GLAM Blog Club: What I Learned in 2017 & What I Want to Learn in 2018…

Welcome to my first blog post of 2018! I am hoping that this will be an excellent year filled with new adventures and lots of learning. The theme provided by GLAM Blog Club, what I learned in 2017 and what I want to learn in 2018, allows for both reflection and the opportunity to write down some goals. It is now time to momentarily cast mindfulness aside and obsess over the past and ponder the future.

What I learned in 2017…

I have been trying to think of how I can summarise 2017. I was recently scrolling through some photographs and blog posts thinking “no way did that actually happen in 2017, didn’t I do that years ago?” Basically, it was one of those years. I spent the first six months living and working in Sydney then moved interstate to the regional city of Gladstone, Queensland. This move separated my year into two distinct segments.

Sydney

The number one thing I learned in 2017 Sydney that will continue to have a positive impact on my life was how to manage my time. Honestly though, I needed to learn this quite quickly. There was one stage where I was balancing several casual jobs which all had different roster due dates etc, etc. Being thrown in the literal deep end provided me with a great opportunity to dust off an actual paper diary and work things out. Why did I do this to myself? Easy, I wanted to spend 2017 working out exactly what I wanted to do in the wonderful world of museums. I had finished my study and hoped to get out there and learn by doing and not just by reading.

I soon discovered that I genuinely liked everything. I saw the positives in doing any job because, at the end of the day, I was walking into a museum or into a heritage site and actually contributing something to the industry. So I was left wondering where exactly to go next. That was when I saw a job advertised for an Exhibitions and Education Officer at Gladstone Regional Art Gallery & Museum. A role that seemed like you could do a bit of everything and offered me a more stable permanent position. Too good to be true, but, I got the job.

Gladstone

Moving from Sydney to Gladstone came with a whole lot of personal development and learning. Above all, I learned to trust my gut instinct and take that next step in my career. It was hard leaving so much in Sydney, especially my beautiful friends and my job on Cockatoo Island. I knew though that it would be the right move.
In the first six months I have had so many incredible opportunities in this workplace and learnt so much it would be insane to recount it all here. Being part of a small team at a regional gallery means I have been delving into anything and everything. I work with a team filled with ridiculously knowledgeable and wonderful individuals. I am constantly supported and nudged into trying something new.

What I hope to learn in 2018….

The number one thing I want to learn in 2018, from a professional perspective, is how to fully embrace my role. I want to get to the end of the year and just be amazed at what a wonderful year it had been.

At the beginning of last year I wrote that I was going to learn heaps about archives because I had enrolled in an archives course. So that didn’t happen. I took a step back and thought I would like some time off study. This is important to note because of what I’m going to say next. At the risk of jinxing things, I have enrolled in a short online course run by the Museum of Modern Art in New York on modern art and teaching art in a museum setting. I am so excited to start this course and since it relates so much to what I’m doing in my role, I will finish it. If this sounds like you, here is a link. Join me.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/modern-art-ideas

Also, I am booked in to the 2018 Museums Australia Conference and if it’s anything like the one last year, I will learn so much just in those few days. I cannot wait to see the responses to this year’s theme, Agents of Change.

In short, I want 2018 to be a year of focus. A year in which I grow so much in my role.

If you are still reading, thank you. I really enjoy sprinkling some more personal stuff on my blog especially when it is for GLAM Blog Club. I am looking forward to writing on more themes this year!