The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Librarian

Hey--don't just stand there; it's okay to come in. That's right--sit down. I won't bite. Okay now, you tell me what career you want to know about. What's that--speak up, okay? A what? Ohhh, a librarian. Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

So you'll need to go learn "library science" at some university or college someplace. Don't let them fool you; there's no science involved. Oh there will be computers, microfiches, security scanners and such, but really, things haven't changed much since the library was a bunch of parchment scrolls in some monastery. The principles are still the same.

Here's the thing. On the outside, books are flat, lifeless and boring. Your job is to blend in--and you look like you're cut out for it--no offense. Your wardrobe will continue to be simple sweaters and conservative skirts, maybe the occasional daring foray into a plain drab suit of some sort. Under the migraine-inducing flickering of defective fluorescent lights you'll squint your way into the vision problems that will soon have you sporting the de rigeur horned-rim glasses hung round your neck with a chain.

The library is your refuge. Just like you hid from the other kids in a corner of the elementary school playground, or handed out the sports equipment at lunch so you'd never have to use it, so now you retreat from the social challenges of normal human interaction to cloister yourself among novels, encyclopedias and magazines. Oh you'll have friends of a sort--the fish on your desk rely on you to feed them once a day, and you'll name them after some of your favorite authors, and you'll think it somehow darkly humorous when you flush Herman Melville down the toilet but you will have no one to share the irony with you.

You won't be the only librarian, of course, but you'll quickly become the one who embodies the essence of the library's loneliness. The others may date or even marry, but you will languish among the imagined passions of victorian romances because you never encounter anyone in the drab routine of your life who could make those stories real for you.

That's not to say you won't have suitors--every time a new entry in the adult classic "Hot Librarians" series is released some oversexed admirer will stalk you through the stacks, slipping horribly-graphic propositions inside the dust jackets of DH Lawrence novels left open at meaningful passages. Over time, to avoid the humiliation and asthma attacks (book dust will play havoc with your respiratory system) you leave the public library system and move into the even more isolated realms of the law library. Then only creepy attorneys will make your life occasionally difficult when they show up in small herds after overimbibing at expense-account luncheons to have a laugh at "that librarian who blushes all the time".

Fortunately for them, you'll be too mortified to ever consider a harassment suit.

At some point you'll fulfill the ultimate librarian life destiny--you'll move in with your ailing widowed mother to care for her in her twilight years. While she may be ailing, she'll demonstrate a tenacious cling on life for many years, and her longevity may well mean she'll be there to scowl through your retirement party. Throughout the quiet desperation of your life with her, she'll criticize your every clothing choice or hair cut as branding you a "wanton hussy", even though you likely will never have a real date in your life.

Don't look so sad, it doesn't have to be this way. At some point you may go crazy and take an axe to the old lady--it's the quiet ones who usually snap in the end.