News
Librarian Designs Her Degree For The Ultimate Dream Job
August 20, 2020
Autumn Anderson is a soon to be Integrative Studies Graduate at Grand Valley State University’s Traverse City Regional Center. Autumn discovered her passion while in High school and was able to design a bachelor’s degree around her dream of becoming a librarian.
Autumn enrolled in early college programs at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) while still in high school homeschooling. She began working at the NMC library with an interest in what the life of a librarian might be like. The more she gained experience the more she fell in love with the idea of becoming a librarian as her dream career. Autumn Explained, “It was totally what I wanted to do, and the librarians were my kind of people.”
Pressing forward, she completed her Associates of Science and Art Basic at NMC. Autumn wanted to continue her education to receive a bachelor’s degree. She met with Jackie Abeyta, Student advisor at Grand Valley State University’s Traverse City Regional Center. Jackie was able to direct Autumn towards the Integrative Studies program. Autumn recalled, “Integrative Studies was interesting as it gives you the ability to tailor your degree to what you wanted.”
From there she worked with GVSU Traverse City Regional Center Advisor, Kate Fairman. Kate was a key leader in Autumn's choice of classes to help reach her goals. Autumn recounted, “it was hard to figure out at first. Even though it’s great to have the ability to create your own focus in your degree, there wasn’t always an easy clear pathway like most typical degrees. Kate Fairman really helped me figure out and decide what classes were right for me. We had a lot of meetings and emails. She really guided me through.”
All her hard work has paid off. She will be completing her Bachelors of Integrative Studies with a library Studies focus this August after completing her practicum.
Autumn started her practicum at the Traverse Area District Library in May. The week before Michigan shut down, due to Covid-19, she had a meeting with her manager to outline what her duties would be, not realizing Michigan would go into lock down so soon. Unfortunately, Autumn's role changed drastically with the shutdown as most of her projects were outlined to be at the library and her new role suddenly became remote.
She adapted quickly and spent most of her initial time researching how other “class 6” Michigan libraries adapted to Covid-19 with a virtual presence online and in social media. When asked how she felt things have changed over the years with electronic vs. paperback books, Autumn said, “ We have a lot of capability for eBooks and audio books but there is still a lot of demand for hard copy and paperback books. It has been great to have the electronic ability to adapt to Covid-19 so there wasn’t a lot of change there, but I prefer hard books and physical books myself. It just isn’t the same experience with electronic books.”
She looks forward to graduating in August and is very thankful to everyone that has been a part of her journey of success.
Autumn was able to carve out a path to her dream job as a Librarian and you can too! Call or email Jackie Abeyta to discover options that fit your goal and lifestyle.