I’ve heard it all before…

I’ve only been working as a librarian trainee for 2 weeks but I’ve already heard my fair share of ridiculous and outlandish excuses and stories from patrons.  In order to familiarize me with all aspects of library service the director has me working at the circulation desk as well as at the reference desk.  Some people seem to think this is unnecessary but I’m glad to get the experience since I never worked circulation before.  I think it is important to know about all the different aspects of libraries.  Anyway, today I could not allow a patron to renew his card because he had been billed for a book that he never returned.  He claimed he could not have possibly checked out that book because he was in jail at the time.  While this may be true, I still thought it was pretty funny.

It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas?

I’m really really really bad about posting on this. I will probably get 0 points for this blog but honestly, non-extra credit work comes first and I have too much of that to keep up with this. I swear I’ll try and be better about it. I was wandering around CVS the other night looking for some cute Halloween cards and things to send to my friend who is in Spain for the semester and what did I find? Christmas items. Please correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it OCTOBER 23rd!?! Last I checked we still had Halloween and Thanksgiving to get through before Christmas.

Oh, I must correct something from my last post. As it turns out I was mistaken and the guy dancing in the video is Andrijana’s friend and the person who made the video was just a passerby who thought it was fantastic (because it is) and recorded it. Just to clarify.

I was just perusing an old blog of mine and I thought it would be amusing to post an entry I wrote around this time last year, during my senior year of college. I titled it, “If only they knew…” and this is what it said:

The truth is, I’m actually a really bad student. How I made it to my senior year of college without anyone realizing this is beyond me. I don’t do any work and when I do, I have to pull all-nighters because I waited until the last minute. I know you’re thinking, “oh everyone pulls all-nighters every once in a while” but you’re mistaken. No one pulls all-nighters like these. No one else writes 20 page papers in one torturous night. I do. It’s bad. So bad, it’s good.

I’m not saying I get the best grades in the world and I’m not saying my GPA is as high as it could be. What I’m saying is that I’ve never done poorly on any assignment I did the night before. I’m almost angry about this because if someone failed me or something then I’d probably learn my lesson and start doing things earlier (wishful thinking) but no one has. While I love the rush of my all-nighters and the clarity that comes when you only have 2 hours left and 5 pages to go, I’d also love to be one of those people that starts things early, agonizes over their papers and fine-tunes them for days and days before the due date. I am NOT one of those people. My secret is that I pretend to be. Take this conversation I had the other day with my roommate and an acquaintance whom we shall call “J”:

Me: Hey! What’s going on? How have you been?

J: I’ve been doing okay. REALLY busy though.

Roommate: Yea you must be, what with being an RA this year and everything.

J: It’s crazy! And they keep sending us to more training and we have all these meetings. It’s just really time-consuming. We have this training session tonight! Like we don’t have midterms or anything.

Me (my words, dripping with empathy): OH MY GOD! Are you SERIOUS?! Don’t they know it’s midterm time? As if you don’t have any studying to do or anything. Could they have picked a worse time?

J: I know! So how have midterms been going for you guys?

Roommate: Eh, not too bad.

Me: Yea, not that bad. I can’t imagine if I was an RA too though! That’s just too much.

Seemingly normal interaction, right? Wellllll…I didn’t actually have any midterms. That’s right, I acted as if I was this stressed-out, hard-working, maniac college student. The whole time we were having this conversation I kept thinking, “why are you saying these things? You don’t even have any studying to do!” I couldn’t stop myself. I had no control.

My roommate, who sees me NOT studying all day long and watches me read for leisure instead of for my classes looked at me and actually laughed. I knew I should’ve lived in a single. Then no one would know my secret.

Last year at some restaurant with my family we got onto the topic of school and how hard I work. I told my parents, “if you knew how hard I worked at school or how much effort I actually put into my work you’d make me come home immediately and stop paying for my college education.” Everyone laughed heartily and then we moved on to something else. WHY DOESN’T ANYONE BELIEVE ME!? I’m like a kid that falls through the cracks of the education system except I haven’t fallen, I’ve climbed up through the cracks and nobody noticed. I can’t help but feel like one day someone’s going to call me out on it and revoke my high school diploma, last year’s dean’s list status and soon, my college degree…that is, if I make it until May.

It’s frightening how little my work habits have changed but it just works for me. I’ve cut out the all-nighters for the most part though. It simply cannot be done when I have to be up to get ready for work at 6:30am. I’m trying to change, really I am. I just work better when I have serious time constraints and crushing pressure, like right now. I really must get some work done…

For your viewing pleasure…

Hey everyone…

Take a look at this and give it a green light!

http://www.current.tv/watch/13485554?s1=recentGls&list=recentGlsByAssignmentGroup&k1=1&k2=0&sid=14505994&fr=0
Your fellow GSLISer, Andrijana asked me to post this on my blog since she doesn’t have one. It’s a video that her friend made. If it gets enough green lights, it can make it onto TV. It really is a beautiful video and this dance troupe does a lot of volunteer work with kids in the Bronx, teaching them how to dance and providing them with a creative outlet.   So help Andrijana’s friend out! Also, post it on your blog or pass it along to anybody you think might enjoy it. Thanks!

I don’t know my own name right now…

So I’m really off to a great start with this blog, huh? I’ve already missed a week’s worth of posts. Here’s a little update. Yesterday I started a new job at a public library as a trainee. I work there 17 hours a week, at my other part time job (also library-related) 19 hours a week and attend 10 hours of class a week. Add in travel time, about 7 hours of sleep a night, and out of class school stuff and that leaves me with approximately 35 seconds per week to do everything else I need to do to stay alive. Things that are currently being neglected as a result:

-Haircut. My bangs are no longer bangs; they almost totally grew out. My roots are horrendous.

- Dentist. I hate all doctors but I hate dentists the most. I think there is something inherently wrong with people who decided to spend their working lives with their hands in other people’s mouths. I’m now being stalked by my dentist. They call once a week at least. I have 5 postcards saying I’m due for an appointment piled on my dresser.

-Getting a new drivers license. Apparently I lost mine? Not sure when it happened. The last time I remember having it was over 2 weeks ago. Yea, I’m really on top of things.

I make lists constantly throughout the day. They include all the things I need to get done in the next week, day or hour. I also have a monthly calendar of important things that I need to do or remember. As I get busier the lists get more and more detailed and include things that should never have to be included on a list. I actually wrote down “eat dinner, take shower, brush teeth” as if these are things that I would forget. Cause for concern? I think so. When meals and showering become annoyances that you just want to do so you can get them out of the way and get to the more pressing items on your 85 lists you know there is a problem.

I had a quiz in 700 and 701 tonight. 701 was okay but 700? Not so hot. I’m done for the night…

Blog Post: Check!

Photo Friday: Columbia Road Flower Market (London, 2005)

In the Summer of 2005 I studied abroad in London for 7 weeks. It was an amazing experience (except for that whole “bombs on the tube/buses” thing).

First post

So after much thought and consideration and a complete lack of good ideas, I’ve decided to make this blog about my life post-college graduation. I just graduated in May 2006 from Fordham University where I double majored in Sociology and Social Work. These fields of study currently have very little relevance in my life. The story of how and why I totally changed direction from a career in social work to one in libraries will follow at another time. I read many blogs regularly so my blogroll will probably continue to grow. I’d recommend clicking around a few of them if you ever get a free minute (not that you have free minutes between school, work, life etc.). Please feel free to comment and respond to my posts.