Round 2

So I just finished my first week of my second quarter of library school, and am now entering week two. Though since I don't have class till Wednesday, I'm still enjoying my four-day weekend. The other nice thing about quarters? They're only ten weeks long, which means, class-wise, I'm already done with 10% of the term. There is an eleventh week for finals, but it appears that I won't have any, which means I will be using that for my second week of spring break. I really thought that we would automatically get two weeks off between winter and spring quarters since we only got two weeks off for winter break, but UW apparently thinks otherwise.

I've been thinking a lot about using people's names in this blog especially since I'm about to talk about my classes and professors. I tend to mention you, my friends, but only in favorable and factual statements. This is not my moody, angsty MySpace blog from my college days (which is essentially defunct now anyway). So maybe my law school friends will have insight on this arena of Internet laws and ethics. (Also, if I've mentioned you and you'd rather I didn't, just let me know.) So I flew back to Seattle on Sunday, and used Monday to settle back in and play around. On Tuesday, however, I was dreading going back to school, but Wednesday rolled around anyway, and after six hours of classes I felt a little bit better about the whole thing, surprisingly. So last quarter I only had one class per day Monday through Thursday, and they were in the afternoon. And I was very lazy. Now I have three classes on Wednesday and Friday from 8:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon with an hour for lunch. On those days it feels more like school, though the other five days of the week? No structure, so I'm still very lazy. I really need to seriously look for a part-time library job. Back to Tuesday, and I went through my school email inbox which I had let grow wild sometime back in October. That was a mess. But I eventually got caught up on that, though it requires daily attention which means it's already getting out of hand once again. That night I was desperately looking for a new three-subject notebook to start the quarter with and Office Depot failed me miserably. After looking in a couple of other stores, I found a passable notebook though they were sold out of my beloved Mead notebooks. C'est la vie. But I was ready for Wednesday, more-or-less.

My alarm went off at seven in the am which is the earliest I have intentionally woken up during my time in Seattle. I got ready and after walking out my door went to go get me some Starbucks. During this time I saw like five buses go by, including the mysterious 243 which I had never seen before, which clearly reinforced that this was morning-time because in the late afternoon the buses are supposed to come every 15-20 minutes and they are late anyway. So I caught the sixth bus that came along to campus and prepared myself for Information in Social Context(s) while catching up with half the cohort. This class is taught by one of the PhD students and this is her specialty. Basically it's a class about the legal and political aspects of information within the LIS profession and ethical and moral responsibility. I thought I always wanted to minor in philosophy but after doing the first week's reading which included Mill, Kant, and Aristotle, I realized that a PoliSci minor was about as much of that as I can take. Thankfully we are moving on from moral reasoning to professional ethics and information policy--readings include the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Joy. Well, hopefully it'll be an interesting, provocative, and enjoyable class. And because our instructor is a grad student, it appears that our readings and assignments are much more grounded in reality which is nice.

We then moved on to Organization of Information and Resources which is basically the first cataloging class and is for our entire cohort. So far I think this class is going to be my favorite of the bunch. Our professor Joe Tennis is an adorable man. He looks like the quintessential, perhaps stereotypical, librarian/cataloger. He is super organized, though we've been having a few snafus with the room's technology, and he's very passionate and funny about the material. So far we've begun talking about the attributes of a document as well as a few of the models of cataloging. There's still a boatload of reading to do but the grading is based on five multiple guess quizzes and four (out of five) assignments which I believe will be relatively straightforward. Here's hoping.

After a quick lunchbreak, I got ready for Research Methods, a required core course that I am getting out of the way early. Whenever I hear the word research I tend to panic. I realize I've done research in high school and college, and that every time I wrote an essay fusing together primary and secondary texts and critical theory, I was doing a type of research, a squishy type known as humanities scholarship. I like the word scholarship a lot more than research. This is also why I like the squishy library side of library and information science. Research still makes me think of technicians in lab coats doing sciencey things in stark labs. It also makes me think of charts and tabulated results where n = x and too many numbers. However, we started class with Bach's fugue (which I had already seen in Dr. P's class), this Powers of 10 video (a bit long and science class-y but still interesting), and talking about Borges's story "The Library of Babel," so maybe this won't be such a bad course. I also realized that we will only be talking about research methodologies without actually doing any field work which makes me very happy. Still, by its very nature this will probably be my least favorite of the three classes. It also has the largest assignment/project due at the end. Boo. And the two people in my group for this project, who seem like lovely people, are no longer interested in being librarians. One of the girls who is in her fourth year (of a two-year program) is finishing her Master's just because, even though she is no longer interested in libraries or information science. That was a little bit sad, so I hope I graduate on time in two years and will still be excited to be a librarian. There are also seven textbooks for the class though none of them are exactly required. There's a basic textbook which I need to buy online since it's not available at the bookstore (though it is on reserve at the library), but then instead of or in addition to that book, we can get one of these other textbooks if we feel like it. I can tell you I don't like this situation at all. Just pick one textbook, order it into the UW bookstore, and I'll buy it and maybe even read it. Just sayin'.

My fourth class is a one-credit, pass/fail, pre-req, entirely online course called Algorithmic Thinking. Yes, I am scared. Apparently it's about JavaScript based on my textbook which is called JavaScript for Programmers. Can I just mention that I'm in a library program and not computer programming? Well I finished the first week's module on Saturday which included downloading all sorts of programs onto my laptop and retrofitting my Mozilla browser. The process was exhausting. It also involved a short survey to see where we all were in regards to the material and I learned just exactly how little nothing I know. Okay, so I can do some html tags, but that's about it. Anyway, I hope the class is interesting, maybe even fun, and that I learn a little bit about . . . algorithms or whatever instead of setting my head on fire.

The weather's been pretty nice lately. I mean compared to Utah which was lovely and cold and snowy and perfect for Christmas. But now it's January and even if it's grey and rainy like today, I am okay as long as the temperature stays in the forties and fifties. *knock on wood* And I don't think asking for a couple of sunny days here and there is too much. On Friday I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (which is available for instant watching on Netflix),and it was just as delightful as when I saw it in theaters. I also watched Gladiator for the first time and I nearly cried. Joaquin Phoenix was also getting me all hot and bothered. Remember when he was gorgeous and not crazy? *sigh* And last night the Fighting Librarians got back together for pub trivia at the Dubliner where I had a Guinness and Jameson, which Rae taught me in Minneapolis, and we totally won. And I grabbed some Dick's on the way home, because even though eating a cheeseburger and french fries at 11:30 at night is not exactly healthy, Dick's is the best fast food ever especially when you've been drinking.

Well I better get started on my reading for Wednesday. Happy Monday!