The ePortfolio of Zachary Catt

I have known since I was very young that I wanted to go to college. I never knew exactly what I wanted to do when I got there, but I knew I wanted to go. Once I got to college, things got a little confusing for the first few years. I started my undergrad as a computer science major, but after a few programming classes and a lot of math, I figured out it was not for me. So, I switched to history. As I have noted in my background and plans section, history has always been one of my great passions. That being said, I did not know what I was going to do with my history degree. I knew I did not want to be a teacher or a writer, which I felt did not leave me with a lot of options. I was stuck and quickly becoming dejected about my future career options.

As I neared the end of my senior year, however, I started looking more into what it took to work in a museum or archive. Alongside my love of history, I have also always loved museums and wished I could work in one. Through my research and some discussions with fellow students, I learned that many museums, archives, and even libraries require entry-level applicants to have library or information science degrees to be seriously considered for positions. I was not too surprised by this but it did give me pause to think about how much I actually wanted to pursue this path. After much deliberation and discussion with my family and significant other, I decided to give my dreams a chance and applied to UNT's Toulouse Graduate School. I had decided to go for a Master's Degree in Library Science. 

I am not sure exactly where I want to focus my attention for my degree at this point. I am obviously interested in museums and archives as I have previously mentioned, but I am not sure at this point if I want to wholly dedicate myself to that path. I want to take more classes related to archiving to see if that is the direction I want to go. Whatever I pick, I want to try and find a job where I can work with technology and possibly help with the problems of video game preservation that I have been hearing about over the years. I know there are some digital imaging class that I can take so I am going to look into those as well.

As for the future and what I am going to do after graduation, I am not entirely sure at this point. What type of job I will look for

 is sort of up in the air at this point. I do have the dream of working at a major museum, like the Smithsonian, but that is certainly not something that I can count on happening. I think at this point I am just gonna see where this degree takes me and if there are any areas that start to stand out to me. If I become especially interested in public librarianship I might also pursue that, but who knows. Either way, I am super excited to take more classes and I cannot wait to learn more about library science and what it means to be an information professional.