[Warning: This post is almost entirely unrelated to books.]
I have spent the last two weeks in a state of constant agitation and irritation, brought on by my latest Archives course assignment. Training to be an archivist is proving far more stressful, and time-consuming, than I expected. This time I had to write a 4000 word scoping report for an SME (small to medium enterprise, for the blissfully uninitiated) on the introduction of a digital preservation programme. It didn't actually bring me to tears but oh so very nearly. Thank all the gods, great and small, that it was the final piece of work for my first year. I am now deliciously free until the last week in April when I go for my second residential week in Aberystwyth. Next year promises to be a lot more fun: paleography, content and use of manuscipts, records creation from the medieval to modern period and, finally, cataloguing and listing. The latter is the crux of the matter since cataloguing and listing is an archivist's primary professional purpose and the chance of getting a good post without it is almost nil; I'm sure they save it till last so you can't ditch out half way through the degree. This is no doubt also the reason they force you through Records Management and Digital Records in the first year. It certainly helps them winnow the candidates. As far as I can tell only three other students from the April 2008 complement of 14 have made it through to April 2009.
I may have said this before but: this vocational degree has to be one of the hardest things I've done in my life. When I finish it I think I will rate the achievement above my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, because it has been such a trial. Working full time and coming home to two more hours of studying, plus five or so hours at the weekend - more if I'm working on an assignment - is exhausting and not a little demoralising. I barely have time to read any more. It will all be worth it in the end, I know, but right now it often feels like a straitjacket. Then there is the fact that all the skills I acquired writing history and literature essays counts for almost nothing. Since I started I've written reports, presentations, strategies, costed budgets and made several business cases but I've yet to write an essay. This is all good practise for my professional life but requires me to learn new forms of writing from scratch. I'm verbose by nature; it hurts to structure and crop so rigorously. Oh for a high-flown introduction, or a clever concluding riposte.
I enjoy my archives day-job more than ever, which keeps me going. That and the fact that all my colleagues warned me of this: that the MSc is tedium and slog, but the work on the other side is an indulgence. I spent most of last week working on the papers of a 16th century court case, a dispute between two brothers over their mother's estate. Included in the bundle were the depositions of seven witnesses, testifying that Elizabeth Penrose, the mother, had repeatedly stated her intent of leaving her property to her elder son because she didn't like her younger son's wife. They contained all sorts of wonderful observations about the family, and the rhythm of life in a Yorkshire village, c. 1555. So, yes, being paid for transcribing it and writing about it is a gift, and worth every second of the MSc, digital preservation scoping report and all.
Now perhaps I can work on finishing Bleak House, which I started reading in December last year, and catch up on some new releases that I've had sitting around for months: Marilynne Robinson's Home, and John Burnside's Glister, and Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and Andrew Davidson's The Gargoyle.
~~Victoria~~