In my placement report, I reflected that one great benefit of the placement experience was to be able to measure my competence as an information services professional through working alongside others in a larger organisation. Receiving a glowing report from my placement supervisor and feeling that I had made meaningful contributions to the Sydney University Library in my time there gave me the confidence I needed to step forward in courage in my school library.
A few months ago, a member of my teacher librarian network was asking on Facebook whether I knew how to run a report on loan statistics to compare the current year’s circulation figures to previous years’. I never had to figure it out because she figured out how to do it before I had a chance to try. At the time I considered finding out how and running the report to see what my statistics looked like. However, I chose not to do it because I was afraid I would find out that there was no change or that we had gone backward since I arrived. With my newfound confidence (and a complete year of borrowing finished) I ran the loan statistics report this past Wednesday and found that borrowing had increased by more than 40% in 2019 as compared to 2018. Given that enrolments had risen by less than 10% I found this to be a meaningful increase.
I encourage you to face that feedback you’ve been avoiding – you might find it brighter than you imagined!