Kondo-ing my place. Should I keep books from grad school?
May 8, 2015 9:21 PM Subscribe
I went to grad school for counseling. While I work in the field (policy/government), I'm not working clinically anymore. Due to financial constraints, I have to stick to government work while I pay off student loans for the forseeable future (at least 6-7 years).
At some point, I'd like to work directly in the field clinically, but right now that's not in the cards. My dilemma is, I don't want to spend a lot of money buying back the books I gave away. OTOH, 7 years is a long time to hold onto the dozens of books I've acquired. I've tried googling, but can't figure out what grads typically do. My hunch is they keep very little, but I'm really torn about what to do.
Did you keep books from grad school?
At some point, I'd like to work directly in the field clinically, but right now that's not in the cards. My dilemma is, I don't want to spend a lot of money buying back the books I gave away. OTOH, 7 years is a long time to hold onto the dozens of books I've acquired. I've tried googling, but can't figure out what grads typically do. My hunch is they keep very little, but I'm really torn about what to do.
Did you keep books from grad school?
I've kept essentially all of my books from undergrad through two graduate degrees. The only exceptions were the books from organic chemistry that I took as a post-bacc student. I still really regret getting rid of those, although I really needed the cash at the time. Unless you really need the cash right now or you have absolutely no space for them, reference books are priceless.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:02 PM on May 8, 2015
posted by hydropsyche at 11:02 PM on May 8, 2015
I have two master's degrees. In both cases, I kept most of my books and hardly ever opened one later.
My advice: Keep the ones that have a strong emotional attachment for you and sell the rest. Save the money (or at least keep track of how much you make from the sales) and then if/when you feel like want to re-read them or use them professionally, you don't need to feel bad about spending the money to re-acquire a used copy.
Generally, when I get rid of things, I have sometimes thought "If I had this, I might use it" but almost never want it enough to go out and rebuy it. In the meanwhile, not only do you have the money from selling it but you also have the space in your house that not only that book, and all of cousins, would be taking up for all of those years.
posted by metahawk at 11:04 PM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
My advice: Keep the ones that have a strong emotional attachment for you and sell the rest. Save the money (or at least keep track of how much you make from the sales) and then if/when you feel like want to re-read them or use them professionally, you don't need to feel bad about spending the money to re-acquire a used copy.
Generally, when I get rid of things, I have sometimes thought "If I had this, I might use it" but almost never want it enough to go out and rebuy it. In the meanwhile, not only do you have the money from selling it but you also have the space in your house that not only that book, and all of cousins, would be taking up for all of those years.
posted by metahawk at 11:04 PM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
I should add that my degrees are in the social sciences, there while there are classic reading, they aren't reference books in the same sense that you might have engineering or sciences.
posted by metahawk at 11:06 PM on May 8, 2015
posted by metahawk at 11:06 PM on May 8, 2015
I kick myself for getting rid of methods textbooks and seminal works, particularly those that are written by theorists explaining their theories. Those are the only textbooks I've ever regretted giving away or selling. I'm very ruthless with books - I have many fewer than I used to - so I'd sell the rest on Amazon without a second thought.
posted by sockermom at 11:36 PM on May 8, 2015
posted by sockermom at 11:36 PM on May 8, 2015
the Kondo lady would totally pitch those books
posted by thelonius at 2:26 AM on May 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 2:26 AM on May 9, 2015 [5 favorites]
Best answer: I recently threw away all of my old law school books. Not donated, not sold - threw away. I never cracked one of them open after ten years of practice. In fact, I'd be committing malpractice if I made an argument based on my old textbooks rather than some case that got decided last week.
I have to imagine that clinical counseling is just like most any other where new and relevant information is published in journals, not books. Toss them.
posted by Tanizaki at 4:55 AM on May 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
I have to imagine that clinical counseling is just like most any other where new and relevant information is published in journals, not books. Toss them.
posted by Tanizaki at 4:55 AM on May 9, 2015 [6 favorites]
Best answer: Your books from grad school in counseling are not the best books about the subjects you studied, they are just the books you were assigned. Clinical counseling books, that is the books working counselors might refer to regularly, are usually both more complex and more targeted than the books you read in grad school.
Toss them.
posted by OmieWise at 5:51 AM on May 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Toss them.
posted by OmieWise at 5:51 AM on May 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Best answer: oooh, such a relevant question to my life - I'm planning (hoping) to start kondo-ing my apartment this weekend in advance of a cross-country move and a pretty major field-switch. I have a PhD I will probably not directly use again and LOTS of books as a result...and trying to figure out what to do with them is something I've been turning over in my head for a while.
I think, if I'm understanding the Kondo method correctly, that no one else can actually answer this question for you, because "What are the odds that I'm going to use this book again in six or seven years?" isn't quite the right question to ask. Rather, it's your job to pick up each book, one by one, and honestly explore how the idea of holding onto makes you feel. If it 'sparks joy' - which in this context I'd imagine would be something like, 'it reminds you strongly and pleasantly of the important thing you have accomplished in the past and serves as a meaningful reminder of the path you hope to pursue in the future,' then keep it. But if the feeling is more one of anxiety and a desire to prevent uncertainty - i.e., 'I'm not using this now and it doesn't spark good feelings in me and my preference would be to get rid of it, but I'm scared that someday I might need it in the future and I want to avoid the risk of maybe having to spend money later if I get rid of this now,' then you should toss it.
Ultimately, her argument is that that kind of money-anxiety is a mask for deeper, messier fears about our relationship to the past and the future, and the small chance of having to spend more money at some later date is worth the current reassurance of having a healthy, positive relationship to the objects around us in the present moment. I think it's important to recognize that it's a method that does cost some amount of money to fully implement, and that if you choose to follow it to the letter you are accepting a slightly larger financial risk than if you decided just to apply it piecemeal. That's a choice that you can make, or not, but either way it should be done mindfully.
Good luck!
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:56 AM on May 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
I think, if I'm understanding the Kondo method correctly, that no one else can actually answer this question for you, because "What are the odds that I'm going to use this book again in six or seven years?" isn't quite the right question to ask. Rather, it's your job to pick up each book, one by one, and honestly explore how the idea of holding onto makes you feel. If it 'sparks joy' - which in this context I'd imagine would be something like, 'it reminds you strongly and pleasantly of the important thing you have accomplished in the past and serves as a meaningful reminder of the path you hope to pursue in the future,' then keep it. But if the feeling is more one of anxiety and a desire to prevent uncertainty - i.e., 'I'm not using this now and it doesn't spark good feelings in me and my preference would be to get rid of it, but I'm scared that someday I might need it in the future and I want to avoid the risk of maybe having to spend money later if I get rid of this now,' then you should toss it.
Ultimately, her argument is that that kind of money-anxiety is a mask for deeper, messier fears about our relationship to the past and the future, and the small chance of having to spend more money at some later date is worth the current reassurance of having a healthy, positive relationship to the objects around us in the present moment. I think it's important to recognize that it's a method that does cost some amount of money to fully implement, and that if you choose to follow it to the letter you are accepting a slightly larger financial risk than if you decided just to apply it piecemeal. That's a choice that you can make, or not, but either way it should be done mindfully.
Good luck!
posted by pretentious illiterate at 5:56 AM on May 9, 2015 [8 favorites]
Best answer: I recently mostly-Kondo'ed my apartment as a current PhD student, and I found that "sparks joy" was actually a surprisingly good metric for what academic books I wanted to keep. For those types of books, "sparks joy" ended up meaning something like "I'm excited about what this person is saying and I'm looking forward to delving back into their arguments and their research in more detail."
The end result was that I kept about two shelves of books, mostly: books unrelated to my subfield but were so well crafted that it changed how I think of my field as a whole and books related to my subfield that have helped shape my own research and that I was excited about continuing to revisit. Almost none of these were books assigned in class, since like OmniWise notes, the books assigned in class are usually not the most groundbreaking books in the field but the ones that are easiest for students without much background to parse quickly. I kept no reference books, since those go out of date quickly and can be found easily if I need them again.
Especially if you're not in the counseling field in the near future, I would keep only those books that spark joy -- those that have helped shape the person you are now, that you would find joy in revisiting regardless of where life takes you.
posted by LeeLanded at 6:31 AM on May 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
The end result was that I kept about two shelves of books, mostly: books unrelated to my subfield but were so well crafted that it changed how I think of my field as a whole and books related to my subfield that have helped shape my own research and that I was excited about continuing to revisit. Almost none of these were books assigned in class, since like OmniWise notes, the books assigned in class are usually not the most groundbreaking books in the field but the ones that are easiest for students without much background to parse quickly. I kept no reference books, since those go out of date quickly and can be found easily if I need them again.
Especially if you're not in the counseling field in the near future, I would keep only those books that spark joy -- those that have helped shape the person you are now, that you would find joy in revisiting regardless of where life takes you.
posted by LeeLanded at 6:31 AM on May 9, 2015 [4 favorites]
Are you going to need to take a licensing exam in the future? You might want basic-overview books for that. (Most study materials also contain that information, but my brain tends to remember things better if I review them in the same layout that I first read them; your brain may vary!)
We were assigned a fair amount of (good) self-help books (like Gottman), and I kept those to lend to clients. I did keep a bunch of others that I just went to check on to see which ones I've used or needed, which made me realize I should get rid of them because I haven't used or needed any of them.
posted by jaguar at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2015
We were assigned a fair amount of (good) self-help books (like Gottman), and I kept those to lend to clients. I did keep a bunch of others that I just went to check on to see which ones I've used or needed, which made me realize I should get rid of them because I haven't used or needed any of them.
posted by jaguar at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:08 PM on May 8, 2015 [2 favorites]