I am predictable! It was mostly wrangling time between meetings and questions today to get a chance to answer.
I like people a lot, actually, but my migraines definitely like there being fewer people making lots of unpredictable noise while I'm trying to concentrate.
(I'm someone who can either do the people-facing stuff, or do detailed stuff, but trying to combine them is tricky, because I'm very reactive to noise around me. Jobs that have let me figure that out have been great, the places where I'm supposed to do the focused stuff in a noisy environment have... not.)
The other part I should mention is that my current job gets questions from everyone from about 4th grade through people in their 80s, and with a wide range of knowledge about what they're asking about (everything from, well, 4th graders to experts in their field) and from the US and internationally.
A big part of my job turns out to be figuring out how to meet that person where they are, and have reasonable boundaries about how we help (in keeping with library policies, larger institutional priorities, etc.) and express them kindly even when we can't help with a thing or need to say no to something specific.
That's a puzzle I actually really enjoy, but it's a particular set of social skills that a lot of people find super stressful.
My coworkers and I were talking last week about the fact that routinely, the people we've had the most difficulty with are grad students. Some of them are fantastic, but some of them show up and say "I'm doing a PhD on X. Do all my research for me on this vaguely explained subtopic." (To which we reasonably say "No" and "Here's how to do searches in our catalog" and "Here's what we can help with.")
no subject
I like people a lot, actually, but my migraines definitely like there being fewer people making lots of unpredictable noise while I'm trying to concentrate.
(I'm someone who can either do the people-facing stuff, or do detailed stuff, but trying to combine them is tricky, because I'm very reactive to noise around me. Jobs that have let me figure that out have been great, the places where I'm supposed to do the focused stuff in a noisy environment have... not.)
The other part I should mention is that my current job gets questions from everyone from about 4th grade through people in their 80s, and with a wide range of knowledge about what they're asking about (everything from, well, 4th graders to experts in their field) and from the US and internationally.
A big part of my job turns out to be figuring out how to meet that person where they are, and have reasonable boundaries about how we help (in keeping with library policies, larger institutional priorities, etc.) and express them kindly even when we can't help with a thing or need to say no to something specific.
That's a puzzle I actually really enjoy, but it's a particular set of social skills that a lot of people find super stressful.
My coworkers and I were talking last week about the fact that routinely, the people we've had the most difficulty with are grad students. Some of them are fantastic, but some of them show up and say "I'm doing a PhD on X. Do all my research for me on this vaguely explained subtopic." (To which we reasonably say "No" and "Here's how to do searches in our catalog" and "Here's what we can help with.")