I wrote my final final this morning; the written theory exam about web development. It was OK, there was one question that I couldn’t answer, just because I didn’t happen to concentrate on that particular topic when I was studying, and there were a few other answers I provided that may or may not be exactly correct. But the good news is that it wasn’t terrible, and I’m sure I passed it.

After I turned it in I left classroom 311 for the last time, a room I’ve been in pretty consistantly for the duration of the 2 year program. I wandered past my mailbox that won’t be mine anymore, down the West Hall connector to the UGLI(undergrad library) for the last time, and over to the Hatcher Graduate Library where I spent some time in the reading room, (which is beautiful) flipping through a reference book that listed Broadway musicals including when the musical opened and where, how many shows on Broadway, whether it closed before it got to Broadway, who was in the original show and more. Some of the shows were from the late 1800’s! It was fun to sit in a beautiful room and rifle though a book that had nothing to do with anything. Then I walked across campus, past the workers who are preparing the graduation area, stopped to smell the starburst magnolia trees in full bloom, and met a friend for a celebratory lunch, complete with a lovely glass of wine. Then we wandered around downtown AA, the normal people’s part of the city vs the student infested areas near campus, stopped and had ice cream out in the sun, and caught the bus back out to the car.

All in all a very nice day. I’d say I was free, except I have to work tomorrow 9-6 and Sunday 12-6, and then all next week as well. But after THAT I’ll be free! It’s a very nice feeling!

Very last and final final tomorrow a.m. at 9:30.  Web design of course.

I’m home from my morning shift at the library, where I kept notes about the various things that were asked of me, to share with you. I find the variety of things people wonder about fascinating, and thought you might too on occasion. But as I sat down to write about my morning experiences a great blue heron flew low across the yard outside my window, then swooped steeply up so that I saw the underbelly, legs outstretched. “Heck,” I thought, that bird just landed on my roof! So I tiptoed out the front door, and sure enough there he was, up on my roof, a big gangly bird staring down at me. He slowly spread his wings and glided off the roof, back toward the pond across the road. How cool. And of course, no camera on me. So…maybe Ann Arbor isn’t the only odd place in the world. We just have odd wildlife, rather than people out here.

Speaking of odd wildlife, did I tell you that earlier this week the dog was going bonkers because of four deer in the back yard, so I went out to shoo the deer away, and one of them stood his ground and then charged me? I ducked behind the dog pen and kicked it, the sound made him leap the other way and back into the woods. Guess it’s the wrong time of year to mess with deer.

So I guess I’ll tell you about the things people ask a reference librarian in another post on another day. Tomorrow is my last final. I should really go study now. Even though it is beautiful outside and Katie and I would rather go for a walk. Well. I want to go for a walk, Katie is taking a nap. Lucky me.

The practical final was awful.  Probably the worst final I’ve ever taken, it was just like the nightmares everyone gets about school and tests.  I had no idea what to do, so I played with it for about 20 minutes, did what I could and then messed around for an hour so it wouldn’t look like I gave up, which in fact I did, and then electronically turned it in and slipped out of the room.  If I were the professor I’d give me about 10 points for showing up, maybe five points for what I turned in.  Out of a hundred mind you.  the only good thing is that it’s over!  Now I am supposedly getting my notes together for the web theory final exam which is this Friday at 9 a.m.  I am hoping to do much better on that, but I won’t if I don’t get myself in gear and study some!  I have tonight and tomorrow afternoon/evening.  But Friday at noon I will be officially finished!

I turned in my last paper today, dropping it in a professor’s mailbox, then let the spring winds blow me across campus and into town for my shift at the public library.  The shift was somewhat odd in that collections management was recataloging the cd collection and refiling them all around me.  For some reason IT people were connecting another computer to the desk so for periods of time I had no connection to our catalog or anything else.  Just an odd shift.

I was starving when I left work at 5, so I walked back toward campus and stopped to have dinner at a restaurant on State Street.  As I approached the restaurant I could hear bagpipes.  There was a piper playing outside a bookstore across the street.  Crossing the street right in front of me were two people in mime outfits, white faces, dancing their way across the street to the beat of the piper.  During dinner I watched lots of people go by, including a woman with scarlet and black hair, the top was long and deep red, the bottom was cut very short and was black.  She wore army boots and tights and a pink skirt.  She rode off on her bike, nearly colliding with another woman with normal hair who was riding her bike with a base fiddle strapped to her back.   They both nearly ran down the piping Scotsman in full kilt.

I just have to say that as I walk Katie in my rural neighborhood I  don’t get to see stuff like this. 

So.  Two more days until my last ever final is finished, whatever the outcome I will be glad to be done, and sad to be leaving the oddness that is AA.

So I’m sitting in the computer lab, notes ready, laptop warming up, waiting for my practical exam for the web class.  I was thinking as I was trudging over here that today is the last time I have to lug my laptop around anywhere!  (I’m looking for good things about an April 15 final exam in a class I have only a vague understanding of.)  It’s sunny out, sort of warm.  There are groups of students in shorts and flip flops everywhere.  The two behind me are talking about how it sucks to go shoe shopping with your mother.  I had two thoughts about that;  one they were lucky to have a mother, two shoe shopping has to beat out web exams.

So anyway, here I am, waiting.  Thirty more minutes and I’ll at least know what I should know, instead of wondering about what I don’t know.

Winter returned during the night, snuck in and smacked us up the side of the head with snow when we weren’t looking.  Katie and I didn’t appreciate getting our feet cold and wet so early in the morning, but I guess we weren’t surprised.  Is is, after all, Michigan.

It was sort of pretty though, and tolerable because you just KNOW it’s not going to last.  By noon it was gone, and I have only these pictures to prove to my sleeping husband that we had any snow at all. 

Seven days left till I will be done with all this schoolwork.  Well, in theory I’ll be done, school will be done whether or not I finish everything.  I’m headed to Ann Arbor, this Saturday morning, scheduled to work downtown all day, 9-6, in the Youth Department.  I’m already stressed, this should put me right over the edge.

Yesterday I worked hard on getting notes together for the two web finals.  Katie was at the groomer all day, on purpose, so that I could make some study headway.  I don’t think she had a good time because she threw up her dinner, twice, once she was home.  I felt much the same way.  There is so much to get straight in my head about this code writing thing.  But I did make some progress, and I will work on it again tonight, if the kids haven’t killed me, and all day tomorrow.

Monday our big group project is due, and it’s pretty much finished now, so that is a weight off my mind.  Still have to write a 3 to 5 page reflections paper, due Thursday.  Tuesday night is my practical web final, the one I most dread, the reflection paper is due Thursday, and Friday is the written, theory web final.

I’m not going to like the week coming…but I’m going to REALLY enjoy it once it’s over!

My big project for one class is due Monday.  The practical web design final is Tuesday, and the theory related written web design final is Friday.  Next week is going to be rough.  I wish it were two weeks from today, I’d be graduating tomorrow.  Given, I guess, that I actually pass the web class.

I need time to work on web stuff, to gain some confidence with it, try to understand a little more, but I have a lot of hours of work this week and next, and group work that has to be done for the project due Monday.  I’m starting to feel stressed, as I knew I would.  But I”m trying not to be afraid.  Trying.  Sometimes it’s hard to think, and that’s never good during a finals week.

Today on my drive to AA I heard there was a closure on s.b. I 75 down near Monroe.  A semi truck involved with a “small red four door” car, as described by the traffic copter guy.  He said it was hard to tell what the make of the car was because “the car was crushed from the back up to the front seat.”  That’s exactly what dad’s red car looked like, hit from the rear.  Today there is an accident investigation under way, which means someone is either dead or seriously injured.   I wondered, for the rest of my drive, whether the family knew yet.    I’ll be thinking of them today as they face a world changed forever.

Makes those pesky finals seem not so important, doesn’t it.

Yesterday I would normally have been working at the library and then going to my computer lab to sort out problems with my homework. But I realized on Sunday that I wasn’t scheduled to work, and since my homework was already turned in, I didn’t need to foray down to Ann Arbor. A free day to spend at home, getting ready for the difficult final week ahead. What a gift.

Turned out that I spent most of the day trying to make headway on my last of this lifetime school group project. We have a massive paper to turn in next Monday. Each of the four of us has been working on sections of it, and now its time to bring the whole thing together. I and another student have committed to the editing of it, and she did the first pass through the paper. I struggled for hours just to get beyond the first couple of pages; the text of the paper feels so awkward, and its obvious that more than one person has written it. Plus it’s huge, and has way too many citations. We have 50 pages and almost 150 footnotes. I did what I could in about six hours, and turned it back over to the other editor. She spent most of the night and into the wee hours of the morning making much better headway. The paper is now back in my lap, but it feels more manageable now, though its still just as long.

Today, after my final web design lecture I will head over to work where I will help public library patrons work on the computer while I try to edit the paper. I want it to be done tonight; we’ll see. I need to be able to concentrate on the web finals that are coming up next week. I attempted to begin that last night after abandoning the group paper, but my head and neck hurt so much from the hours of paper struggling that I finally went to bed at 9 in self defense. Last night I was worried that nothing I read in my web design notes or saw on the web design lecture slides made sense. And that there was no way I could make any of it clear prior to the exams.

This morning, the world seems brighter. The sun is just popping out from among clouds, the sky is bright blue and filled with clouds, both dark, ominous black clouds and stark brilliant white puffs. The low morning sun makes the red brick of the university buildings glow. The air is warm, and there are blue flowers blooming under the shrubs. I am an hour early for lecture, and I have some sense of hope that indeed I can get this all done, and that all will end well.

A female cardinal calls from a tree as I open the door to West Hall and start up the stairs to the last lecture of my academic career.

Tonight I heard the last lecture in one of my classes. The topic was the digitization of collections, but the professor stopped short of completing the lecture. He said we could look at the rest of the slides of his notes on our own, that he just wanted to end the semester with a final thought. And this is it; paraphrased:

“Librarianship is a noble profession. We’ve all experienced what libraries have provided to us while growing up. Librarians are the gateway to the world of information; librarians make society more humane and more democratic. But librarians aren’t held in much esteem. Many of you, when you told friends and family that you were going to school to become librarians, suffered the jokes and confusion of people outside the profession. Some people probably questioned your sanity and your economic future. Librarians aren’t valued by society, and aren’t compensated well. Your rewards won’t be evidenced by your rate of pay. You’re answering a higher calling; you’ll be providing a service to society.”

I thought it was the perfect way to end the semester. No one has ever said that out loud in any of my classes. But it’s true. When I quit my job to go back to school most people thought I was nuts, both because they couldn’t imagine going back to school, and because of the salary I was giving up.

My boss,however, asked me the right question. She asked if I was leaving to do something I felt I was meant to do.  I answered with a heartfelt yes.