Change Is Hard

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.

Ok, lets be honest.  I AM truly counting down the days now.  I should put a big “13” up on a wall somewhere, because that’s the number of days until all the schoolwork, including exams, will be done.  Two weeks from yesterday I’ll be free!  Sort of makes my stomach hurt when I think of how little time I have to prepare for the exams.  But on the other hand, it’s sunny out and the garden needs weeding and soon I will be able to weed without thoughts of adjax or ruby or html or other stuff crowding out all other thoughts in my head.

I woke up last night about 2:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep.  I was thinking up different ways I can study for the practical exam, different things I could do to my now corrected midterm to see if I can add database models and live chat and other cool stuff to it successfully, guessing at what the professor will throw at us on the test.  Of course in the light of day I don’t really want to do any of that.  So I think I’ll take the dog (who is sleeping) for a walk.

As I finished writing the blog entry for today, and was checking it for editing…I heard a soft squeak next to me.  You guessed it, it was Katie the dog who has been patient (sort of) all day and whom I haven’t really played with since the first day of spring break oh so long ago.  She was carrying her new favorite doggie toy and squeaking it next to my leg.  Her eyes were hopeful.  So I tossed it for her, and now I have to go play.

It’s early Saturday evening, and I just electronically submitted my LAST web design homework.  Assignment 10 was easier, not to say I didn’t get stuck, but I drove down to AA yesterday (on my day off mind you) to meet with the professor and work out my problem(s).  I finished the last 1/3 of the assignment on my own and even figured out my own issues without asking for help!  Does this make me a programmer?  NOT!

It is SO tempting to celebrate by not doing anything else tonight.  But the practical final, a week from Tuesday, is going to be based on our practical midterm.  And since I only got about 2/3 of that done, I need to get that finished so I have something to start with.  And I had some help with that from the professor and from another supportive student.  So tonight I guess I’ll work on that.

I have all my work input into our shared site for my collection development class group project.  Our group meets Monday to discuss putting all our parts together into a (somewhat) cohesive whole.  I am eager to get going on that so I can check it off my short list of stuff to do before graduation.  And for my professional practices class all I have left to do is a one page handout synopsis of my last paper.  The paper was turned in last Thursday, I have to present this coming Thursday from the handout (yet to be created).  I’ll put that together tomorrow night, or maybe I’ll go out on a limb and do it next Wednesday night! 🙂

So all in all I am SO close to being finished.  Two finals to go, one short handout, and the compilation of the group project.  Then FREEDOM!

This week in the web design class the professor sent out a correction for some code previously provided. The typo in the code as seen in the assignment caused many of us to run our tests but get errors that we couldn’t debug. The title of the corrected code was “Errata for Assignment 9.” I had never seen the word errata before, and I vowed to look it up. Someday when I had time for that sort of thing.

Today I am sitting in the UGLI (Undergrad library) waiting for the professor to show up for a meeting and figured I had the time. So I went to my trusy online Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary and typed in “errata.”

“Errata: a list of corrigenda; also :a page bearing such a list.”

Well…that wasn’t very helpful was it?! So I entered “corrigenda.”

“Corrigenda: an error in a printed work discovered after printing and shown with its correction on a seperate sheet.”

Now here’s the difference between acadamics and me. I’d have just labeled the page “Stuff that needs to be corrected in assignment 9.”

But, given I am here, I will try to adhere to the rules of a university, and consider this another lesson learned. Can I go home now?

As I waited in what amounted to a wind tunnel for the bus this evening I reflected that today actually went far better than I expected it would as I was trying to make myself get up at 5:30 this morning. I got a lot done at work and then went to my computer lab where, just like every week, the professor was there to make what I felt were huge problems seem smaller. He is so supportive, I’m sure I’d be in far worse shape than I am if it weren’t for him and a few other students in the class that help me sort stuff out. I can’t say that I understand what we did tonight, not specifically, but in a vague sort of way I get it. At least for now. Final exam: two weeks from tonight.

So I’m waiting for the bus in aforementioned wind tunnel, and realizing that the day wasn’t half bad when at 5:20 the bell tower carillon began to play..soft at first, but a rather frantic fugue, and I thought how odd that someone was beginning to play at 5:20, when generally I hear them at noon. It reminded me of Mom who went to school there, and played the organ and I think secretly would have LOVED to play the carillon. The music got louder and more frantic, I closed my eyes and listened to it above the hum of cars and people going by. It began to fade away as my bus rounded the corner at State and North University, heading to pick me up, late as usual. If the bus had been on time I wouldn’t have heard the concert. The music stopped as the bus pulled up.

I know it’s going to sound weird, but I think the music was a sign from Mom; I think she was scolding me for getting so worked up about stuff that inevitably turns out OK.  I guess she’s right. I’ll try not to get so bent out of shape as the final approaches. But I’m not promising anything.

I’m totally stuck on this week’s web assignment.  There are several (as in more than two) parts that I can’t get to work and worse, haven’t a clue how it works anyway.  So lab tomorrow night is going to be rough.  I think there will also be more people than usual attending the lab as apparently this one was more difficult for most people. 

Meanwhile I spent three hours this morning and early afternoon working at one of the library branches, renumbering children’s fairy tales.  This branch has only a tiny work space, so I did my thing sitting out on the refrence desk, which of course meant I got a few reference questions along with the mindless renumbering project.  The second half of my time there I was sharing a desk with a Youth Librarian.  She handled all the questions, and as she was working with an elderly woman who had several books she wanted to find, I marveled at how well she did with the sometimes crotchety, sometimes preachy patron.  Then I realized that the calm good humor she used with children worked equally well with older people.  A good lesson to learn. 

Having spent the entire day today working on homework I can truly say that I am rethinking this school thing totally.  OK, not totally, but really, I’m so tired of working on this stuff. 

This morning I concentrated on the 9 page paper that I wrote yesterday that is supposed to be 6 pages.  Editing is so much harder than writing!  And frankly, reading it on a new day, I had to admit it was pretty  much garbage.  But I’ve cleaned it up, after many hours, so now I only have to get rid of one more page.

Then I worked on stuff for my group project.  I am supposed to write 5 or 6 pages about Cleveland’s environment, history, etc that will go into our big final paper.  Well I can only find about 3 pages for that.  I mean, how much is there to say about Cleveland!

So I gave up on that and went back to work on the web homework that stumped me yesterday.  After several hours I managed to get all the stuff input, but of course most of it doesn’t work.  I did get one piece to work, and that was exciting.  I have an email out to the class now about my biggest problem, and hopefully still tonight I can fix that problem.

At the end of a jam packed day I haven’t really completed anything that is due this week.  And oddly, I’m wishing I could just turn in 2/3 of each assignment and call it good.  Guess it doesn’t work that way.    If I didn’t have the web final exams ahead of me I’d be less stressed, but I think in that class I have learned just about all I can hold in my head, and these couple of weeks, with new topics, are going to be rough.

Just hanging on now…

I love weekends. Even weekends that are filled with all sorts of stuff I have to do. But maybe the wonderment of a weekend will fade once I’m done with school and the job ends. And I am no longer a college co-ed but merely a middle aged slightly overweight unemployed woman. <smile> I am actually looking forward to being just a middle aged slightly overweight unemployed woman.

Today I’m sitting at my local library which is Katie (the dog) free, writing my last individual paper of my college career. I really don’t want it to be a piece of garbage, I really want it to be meaningful, insightful, perhaps even brilliant. However, I have left it too late for that. It’s due Thursday and I won’t have time beyond this weekend to work on it. So. I will settle for not horribly stupid, with no spelling or grammatical errors, and only an occasional mistake in the footnotes. I’ve been here now for three and a half hours and I need a break. I’m pretty sure that there is no flow to what I have done so far. But I am hoping with a bit of cutting and pasting (which I didn’t even know how to do prior to going to school in 2006!!) I can make something a bit coherent out of it. Or maybe the magic writing elf will appear overnight and spin it into gold.  Or something. You never know.

Enough of this. I need to finish, and the library is only open two and a half more hours. Then I’m stuck at home with Katie unless I want to write the rest of this paper sitting in my car in the driveway. Now there’s a picture for you! Tonight I need to start work on the group project which is due the week after next, and do my weekly homework for the web class. That alone will completely engulf me for the rest of the weekend.

That’s OK though..because it’s only twenty more days and I will be finishing my last ever final exam. But I’m not counting..yet.

The forsythia race has results! About 10 days after I cut the bare branches from my bush I have beautiful yellow blossoms inside.

Yellow flowers inside is a good thing, given we had snow outside again today. And of course today’s snow is for sure the last snow of the season, right?