Call me Mistress.

Late yesterday, I received word from my advisor that I have completed the requirements to pass the e-Portfolio course, and thus, have completed my Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science.

It’s all very anticlimactic, really. I’m thrilled and relieved, but as it will be months before I see a diploma, it feels very "well – now what?!"

~ ~ ~

Well, knitting, of course, for one thing. And, hopefully, moving. Yes, moving! My somewhat cryptic reference to a bungalow in Garvanza a couple days ago? It’s this place, the one where I was initially rejected but was second choice. Turns out the new tenant is getting a job transfer, and the apartment is available again, so the landlady called me a few days ago to offer it to me. And of course I said yes yes yes, but it all feels very uncertain until I actually put down my deposit and have the lease signed, sealed and delivered. That should be next Wednesday.

Eeyore that I am, of course, I’m worried that it will fall through. But I really, really hope it doesn’t.

 

One step closer.

Thanks to an unexpected day off and the power of caffeine, all of my first drafts have been turned in as of late afternoon yesterday! Now it’s a waiting game – waiting for my advisor to let me know if any revisions are necessary. And as we all know, I’m not fond of waiting – it turns me into a stressball.

So yes – even though I wrote that Statement of Philosophy without benefit of alcohol, now it’s time to bring on the wine!

 

Pressure.

I am thisclose to passing my e-portfolio, and officially becoming a Mistress of Library Science. Thisclose! I have three competencies remaining – one awaiting my advisor’s review, one in progress, and one that I’m clueless about but will get done by Friday regardless. Then I have to write a bunch of statements and conclusions and the like – statement of personal philosophy, statement of strengths, reflection on my MLIS program, and so forth. Tedious, but doable. I’ve got two deadlines looming, the 15th for items to be reviewed and the 20th for items to be approved, and then – done.

So, I might be a bit MIA until then. At which point, if all goes well* I plan to return with a story about this cute 1920s Craftsman bungalow in the hills of the Garvanza district of Highland Park.

*In other words, if writing a Statement of Personal Philosophy doesn’t (a) drive me to drink or (b) land me in the looney bin…

 

Smug and superior much??

A few of us in my CE group were having an online discussion about the fact that, after my school’s administration decided to change our graduation requirements at the last minute, forcing us to rely on previous semesters’ work, they were not providing us with access to previous semesters’ online classroom sites. Having been under the impression that to graduate, we’d be doing something completely different, it hadn’t occurred to some of us – myself included – that things from previous semesters might come in handy some day.

Here’s what my advisor had to say about it:

I have a couple of comments
here.  First of all, I am really surprised that more of you haven’t
kept your work.  I can remember keeping *everything* when I was in
library school.  I even kept class notes for years after I graduated.
And that was in the olden days when everything was pen and ink and
paper–keeping stuff when it’s electronic is even easier.

This smug attitude is what I’m up against in almost all of my dealings with her. I mean, as an "advisor," if you can’t say something helpful, why say anything at all? Chastizing us as though we were children is really not a motivator.

Between the advisor switch, the dreary job market, and the whole ALA/talking the talk thing, I’m really starting to get down on this profession. But making it worse is this smugness that I keep encountering, from everyone from the women who interviewed me the other day, to my advisor, to fellow students on discussion boards.

You know the old stereotype about the prim, prissy, shushing librarian? I’m starting to think there may be a basis in reality for it after all.

And I’m starting to wonder if it’s not too late to consider culinary school instead.

 

Go, me.

Those competencies that I’ve been yammering on about? The ones I need to pass in order to get my master’s degree? Well – much to my great surprise, I found out that I’ve passed three of them already and am one revision away from passing another.

Three down, eleven to go. 10 weeks left to do it in. The pressure is on.

Image lifted from the Vintage Librarian shop.

 

It’s all about me.

Here’s what the past three years of my life looks like:

Everything I’ve done to date in my MLIS program, neatly filed. Yeah, I know, I need a proper filing cabinet.

The reason these boxes have taken over my life is, of course, the dreaded Culminating Experience. Ha, you thought that once you finished a class it was over, right? Not anymore. Basically what this semester boils down to is reflecting on the past a lot, and writing about it.

Reflective essay time – yikes! One thing I am really, really not very good at is this introspective stuff. Yes, I keep a blog – or two – but it’s all pretty superficial stuff: look at these shoes, look what I made, check out this link to an interesting story. I have never kept any other kind of journal; I don’t like to write about myself. I don’t even like to write letters.

But like it or not, here I am, faced with writing 15 (!) reflective essays to explain what I learned, and how and where I learned it, to support each of my school’s competencies. I’m midway through the second of 15, starting with the easy stuff (technology! design!) and leaving the hard stuff for later, including what I fear most of all – a Statement of Personal Philosophy, in which I detail how I can "contribute to  the cultural, economic, educational and social well-being of our communities."

Can’t I just leave it at "I find things; it’s what I do" and be on my merry way?

 

Back in action.

My old website is back up! I haven’t done much of anything website-related since 2004, so I’m excited to be getting back into hand-coding. Yes, hand-coding – none of that Dreamweaver stuff for me.

I guess you get some good with the bad – the bear of a semester I’m about to wrestle with comes with unlimited server space. Hey, better than nothing!

 

Mantra.

I’ve got a new mantra: just get it over with.

I’m through with fighting it. It’s clearly a Sisyphean task, and I’m just not up for it. The fight would be between me and, in the words of an insider, "a reknown and resolute ass." I’m not a worthy opponent.

So now it’s time to forget that I ever liked or cared about library school, and just jump through the hoops and be done with it. And try to stop kicking myself for not going to UCLA or UW in the first place.

 

The continuing nightmare.

Okay, bad enough that they switched the graduation requirements for my lib school program. And bad enough that they practically doubled our tuition with very little advance notice.

But now? This is getting personal. With only two days before the fall semester starts, I learned that they have arbitrarily switched my advisor, from the one I’ve had for three years to some unknown newbie who is a first-timer in my program UPDATE: a well-respected professor in the program whose focus and interests are completely different than mine. At least she’s known to be competent, but – my previous advisor’s foci were vocabulary design, database systems, and information-seeking behavior, same as mine. The new one? Young adult librarianship and a thing called "book talking" which seems to be some kind of presentation that convinces people to read. Um, okay – and this person is going to guide me through creating an electronic portfolio that will enable me to gain employment in database design and/or web search engines how, exactly?

This one, I’m fighting. Grrrr.

 

Done, and done.

I’m done! Done with my summer semester project, that is – brief reviews of 40 resources for children ages 6-12, all of which I have read, watched, or listened to. And the minute I submit it – tonight, after giving it another once-over for conformity to APA style (boo, hiss), the summer semester will officially be over and done.

I loved my summer class – for a number of reasons I almost didn’t take it, but I am so so glad that I did. My only regret is that I didn’t take the other two kids’ lit classes when I had the chance. Oh well, guess that’s the point of a practical graduate education – to learn what you do, and don’t, want to be when you grow up.

Part of finishing up my project was to listen to a couple of audio books. As the only audio device I have to play them on is my computer, and the only decent speakers I have are my iPod headphones, well – that meant I was pretty much chained to my desk for a few hours over the weekend. Which, of course, was the perfect excuse to do some knitting – and voila, a finished object!

Please excuse the lack of photo styling, but I wanted to show my knitting in its natural habitat – laptop and all. It’s the Double Cable Scarf from One Skein, in Blue Sky Cotton. As usual when it comes to Leigh Radford patterns, I love everything about it – the yarn, the pattern. And as usual, I made a couple of mistakes, but kept on going anyway. The only sticky spot was the bind-off – I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to bind off in pattern – the purl stitches just kept dropping. WTF? So I just did a plain old knitted bind-off, and decided that symmetry be damned.

I’ve said before that I like to use knitting as a life lesson – I’m such an obsessive perfectionist in most aspects of life that it pretty much stops me from getting many things done. So with knitting, I just try to live with imperfection, and move on to the next project. I’ll definitely be living with my imperfect bind-off just as soon as the temperatures drop – but by next time, and there will be a next time for this pattern, I plan to learn to do it correctly.