Last Friday was my last day at the State Historical Society. I logged about 100 hours over the course of the summer, and I learned a lot. I started my internship there because I was considering becoming an archivist. After spending a whole summer there I decided that archives are probably not the vein of library science I want to pursue. There are a couple of reasons why.
The first reason is that it seemed like the archivists at the State Historical Society didn't have a whole lot of interaction with the public. They handled queries but most of our queries came in through phone or email. I think at first I was attracted to the field of archives because it wasn't with a lot of people interaction, but after spending the summer there I realized that I actually like people (I know, I was amazed too).
Another reason is that archivists have to spend ridiculous amounts of time on stupid projects that are not interesting at all. I know all librarians have to deal with boring stuff but the project I was working on this summer was humongous. Three of us were working on it and one of the archivists came in one the weekends to work and when I left they informed me they were about half done. Some of the stuff we got in had no historical significance at all. Like Christmas cards. They might be important to the person who gave them to us, although I doubt it because otherwise he probably wouldn't have given them to us. Basically, the archives kind of seem like a landfill.
Overall, I enjoyed my time at the State Historical Society and I am so glad I tried out archives because now I know what the job is actually like. This was my first internship and I'm only halfway through school so I still have time to try out a lot of other jobs. My time was not wasted at all, I learned a lot about the process and just about libraries and archives in general, and I came away with a personal decision that it wasn't for me. I say my first internship was a success.