I changed job. Just over a year ago now. I know! I thought that I might be too old too.
Have you been New, New recently? How did you find it? Here’s how being New, New felt to me:
Exciting
So many new people to meet, so much to learn and so many new subjects with which to engage. What a fabulous opportunity!
Deskilling
Particularly with your daily use software products. There was little overlap between my old place and my new place in terms of:
- Office Suite (Google to Microsoft)
- LMS (OCLC to SirsiDynix)
- Document management (Google Drive to OneDrive/Teams with a sprinkling of intranet)
- Predominant methods of communication (email/Chat to Teams/email)
- Enquiry management (SpringShare – still so much to uncover)
- Web editing (devolved to centralised)
- VLE (Moodle to Canvas)
- Online meetings and training (Google Meet/Zoom to MS Teams/Zoom)
- Reference management software (EndNote to Mendeley)
Even your basic librariany stuff – DDC to UDC. Where the heck do I find…?
On the plus side, the New Place uses Talis Aspire for reading list management and some of the key text books are the same – Saunders ‘Research Methods for Business Students’ – my old friend!
Exhausting
There’s the new commute. You will optimise your route, you will find your favourite parking space, you will settle on a leaving time – making adjustments for multiple road closures and the school holidays. It won’t happen straight away though.
There are all of the new names – they know who you are, you don’t know who anyone is.
There are all of the new systems and the new ways of working – I refer you to the massive list above. Your brain has to wrap itself around A LOT. Did you know that ‘…learning a new skill requires more brainpower than a well-practiced activity.’?* And that learning a new skill is likely to expend more energy?*
No wonder I was so hungry in those first few weeks!
Confusing
You don’t know what you don’t know. Other people don’t know what you don’t know.
You won’t know who does what. You don’t know where anything is. You don’t know what a lot of things are, particularly if they have an institutional-specific initialism/acronym/context-specific in-joke title. A year in, there are still some buildings I haven’t been into and I’ve just been added to ‘A Thing’ that happens once every so often but not for the last 11 months.
In Conclusion
I found being New, New quite tough at times. So, thank you. Thank you brain and body for coping. Thank you, to my family for their support. Thank you, to my colleagues new and old for their support.
Here’s to the next year!
Messier, C and Béland-Millar, A
Does the Brain Use More Energy During Particular Activities?
May 1, 2017.
pennylibrarian cpd 