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Daniel Becker MA'03, Comparative History: Research and Instruction Librarian, Harvard Kennedy School
Can you describe your career path and how it has led to your current work?
I started graduate school hoping primarily to become an educator; the research aspect of the PhD was fun, but I was mostly looking forward to teaching. I did end up teaching for a while—as a teaching fellow and a summer school instructor at Brandeis, as well as as a two-year visiting instructor at the University of Maine at Farmington—but in the process somehow never quite got around to actually writing my dissertation. Then the Great Recession hit and basically wiped out most of the already limited faculty positions that existed in my field, and it became quite clear that it was time for a Plan B. That turned out to be librarianship, and I couldn’t be happier with that choice: I still get to do the research I enjoy, and more importantly, I still get to be the educator I wanted to be.