To Archive or Not to Archive

To my elders,

I am studying to become an archivist. Which, to a lot of people, is just about THE most boring job they could imagine. If they even know what an archive is or does. And sure, it can get a little dry sometimes. But learning and understanding what other people have done, what their jobs were, their accomplishments, and how they experienced the world, just for the sake of it, is amazing. Learning simply to explain it to other people. Understanding for historical perspective. Seeing all that has happened and all of the ways something could be important to someone at some point in the future, is just completely fascinating. I get to see all of those things that no one gets to see. I have to sign confidentiality agreements at every job.

I should admit that in some ways, my being a complete gossip-loving-snoop is, to some extent, the best and worst part of my job. Or future career, as it were. Because I love finding out all the interesting bits, love knowing everything that was ever in writing, but also get a lot of urges to facebook the juicy bits. Which I can’t do. Not that there is anything that is ever revolutionary or scandalous or anything, but it is still often pretty interesting and funny. And for a history geek who is just interested in who and how people are, how they really are, how society really worked, not romanticized, not censored, but how regular people really interacted and how they really expressed themselves, it is pretty much as perfect of a job as it gets.

I need a job that has some theory, that has some repetition and know how, that can be improved on, and that has a lot of constant learning. Not necessarily about how to do my job, because I kind of like being able to get good at a job, but one that I get to learn new things all the time. I am a bit of a repository for useless information. It is important that somebody know how many dimples there are on a golf ball (approximately 356, but varies between 300 and 450, depending on the brand. Almost all have an even number of dimples though) or how many curls Shirley Temple wore in her childhood movies (56. Hey, when you have Shirley Temple curls as a kid, these things are important). As I’ve already gone on about, I am not philosophically a fan of small talk. So I fill the awkward silences with useless facts. Like how Doctor Who has been running since 1963 with a brief break in the 90s, has had 11 different actors play The Doctor to date, a lot of the early episodes were lost in vault fires or were simply cleared out for space by the BBC, and that the Theremin (that weird electronic instrument that makes noise based on proximity and is played without touching it, as demostrated by Dr. Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory), was used for the theme song of the first 4 series of the 2005 reincarnation of Doctor Who. Fascinating, no?

Archiving is a job that I am not only interested in, but one that I am also interested by, and that makes all the difference. I respect it. I respect the purpose of it. I am not interested in money. Money is of no intrinsic value, it is simply a neutral currency one can use to exchange for goods and services (I would say "a post for another time," but I don’t really have anything more to say about it. Money is just sort of there. It is electronic numbers or pieces of cotton weaved paper with finely printed images that are made entirely of little lines with some coloured thread and wax droplets. It doesn’t make people better or intrinsically different than one another, and it does not give security or class or say anything of substance about a person. End of). I have no interest in having a job that is primarily concerned with the acquisition of money. I read somewhere that to be satisfied by your career, you have to find a field that reflects your values. And I think I have. But I also think you have to find something that is what you do anyway, like a tick of your personality. And preserving things indefinitely and organizing them incessantly is something I can do.

-K