To get certification or not, that is the question

Now that I'm comfortable being back in school, and I'm safely registered for next semester's classes, I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I should do the extra classes/student teaching internship I'd need to become teaching certified and earn the School Media Specialist certification as well as completing the Masters in Library and Information Studies.

To just earn the Masters degree requires 36 credits - only 12 of those credits are made up of required courses; the rest can be made up of whatever strikes your fancy within the department. There are unofficial concentrations (Youth Services, Information Architecture, etc), but they're only guidelines to help you choose classes that go along with your interests. Because I do not already have a teaching certification, I figured I would just go along with the regular degree and do a Youth Services concentration. Taking two classes a semester, including summers, would have me finishing this degree in two years (6 semesters...trimesters...whatever).

If you do not already have a teaching certification, which I don't, to earn the Masters plus the School Library Media certification requires 48 credits which are made up of 39 credits in library and information studies and 9 credits in education classes. Every single class is mapped out. No electives (except there's kind of a choice in which education classes fulfill the requirement). Six of those credits come from a required school media internship/student teaching which must be taken in your last semester. This would mean I'd have to quit my job before being done with the degree. It would also mean that finishing the degree will definitely take me more than two years. It would probably take me three years (8 semesters/trimesters/whatever). On top of that, only one of the three required education courses is offered online at FSU, so I'd have to take the other two elsewhere and transfer the credits in. I contacted the director of the school media program about how other distance students satisfy those credits, and she gave me a list of pre-approved equivalents that people have taken at University of Phoenix Online, or I could check local schools to see if they have anything similar. The only thing I'd have to actually travel to Florida for would be to take three teaching certification exams. Even though I do not want to work in Florida, taking and passing them are part of the requirements for graduation with the school media specialist certification.

So now, I just don't know what I want to do. If I already had teaching certification, I would definitely go for the school media certification, but since I don't, I'm torn. Thus far, I have taken and am registered for classes next semester that are required for the school media specialist track and also work for the Youth Services concentration. I can probably go a few more semesters taking classes that work for both before needing to decide.

On the one hand, having the school library media certification will qualify me for more jobs - I'd be able to work in either a public library or a school library. On the other hand, it will take longer to get the degree, and I'll have to quit my current job before I was planning to without having another job lined up. I'd have teaching certification though. And being forced to take an internship and get some library-related work experience before actually job-hunting for a library-related job is a plus. Oh well...I've still got some time to make up my mind.