It was nice while it lasted….

Okay, well, it wasn’t really nice while it lasted because work kinda sucks right now, but the Summer syllabi went up today. As I feared, my 6 weeks of summer school will be a ballbuster (except I don’t actually have balls).

*sigh* I’ll just worry about when I get back from Yosemite.

Three down, three more to go….

I just turned in my last assignment of the Spring Semester. Three semesters down, and now only three more to go.

This one was rough, y’all, and the ending was particularly hard. In the last three weeks I had 3 Cataloguing projects, 1 Cataloguing assignment and my final Use and Users report due. I would be lying if I said there wasn’t at least one crying fit of hysteria somewhere in there too.

Tremendous thanks to Phil and Sarah for proofing everything and keeping me calm. Thanks and apologies to my friends and family since I know it seemed like I fell off the face of the earth.

Next semester doesn’t start until 6/10, so I have a month off. While I only have 6 weeks of class in the Summer, I’m hoping for a slightly easier time of it: Reference and Web Design. I’m not even going to worry about them until the syllabi are posted.

Holy Crap!

So I got an A on my monster 8-page literature review that I did for my Use and Users class. I’m totally shocked because even now, 9 weeks into this class, I’m still not sure I have a complete idea of what is going on and I certainly didn’t feel like I knew what was going on when I wrote that thing. I guess I fake it well.

I hope I fake just as well on everything else!

Last post from the Union…

Today is my last day here until June, and when I return I shall be staying the dorms. Ah, the dorms – how I didn’t miss them. Anyway, no more awesome Union until the Fall probably. So I am especially savoring my non-fat latte that I did not have to put on a coat for today.

Anyway, yesterday I had cataloguing. Not a bad day, and it went by pretty quickly. My instructor is a bit wacky and doesn’t respond to challenging questions very well, and my class is full of a bunch of people who work at libraries who don’t know how to ask challenging questions very well. So there were some moments where tempers rose for a few seconds before someone realized that they were just a student and the person in front of them had a PhD in cataloguing and had say over their grade. I thoroughly enjoyed the Dewey Decimal exercise though. Who knew DDC could be so much fun? BTW – 633.83 is for spices and condiments. Did you know that?

It snowed again yesterday after lunch, and we had to march back to the Agriculture library in it. The snow was very pretty, but the wind blew hard enough to push the snow into our faces. I’ve decided that I don’t like that very much. I don’t recall liking that very much as a kid in Kansas either. Anyway, I’m done with the snow.

On a library note, our instructor took us on a more in-depth tour of the main library stacks. The last tour I got was during bootcamp and we stepped inside the stacks only for a minute before we realized they were ridiculously warm and airless. Well, even in snowy weather they are ridiculously warm and airless. I have now been on the 9 1/2th floor and 6 1/2th floor (yes, really). But all in all, this is one hell of an awesome library. The Asian library collection alone is just awe-inspiring (if you’re into that sort of thing like me).

So today my plans are to run a few last errands here in C-U, eat lunch and then head back to warmer weather. If I’m smart – and that’s questionable – I’ll read some articles on the plane.

Sidenotes

Before I break into my discussion of the one class I had on Friday, I wanted to add some side notes to the last post:

1) On Friday night, as Erin, Alisun and I headed back from dinner (which we purposely arranged to be as far from Green Street as possible in hopes of avoiding the chaos), a young man charged in front of us screaming, “I’ll lead the way, follow me! Wait! What street is this?” before he veered off into someone’s lawn.

2) Last night we went out for a couple of beers – $2 each, y’all. For *any* beer. I had three Harps for $6. I would think that was totally and completely awesome except I came home smelling like an ashtray.

3) Who was silly enough to go for a 40 minute walk in sleeting rain this morning? Me! Except for the ice bits hitting me in the face, I actually thought it was sorta warmer out than it had been the past two mornings.

If you’re wondering, yes, I am back on the first floor of the Union with my non-fat latte. I have an article open in false hopes of reading it. Like that will seriously happen….

Greetings from the Union

Greetings from the first floor of the Illini Union. Yep, I’m back in C-U again, but this time I have the good fortune to stay in the Union. I have to say, this is a pretty sweet student union: hotel, food court (with McDonalds and sushi), bowling alley, ballrooms, and the coffee shop and free wireless. Slight side note: an infomercial for visiting the state of Wisconsin is playing on all the TVs here. Did you know the miniature horse capital is in Marquette County, Wisconsin?

I actually have today and tomorrow free. I had my Use and Users of Information class yesterday and I don’t have cataloguing until Monday. I was going to sleep in, but the racket of other guests trying to get to the free continental breakfast in the room across the hall and the bing of the elevators that are also across the hall got me up at 7:30. So I got up, took a brisk walk around part of campus (and I mean brisk – 30 degrees outside, y’all), and put myself together. Now I’m here on the first floor, enjoying a nice latte (hooray for Espresso Royale!) and wasting time until the library opens at 11. Then it’s homework time.

I have to just share about yesterday though. So yesterday was “Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day” here. I get conflicting stories as to whom is responsible for this event, but either the bars or the undergrads made this event up to make up for the fact the holiday usually falls during UIUC spring break. Usually the bars open at 7am on this auspicious day, but Champaign insisted they wait until 11 this year. Lemme tell you, folks: that did not slow these kids down. At lunch time, my class presentation partner Ben and I dodged shirtless young men painted green (and it was in the 40s), people dressed as leprechauns and just mobs and mobs of very drunk, hyper people in green. My friend Erin spotted someone with bagpipes. I really can’t describe how sorta outta control it all is. Of course, by nightfall, there were police and ambulances here and there – people were sick, gotten in fights, passed out. As I told Phil – it was very interesting, in a sociological kinda way. Otherwise it was really silly.

If you’re wondering how I’m coping with the colder weather, I have to say I’m doing pretty well. Last night dipped down into the low 20s, and then I was truly cold despite my coat. Otherwise I’ve been fine. Thank you, Sarah, for the coat. I’m sure I wouldn’t be so fine without it.

I’ll post later, y’all about my classes, but for now it’s back to schoolwork…..

First impressions…

My second class session of Cataloguing is today. Perhaps it’s too soon in the semester to form an impression, but I really like the instructor and the material so far. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but *cataloguing might be fun*. Emphasis on the might simply because cataloguing could always turn ugly in a few weeks. Anyway, the assignments are fun and not that hard (so far). The catch is that there are SO MANY OF THEM. Literally, folks, I have like 1-3 assignments due each week for this class alone.

As for my other class, Use and Users of Information, the assignments are stretched out a little more, but the reading is insane. I have about 350 pages of reading for just this class due a week from tomorrow. The readings so far are also a little too theoretical/philosophical for my tastes at this point. Is a tree information? Um, I’m not sure. Does it matter for this class? Still I think this class will be useful. In every job/career/industry/etc there’s a concern about what customers want, how they use a “product” and how to meet their needs. This class aims to provide some guidance on addressing that concern.

So yeah, different kind of workload this semester. Hopefully it won’t kill me.

On another note, I’m getting freaked out about my job prospects. I’m now subscribed to two librarian mailling lists, and the consensus between both is that library schools might be misleading you a bit when they say “Everyone is retiring and there are tons of jobs!” What I’m finding out is that libraries are either replacing retirees with para-professionals (people without MLS/MLIS degrees) or they’re opening their positions up for people with experience only. The number of entry-level positions are slim to none.

Not that this is detering me from getting my degree. I still love the content and I’m determined to finsh, but I’m adjusting my future career expectations a bit. Man, I hope things improve in 18 months.

So, um, hi!

So, yeah, hi! I know, I’ve been a bad blogger.

I have successfully survived another semester of school. I came out with two A-‘s to show for it, and I’m totally okay with that.

I’m guessing I got an A- in my Information Organization class because I didn’t “participate” much and because I didn’t do as well on the metadata project as I would have liked (no one did, actually). I was shocked by the A- in my Electronic Publishing class; I was sure I’d get a B+ in that one. The final exam was a killer and took me about 14 hours to do, not to mention the fact that my instructor’s expectations have always tended to be a moving target. Go me!

So what did I learn from this semester?

* Having people (Phil and Sarah) proof your papers is always a good thing.

* Don’t do school projects on something “close” to you: for our relational database group project, one guy insisted that we work on his German newspaper collection (sad, huh?). Because it was so dear to him, he insisted certain things work certain ways and hence we lost points because of it.

* Don’t work on group projects with Todd. He either doesn’t do his part and pleads that he was “sick” or he waits until the last minute and supplies something full of errors. Nice guy, but a total flake.

* Procrastination isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve developed this weird habit where I either clean or bake when I don’t want to do school work. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; roomie Sarah sure isn’t complaining.

* Despite not doing awesomely well on the metadata project thingie, I like metadata. It’s kinda neat.

* Playing with XML is fun. Good grief, I’m a such a nerd.

* Articles about data mining are BOOOOORING!!! Data mining in itself is kinda cool, but I’d rather scrub my eyeballs than read about it.

I shall be applying these new lessons this coming semester, which starts on 1/18 for me. I’ll be taking Cataloguing (notoriously hard) and Use and Users of Information (also notably difficult). I guess this means I won’t be watching much TV this Spring either.

Two semesters down – four more to go.

The long awaited update

To all four of you that actually read this blog, I sincerely apologize for not posting sooner. Those who actually deal with me on a somewhat daily basis know that I have been as of late a crazy person. At any rate I’m leaving for Champaign on Friday for my semesterly-trip to UIUC. I thought I’d give y’all the update:

School is hard. I think the level and type of “hard” changes from semester to semester, but this semester appears to be hard in the “holy crap, that’s a lot of work you expect me to do” category. It’s not that the assignments are individually hard (at least for the one class they aren’t); it’s that there are so many of them. I basically have a writing assignment due each week. Here’s the run down on the actual classes:

My “Organization of Information” class is the last of my two core classes (the first one I took during the summer session), and probably the more interesting of the two. We’re covering how information is classified, why it’s classified, how to find it, why you find it that kind of way, etc. Talk about a class that makes you see organizing things in a whole new way. The class is pretty digital-technology friendly too, which is good since I’m a nerd. My only gripe is that we have an assignment due about every one to two weeks. They’re all short assignments and I’ve gotten full credit for the ones that have been graded so far, so I wouldn’t be so bothered by them if it weren’t for the other class.

Ah, Electronic Publishing. First of all, let me say that my professor is a very smart, nice woman who definitely knows a lot about this subject matter and does an excellent job of explaining it. Here comes “the but:” 1) she’s constantly changing the syllabus – a reading that was recommended one week becomes required the next and vice versa. She’s especially fond of adding more and more information/requirements to assignments on an on-going basis. 2) She assigns about 200 or so pages of reading each week. 3) Because the assignments and readings change on an irregular basis, it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on.

Electronic publishing is a really cool subject and she’s trying to introduce some very technical stuff (publishing XML documents) in a very friendly way. I think that she’s doing about the best she can with that subject matter in a distance-learning environment. However I feel like she keeps shifting her expectations of us in weird ways (the syllabus changing, and her saying things like “maybe you can publish your final project in a journal!” and yet she wrote an XML assignment that basically told us step by step what to do so we couldn’t get it wrong), so I feel like this class is an exercise in hitting a moving target. Who knows? Maybe that’s her ultimate goal. I get my first assignment back from her this weekend, so we’ll see if I’ve properly guessed her expectations very soon.

So this week I’m scrambling to finish up some reading, write a short assignment, prepare for some in-class assignments, pack, catch up on Tivo and still manage to be productive at work. I’m only partly successful in this effort so far.

I’ll report in after the trip to C-U. Ciao for now.

And it begins again

The fall syllabi are up, the textbooks have arrived and class starts on Thursday. The cycle of fear and panic that hit me in July is back too. Wee.

Holy crap, folks, I have signed myself up for a crap load of work this fall. I’m sure I’ll get over it once I start into the semester and find a schedule/rhythm that works for me. Right?