I find myself in need of some opinions, and I do hope that some of you lovely people out in cyberspace can help me.
When I graduated from 'Library School' - too many years ago to want to remember - I was full of enthusiasm about gaining my Chartership as soon as I possibly could. As the years went by, I never did get any further than registering my interest for various reasons, and when I went on maternity leave a couple of years ago I suspended my CILIP membership completely (and never reinstated it).
Now, I am thinking of the future - a scary thing to do! - and I am revisiting my previous thoughts on chartering. I've contacted CILIP, so I know how to go about reactivating my membership, which I think might be a good idea anyway. But chartership? I find myself with mixed feelings (which I'm not sure I even understand myself). Those of you out there who have been through chartership - is it worth it? Are you pleased you did it? And was it hard to do? Those of you going through it - are you enjoying it, and are you finding it difficult, or easier than you expected?
I guess I just don't know exactly where to start, and it seems very complicated to me looking at it, but hopefully I'm wrong and it would be a really worthwhile thing to do. All opinions and information welcome and appreciated!
It took me a really long time to decide that I was going to do the charter and, even then, it's taking me much longer than I ever anticipated to get through it. I think I cam give some (hopefully helpful) advice though. Firstly, a good mentor is important. I am a big procrastinator and my mentor is very relaxed about when and if I do things. In hindsight, that's not really the mentor relationship I needed. Difficult to change once you're signed up with someone though so think that one through carefully. The other piece of advice I can give is about getting started. I really struggled with the concept and layout of the PPDP and just felt that I didn't know where to start. I looked at a few example ones and thought I didn't have the same kind of things to put down and I just didn't know what to do. Following a few conversations with my mentor though I finally decided I just had to bite the bullet and do it. Once I had put down my first thing the rest just started to come. Getting over that first hurdle is difficult but it will happen. As to whether it's worth it or not, that remains to be seen. (If you want a look at my PPDP just ask!)
ReplyDelete