Imposter Syndrome in the Archives: What if my mess doesn’t make sense?

I worry about it. With a job like this, it’s impossible to not let your mental process express itself physically, which in my case translates to “shit literally everywhere.”

But also, I’m a card-carrying member of overthinkers anonymous, and a person who is maybe a little too obsessed with patterns and processes. Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t done enough. Sometimes I wonder if I should be sitting here documenting my philosophy since I don’t know how long I’ll be here, or who will manage it when I’m done and new things come in. Did I do enough? Do I need to go back and do more? Will anyone else every notice anyway?

It is what it is, I guess. I’ve started a collections management class in my graduate program. There’s a difference between historical objects and archival materials, but in either case, the logic of the archive belongs to the person who built it, and documenting the logic is really helpful for all who follow you.

Learning this can’t be accomplished in a single class (that’s why there are entire graduate programs around archival studies) but they intersect, and I’m excited to really delve into this further. I hope I can stay here long enough to apply the things I’m learning in a real world, hands-on way.

In other news: ordering archival supplies takes forever, and I’m not even dealing with the bloated administrative process of university purchasing. Good lord, Gaylord (heh), it shouldn’t take nearly two months to get ten archival boxes, but it has. Are we attempting to pass them through the Strait of Hormuz or something?