On the road

As I've mentioned before, I'll soon be driving to Alaska to start my first post-MLIS job. That means very little blogging, here, for at least two weeks. (I'll try to blog every day or so at my blog about the move.) But if 1) I don't pull together the blog post summarizing my Pitt experience and 2) there's no great library-land drama that captures my imagination, I may not actually get around to posting again before I start work, the first full week of October. Then, I imagine, I'll have lots to say.

So, until I return, adieu.

As promised...

I'm blogging the move to Alaska: http://movingtoalaska.wordpress.com

If you're more the RSS type, click here to go right to the feed. (You'll miss my cool map, though!)

The Past Few Weeks

I make no secret of my loathing for summer classes. It isn't the standard "I'd rather have a break," though I suppose that factors in. Rather, it's the inherent lack of balance. The summer semester at Pitt is 3-4 weeks (depending how you count) shorter than the other two, and like everywhere, the professors who are stuck teaching summer classes have to decide whether to try to fit an entire semester's worth of material in--or short-change students who are paying as much for these classes as they would for classes in real semesters.

This summer's professors seem to be trying to find a balance--definitely, they are packing in more than fits in 12 weeks, but I don't think it's quite as much as they'd hit in 15. That's probably the fairest approach, in this situation.

I really believe Pitt's LIS program would be better if they would not run by the rest of the school's semester system during the year--they already run more people through summer classes than the university is designed to handle, which implies, to me, that they are not unduly concerned with "how the rest of Pitt does it." Instead, they should cut a week out of fall and a week out of spring, in order to make summer two weeks longer (since most things are pretty much closed in the summer, students are used to not having the services they need). It would not remove the imbalance entirely, but it would be a good step toward eliminating it.

Other than summer classes--and at some point I'll talk about what I'm taking and what I think of it--I have been busy with conferences and interviews--not that many of the latter, but enough to be noticeable in the scheme of my semester, certainly. (I could write up SLA, but the time has passed. I will try to blog about ALA, though.) I'm composing a series of posts about interviews--dos and don'ts, mostly--but I think I'm going to wait until I have a job to really discuss any of it in depth. My desire to help others who are about to be--or who are currently--in my shoes wars, somewhat, with my desire not to damage my own prospects. I was a little surprised--and pleased, with a tiny bit of heartburn, wondering "what else did I say?"--when a recent interviewer mentioned something I'd said months ago in my blog. (Mostly, I was pleased. Sometimes I wonder whether what I say is even a little bit interesting.) So, that's one bit of advice: people do read what you put out there. I still have few enough followers that maybe Google Analytics will show spikes when search committees decide I'm worth looking into. :)

On the being-busy-and-conference-preparation front, please do come see the Book Cart Drill Team's Pittsburgh Performance, this Thursday, 4pm, Posvar Hall. We'll still be selling raffle tickets, and the final drawing will take place after the performance!



Other posts in the hopper: comparison/contrast of the MLIS program with engineering graduate school (a coworker asked for that, verbally, and it got me thinking); some thoughts on library school in general and Pitt specifically; hopefully an announcement of a Book Cart Drill Team win at ALA :); other ALA posts, including possibly some discussion of the MLIS program accreditation discussions going on there; hopefully an announcement that I got a job, followed by discussion of the moving process; and maybe some musings on the transition from engineering to library work--I should see if I can get a guest blogger in for that one, since he's gone a different path than I plan to. :) After that, here's hoping I'm changing the focus of the blog, somewhat, from library school to librarianship!

Two down, one to go

I'm officially finished with my second semester of library school. It was an inauspicious ending, with my final project for the reference class cut short by travel to my partner's grandmother's funeral. (Family comes first, even at the end of the semester.) I got fine grades in my other two classes, but, yeah, I'll be a bit short of a 4.0 GPA; I hear employers don't look, anyway. While at the funeral, we both caught some kind of terrible cold (nothing porcine, I'm sure), so that's eaten up the bulk of this week. I'm trying to get a little bit of cleaning done, at least, and I'll hopefully spend the bulk of next week on the institutional repository. I'd like to be about done with those hours before the semester starts.

I'll be back to classes the following week. Between three classes, my Aviary independent study, final Book Kart Drill Team preparations, two conferences, and hopefully interviewing, I'll be busy. But three months really isn't a lot, and after that, I'll have an MLIS! And hopefully some cool Perl/PHP/JavaScript stuff on my website.

Spring Break, Classes, Et Cetera

I had a pretty fantastic spring break. I did not, as I had hoped I would, research and complete my paper for Academic Libraries, though I did settle on a topic. I also did not catch up on Cataloging, where I feel like I'm shamefully behind the curve (on the bright side, if you can call it that, there are a bunch of other people who feel similarly). Nor did I get much of anything else school-related completed. But I think I needed the break, honestly. This short, intensive program, with internships and job applications and with so much else going on in the library world that I want to keep up with in my free time, is beginning to burn me out. ... I feel stupid saying that. Who gets burnt out in less than a year? But it isn't real burn-out; it's just an awareness that I need to put my mind firmly on something that isn't school and isn't libraries, now and then. And I think taking some time to do that, last week, was beneficial (even if my Google Reader and inbox were bursting at the seams on Monday).

I worked on some crafty stuff, including some pretty jars of bath salts to sell for Book Kart Drill Team fundraising, and a jewelry-selling (or perhaps eventually a jewelry-storing) rack that I'm really quite proud of. I read most of Alex and Me, which is probably still an interesting read if one isn't a bird-lover but is absolutely wonderful if one is. I cleaned my kitchen and did a little bit of actual cooking, for the first time in a while. No homebrewing, yet, but I hope to get to that in the next few weeks, depending how project due dates fall.

And then I spent several days in DC, visiting people, which was tremendously fun. I remembered how much I like my friends down there, even as I remembered how little I like getting around Northern Virginia. Also, I got to play with a baby. Good times. (No, you don't have to want to have a baby to enjoy playing with them. They're cute!)

Anyway, now it's back to the grind, as they say. I have five or six big assignments coming due in the next few weeks, and it's stressful. But I'll get through it.

On Thursday I'm attending a session on Dialog. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, though I feel bad missing volunteering at the Aviary for a second week in a row. Hopefully I can make it up to them in the form of 120 more hours (and some course credit for me) over the course of the end of this semester and the summer. Or, if the job fairy makes an early visit, one Saturday a month until I'm finished.

Brewin' and visitin' DC

It's time, folks. I haven't run this by Dale, yet, but I'm proposing that brewing should happen on March 7. I won't have any homework due that week, since it's spring break, and I don't work that Saturday (I do work that Sunday night, though, bleh). Anyone want to come watch/help stir?

Also, about spring break... I would like to visit the DC area sometime that week (March 9-15). I'm going to see whether getting that Wednesday or that Friday off is possible. If you're in the DC area and want a visit, chime in with what times are good for you! If you're in Pittsburgh and want a ride down there, also chime in. I haven't asked around for crash space, yet, but once I have a rough schedule decided, I will. :)

I'll post about summer classes later this week.