This semester my plan is to stay ahead of the work, getting the things I can do early done early.  The concept behind this is to give me more time with the dreaded web design class whose homework seems to take me several hours longer than the typical student.  So last weekend I wrote a paper for another of my three classes.  Six pages, single spaced (single spaced is a lot of words on each page!) with a bibliography and footnotes.  A lot of work, it looked at several job postings, combined with the American Library Association’s document of competencies required of librarians, and folded all that into information from four current journal articles that discussed issues surrounding the work of people in the field.

The paper isn’t due until tomorrow, and it’s been done for several days, so I felt happy when others in that class mentioned they were still working on it.  Imagine my angst when tonight, as I tried pull the paper up again on my computer for a last leisurely look before sending it off via an electronic submission system,  and I couldn’t locate it in my files!  I spent a frantic thirty minutes searching in all the places I thought it could have been saved, but no luck.  I started firing off emails to anyone I thought might be able to give me some help finding it.  And then I began the arduous task of starting the paper over. After all I had over twelve hours before it was due!  But I couldn’t concentrate.  That paper had been good!  I knew I couldn’t recreate it.

When the phone rang I was somewhat cranky, having only finished paragraph one.  But it was one of my friends responding to the disjointed email.  A few suggestions later I “found” the paper!  Such relief!  And here’s where the idiocy comes in.  The paper was saved in the right location.  It’s just that I didn’t recognize the title because the title format had been prescribed in our assignment rather than being something I labeled.

The paper had been right there before my eyes, disguised as something unfamiliar.  I have learned this lesson before, to be more curious, to poke around more.  It’s a skill I am trying to develop because it will help with web design.  But in my panic I couldn’t see the paper for the file.

The weekend is being consumed by my web development class.  I spent all day yesterday and a good portion of Friday night on the homework assignment.  After a couple more futile hours this morning I am giving up.  It is 2/3 or maybe even 3/4 of the way finished, and that took over 14 hours.  I am hoping the lab we have Tuesday afternoon is enlightening.  I know for a fact that I couldn’t do this without help at the moment.  Even with the book.  This morning I went back and tried to recreate the very first example using different text and have been unable to create anything at all that is visible.  So that’s scary. 

On the other hand, the professor told us that many of us would be confused for the first three or four weeks and then suddenly a light bulb would go off.  I hope he’s right.  About the light bulb part.  I know he’s right about the being confused at the moment part. 

I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have on this first assignment without massive amounts of help, from the professor, from my husband and from my computer friend (you know who you are).  Thanks to all of them very much.  I think it will be a very long semester for everyone.  Unless that light bulb goes off pretty darn quick.

I just finished the first paper of this semester.  It’s due on Thursday and it feels great to have it out of the way.  Because I am now scared again about that complex web class.  Turns out the first assignment, which was distributed a bit late, is totally on the stuff we didn’t get to cover in class!  Now I’m not panicing.  Ok.  A little.  I know the information is in the book.  But I really thought that we’d get some additional instruction rather than having to figure this all out by ourselves with the book.  If that’s all that’s going to happen I could save myself 5 hours a week and just read the book on my own.

Enough already.  I’m just quick to jump on the panic wagon about such stuff.  It will be fine.  It has to be fine, I already dropped the other class!

And did you hear?  This year, of all years, graduation won’t be at the UM stadium?  But over at EASTERN’s stadium?  Because as usual football trumps all other activity at UM, and the stadium needs renovation to get more luxury boxes in for the big supporters of the program.  Right.  THEY are more important than the students.  But really, does it matter where we graduate, as long as we graduate?  I guess not.  Well.  I know not. 

So…on I go, happy graduate student.  One paper down, a million other projects waiting in the wings.  It’s still all good.

I’ve been to all my classes now, even the dreaded complex web design class.  So it is time to make the decision; which class should I drop?  If I drop the web class I free up two whole days and all my remaining classes would be held on Monday and Thursday.  But I really want to learn this web stuff, to get over the computerphobic feelings I have.  And the professor, though somewhat of a nut, seems like he is going to cover the material very  slowly for people just like me.  Though he did wander off into a technical argument with one of the more learned students near the middle of hour three of our first lecture.  His fault for letting the student show off with obscure (at least to many of us) arguments.  That caused the professor  to not get through all his material, which irritated me.  I had read 40 of the 60 pages, and then got weighed down in the concepts.  I hoped to see the professor’s point of view on those last 20 pages, but he only got to material I had already understood.  I’m hoping this isn’t a view of how the whole semester will go.  I don’t think it is, he seemed to be truly sorry that we didn’t get to cover it all.   Which leads me to the decision– I dropped the special libraries class.  I’m going to stick it out in the complex web design course.  Maybe the “complex” aspect of it should scare me.  But it doesn’t…yet.

Wish me luck!

Early this morning I took the dog out to do her thing.  It was pouring rain and the sound of the drops striking the roof, the gutters and the pavement sounded like a southern chorus of bugs and frogs.  The air was warm and humid and just for an instant I was transported back to an Alabama night, sitting out in the humid darkness on the deck with Mom and Dad, listening to the night noises. 

The pull of the dog on her leash, eager to get her business done, brought me right back to now; standing in a Michigan downpour early on a  January morning.  Katie and I were both  ready to start our day.  

Today I attended two of my four classes.  Both were 3 hour lectures, both met in the same room, and they were back to back, a total of six hours of lecture to be endured today.  One of these two classes is likely the one I will drop, but the decision can’t be made until I attend my fourth and final class, the dreaded web development class which is held tomorrow and Wednesday.  That’s the class I am most excited about, and the most nervous about.  I don’t know if I can handle the technical stuff it will require, though it is advertised as a class to be taken by someone with little or no computer experience.  In reality however, most students have tons more computer skills than I do, so I am worried that I’ll start out behind before this first week is finished.

However, between the two classes I sat through today, if it comes to it, I will drop the Management of Special Libraries, for several reasons.  One, I took an instant dislike to the professor who comes to us from Wayne State University, and two there are a TON of projects that are assigned for the class, none difficult, but an awful lot of them.  And this semester, with classes, my work at the library and an internship, time is scarce.  And lastly, special libraries aren’t my field and this course is less relevant than the other class, which is collection development.  Collection development is being taught by the same professor that taught Archives last semester, he’s a known quantity and I felt much more at home with his assignments.

But all this is just conjecture.  I still have to work through at least one class of the web development course to get the syllabus and maybe then I will know what to do.  Meanwhile I will start writing the paper for the Professional Practices class I had on Thursday, and maybe even start the paper due next week for the Special Libraries class.  And of course I will start reading.  Each course has  huge amounts of reading to do.  I am going to try to read a bigger percentage of the assigned articles this semester than I did last.  Really.  I’m going to try. 

I’m at work today.  All day, from 9 in the morning till 6 tonight.  This is much like doing a marathon, where a large part of a successful race is training to be on your feet for five or six hours.  Here at the tiny branch where I’m working there is no room for chairs, so I walk around.  All day.  Asprin is working, a trick I learned training for marathons.  But I am ready for the day to be over. 

To stay busy I’ve been shelving books, especially books that have arrived from other branches for people here.  They go on a special shelf and all day long I watch the faces of people as they come to get their books and movies and music, the ones they ordered and have been waiting for, the ones they are so eager to read, watch or listen to.  People are almost always excited, it’s almost like receiving a gift.  In a way, I guess getting a book or movie you’ve anticipated IS  a gift.  So as I shelve the books I think about the people that are waiting for them, and that makes me smile. 

I smile less as I straighten up the kids section…again and again.  But on the other hand, watching parents read to their kids, or play with them on the kiddy computers does make me smile, so it all evens out.

It’s just that my feet are telling me that I got whatever I’m going to get out of today’s experience about an hour ago… and it’s time to go home.  I wish.

Today I attended my first class of the semester. Being back on campus felt as foreign as it had the first class of the first semester. It felt like I had been away for many more weeks than we were. For whatever reason I am the least prepared to begin this semester. I couldn’t tell you what classes I am registered for, only that it is too many. I haven’t purchased any books, have only read pages sent via email by one professor, and then only 40 of the 92 pages. I haven’t bought notebooks, only a couple highlighters.

So I sat in this three hour class, probably the least stressful of my four classes, watching the clock and half listening to the professor. Occassionally my attention was rivited on the list of assignments she passed out. Darn! There are several short papers, one longer one, two presentations, maybe three. Articles to read too numerous to count. What is this? I will have to work? My brain can’t seem to get itself around that concept.

I feel disappointed, both in the amount of work and my reaction to it. This is just one of four classes, an internship and of course the librarian job. I don’t seem to have the energy to get this semester off the ground. Maybe Christmas was too much of an emotional hit for me. Maybe I just got lazy going to work a few hours a week and not having homework to distract me at night.

But I remind myself this is the LAST semester. These are the last classes. I LIKE being in school. Really I do. I just need to get my focus back. Soon apparently, as the first paper of my first class is due in two weeks. Two weeks from right now. The clock is ticking.

This early morning as the dog and I were outside doing her business I watched the cresent moon shimmering above the snow laden trees in the front yard.  In the oh so early morning light of 5:00 a.m. my world was in black and white.  The spruce trees were dark shapes against the hazy sky.  The air filled with snowy mist partially obscured the moon hanging just above the tree tops.  The neighborhood was silent, a thick blanket of snow muffling any sound, the air was still.  It reminded me of an Ansel Adams photograph, and despite the cold temperatures, I felt warm.   http://www.anseladams.com/

I’ve been out with my measuring tape now.  Officially, in the middle of our driveway the snow was 11 inches deep.  A lot of snow.  Glad we have the day off!