LS 502; 21


I’ve noticed something about people who like to organize information and do so not just for academic or professional reasons but in their personal life.  There tends to be a sort of Highlander mentality, that there can be only one (person who does the organizing in a group).  I had a group of friends in high school, and while I’m not horrible at making plans and I’m very selectively organized (color coding, categorizing, alphabetizing, other things that are more pertinent to library sciences etcetera) I was not The Planner, that was one of my close friends.  When we had breaks from school, she would plan activities for every single day and plan them within an inch of their metaphorical life, and it never went off particularly well but she didn’t let other people do that, she was The Planner.

As I’ve grown up into someone who’s good at organizing, better than most people I know, I’ve realized how problematic it can be to know designated Planners when you yourself are something of a planner.  Library science-type skills are about the only thing I have to offer to group dynamics sometimes, but when someone else is already The Planner, it can be, let’s say, difficult to utilize said skills without getting antagonized.

I bring this up because it has happened recently and because good grief i hope this isn’t the case in professional environments.


LS 502; 20


I’ve been thinking lately.  Is there such a thing as a digital nerd librarian?  Like, a compendium of digital resources for comic books and video games and films and television and art and literature and cosplayers and crafts and things.  Is there an in-person version of this, too?  Either way, I want it.  People keep telling me I need to figure out a way to combine my passions.  This seems like one of them.

And it involves a lot less face-to-face interaction than my library bar idea.  Face-to-face is fine sometimes, but I’m… not the most actively social person in the world.  So the option would be nice.

LS 502; 19


Sorry all I’ve been writing about lately is academic frustration.  But gosh, do I find it frustrating when teachers take half an hour out of class to demonstrate something that we don’t even need to know for our assignment.  If you’re going to do that, do it after class so people who want to split can split and people who want to learn it can learn it.  It’s such a little thing but I get so tired of it.

LS 502; 18


I also find it easier to learn things by doing than by watching.  My other class has involved a lot of the professor just demonstrating things (some of which I did last term in 560) and it just flies over my head.  If I’m not doing it along with (which I’m not) I don’t learn as well.  It’s kind of annoying.  I’m sure it works really well for some people, but I’m not one of them.

LS 502; 17


I really miss the asynchronous classes I took online when I was getting my undergraduate degree.  I think that style just works better for me, taking my own time to do things.  When we get distracted for twenty minutes on some tangent that isn’t relevant to me, I lose focus.

And I really do hate the little chat box.  Except I have to keep it open in case something important comes up.  But I really hate it.  We’re in class, not at a bad stand-up open mic night.

LS 502; 16


When I was in undergraduate, my dad suggested I get a job at the university library.  He also suggested I become a high school teacher (“you like books!” and “you can have summers off!” were his reasons, despite the fact that liking books is actually one of the worst reasons I can think of to be an English teacher [one, I think I liked maybe three books I read in English classes, two, I’d get tired of teaching them over and over, three, I’d get tired of trying to make unwilling kids enthusiastic] and summers off, according to basically every teacher I’ve spoken to, are something of a myth) so at first I sort of sighed about this suggestion, but then I thought about it.

(I also declared that if I was going to work at a library, I was going to start wearing my glasses on a chain.  I didn’t get the job at the library, because they preferred to hire freshmen because of all of the training they’d have to go through, but I did start doing that.  It’s actually the most practical thing ever, in addition to being aesthetically appropriate.)

But once I decided I wanted to be an actual librarian, he was immediately full of questions and doubts.  I think this is why the “but libraries are dying” thing annoys me in part.  He said “do the research and prove to me it’s viable.”  So I did.  Research is powerful.

LS 502; 15


I’m really glad I haven’t had to answer the “aren’t libraries dying?” question lately.  That gets really, really old.  This is another random thought, but it occurred to me.