So You Want to be an Archivist.... Why?

1.  I like filing.

2.  Lifting records center cartons onto high shelves gives me a much-needed triceps workout.

3.  The constant threat of papercuts makes me feel like I’m living life on the edge!

4.  Steering a rickety wooden cart piled high with early 19th century documents around a hairpin turn gives me a thrill like nothing else.

5.  I care about everybody’s great-great-great grandmother.

6. I secretly like Hilary Jenkinson and all his old-fashioned idealism.

 

7. Archivists make, like, a ton of money.  Right?

8.  I’ll never, NEVER organize my apartment, but when I see a box of papers shoveled out of someone’s attic, I catch myself subconsciously beginning to organize them into series.

 

9.  I like to know that my hands have touched history, that I’ve helped provide a window into the lives of the world’s movers and shakers, and possibly helped to give voice to the voiceless.  I recognize that a will, a school record, a letter, or a medical examination might be the only tangible remaining record of an entire life, and I am the person who decides to preserve it.

 

10.  Or I must just really like filing.