Scratch that job off the list

I have the heeby jeebies a little bit. Tonight our class spent a few hours at the maximum security prison in town to talk to the prison librarian. I am not okay with being behind barbed wire fences in a maximum security prison during movement time when the offenders all move from their cell blocks to wherever they're going, in this case the library. Talk about super uncomfortable. They were all pretty polite, and although we did get some things said to us as we walked by, nobody was really offended or anything. I mean, we were the ones running late and kind of screwing with their schedule. We all had on mugging alarms that would have set off if anybody had been touched. That alone managed to freak us (even the guys) out before we even left the security checkpoint. And that was at the very beginning. As it turns out, the ending was even more awkward because we, yet again, sort of got our timing mixed up and had to walk through the yard when a lot of offenders were out in it and I have never been more uncomfortable walking down a sidewalk than I was tonight with us on one side and a growing number of offenders standing all along the sidewalk watching the six of us walk by. We did have security guards with us at the end, but, it was totally uncomfortable and I wanted to run to the security fence in a chaotic manner screaming, 'I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE.'

Obviously, I do not have the personality type fit to work as a librarian behind bars. Not only the uncomfortable factor, but I care too much about what the patrons want. They told us that prison librarians have to be completely detached at all times. You can't care what happens to the prisoners. You can't become emotionally involved in their lives or let them become emotionally involved in yours. Even the ones that you work with every day, you have to constantly not care about. Most importantly, you can't show fear, which obviously, I was scared as hell tonight. I couldn't do it. Thank God we don't have to go to any more prisons.