i’ve been listening to outliers by malcolm gladwell and am at the part in which he’s discussing how people get to different places in life even though they have similar beginnings. he notes that the people around us either lift us up or hold us back, depending on their own expectations of who we are supposed to be in life. hearing this section of the audiobook reminds me of a very kind journal editor who lifted me up a few years ago.
when i was a grad student i decided that every paper i wrote during the coursework for my master’s degree would become an article that i would submit to a peer-reviewed journal. i’m not sure where this idea came from, but i followed through on it. as it turns out, one significant journal in particular liked what i submitted and published my work. i was at a crossroad when the article was due to go to press, still in library school and working full time as an administrative assistant on campus. when called to state my title i submitted “administrative assistant”. the editor wrote me an email saying that he didn’t think that did me justice, suggesting that i publish with the following affiliation: “Administrative Assistant in the Carolina Population Center and a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” of course i agreed with the change, honored to have a person in a significant position try to help my career along by promoting me in a more professional way. it would have cost the editor nothing to publish my work with the title i suggested, and it is exactly that kind of small kindness that lifts one up and makes a difference.
