The end of the semester post

I checked. Sweb accounts will remain active/untouched as long as we're students, at least. So the really excellent awesome website I created will be there for the foreseeable future. Also, my pathfinder will have free posting for a small while. I appreciate that, UK.
I do not appreciate the freezing rain that is making it very difficult for me to drive back to the library and work on my pathfinder as I wish. Way to make life difficult, KY. I can sit here and figure out all of my electronic sources, but all of my hard copies will still have to be found and annotated tomorrow morning. Joy. I love getting up early on a Friday.
For that matter, at 5 after I turn in my pathfinder, I get to work on my research paper for this class. I've done the research (fancy that!) so I just need to pull it together by midnight. I really hope it's by midnight. I've been assuming it's a midnight deadline, but looking back, I really don't know. Regardless. It's getting turned in at midnight.
So. By midnight tomorrow I will be done with everything but my 601 final which is essays which I rock. So, you know, go me.
I feel as if I haven't necessarily addressed the topics we were supposed to address with these blogs. I think I've vaguely stayed on a LIS oriented track, but as for addressing issues in library science today, I have strayed. I do love web 2.0 so I have addressed that more, but as for other issues? I'm still a little in the dark. If anyone knows any really cool happenings, let me know.

It's the end of the world, as we know it.

So I still haven't decided what to do with my paper. I know, he said start it weeks and weeks ago, but I was an english major and papers are how I do. I'm thinking something involving web 2.0 because clearly that is what I'm interested in. I can't help that browsers make all of these social networks and folksonomical things incredibly easy to access. My del.ici.ous and twitter are part of Firefox. I totally dig that. Now, just to find some scholarly way of putting "I totally dig that" into a paper.
Not to mention the html project. I haven't been worrying about this since I have some vague html knowledge and I know C and Java for pete's sake. That will not help me here, I gather. Regardless. Panic is unbecoming.
The pathfinder that was due today with no penalty turning it in until Friday? Uh buh. I have been sincerely shirking my duties and feeling generally okay about it. I refuse to get all anxious and ill when I'm already all viral and ill. If I screw this up, then so it goes. Yes, I could have applied myself and done much better. Story of my life. I have only thrown myself full-heartedly into one thing ever. I was really good at it. But see where that got me? If you do not know my past with Jon, this is over your head, but suffice to say: trying does not guarantee success.
Not trying does guarantee mediocrity. I'm kinda cool with that. Lower expectations and whatnot, right?
Right.
Note to self: Remember to take Lisa O'Connor's class (625) next spring. Instructional something or other. That sounds helpful and I love her.

Je tweet.

Wow. Seems as if I missed November completely. I'll scurry and make a few more entries before the semester ends and see if I can't catch up.
I joined Twitter today. It is the most mindboggling of the web 2.0 sites to me. I don't really understand. I can't find anyone I know... I only joined to follow webcomic characters from Questionable Content. That is sad to me, but now I get more facets to their fictional lives. It's like extra comics every day. Jeph Jacques is a funny, clever dude.
But now I'm on there and I feel like a crotchety old lady because I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do. I just stare at it? Update my status whenever I wish? I already do that on facebook.
So I'm not ruling it out yet. I also thought del.ici.ous was unweildy at first also, and now I use it often, if not well. That's something.
That excel project for 636 was fun. It was fulfilling and just the right amount of challenge once I figured everything out. I'm a little worried about the HTML project. I feel like I know what I'm doing and that feeling worries me. I think I'll start it soon and try to integrate my pathfinder into it and kill two birds with one stone. Because those birds totally deserve it.
www.twitter.com/caitlinmsnyder
ftr.

I tried like mad to find the quote that I am thinking of, but there are too many combinations and weird websites on google and I cannot do it. I read once where someone said that some people get comfortable in depression and wear it like their favorite tshirt. This is not untrue. What is terrifying about grad school for me is the starting. I can't seem to start a project, because what if once I start, I can't seem to finish? Every time I do start, I figure out the project fits me better than I imagined and it is not pulling teeth, but more like the first hill of a roller coaster. You know, with all of the fear and none of the exhileration. Maybe a little of the screaming.
But I'm not confident in my abilities. I have a couple acquaintances that I hesitate to categorize as friends quite yet, and the work is tough indeed. Couple these feelings with the feeling that though I have a job that I enjoy, it is not nearly enough. I should have a job in which I am gaining experience in my field, but I cannot seem to let go of my joe-job and lose that backup. The people there like me and I like them. They appreciate me. They will take care of me. I will not burn that bridge. I also don't want to be new again somewhere else so soon. I feel as if I had received an assistantship, life would be better and I could be more confident in my place here. Alack and alas. If ifs and buts were candies and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas.
Regardless. With deadlines being pushed back left and right, this semester may end okay after all. Mind-numbingly terrifying, but okay. I am glad I have a degree in psych. My mind would have shut down by now without the spectacular coping methods and theories I learned about without necessarily putting them into practice. Sometimes depression isn't a clinical issue. Sometimes it's just good reality contact. That should rest no one assured. And yet, it makes me feel okay about disliking life so fervently right now.
You see why I don't write blogs? They're depressing. I turn into a 15 year old emo kid when I have somewhere to type and store it. It's ridiculous.

Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo

This fascinates me. Not only because it involves Joss Whedon and his new show, Dollhouse, but because I love linguistics and the evolution of words. I did not know that 'roger' came from 'received', or that 'charlie' came from 'Viet-Cong'. Stuff like that sets my head spinning. I should have been a linguistics major. I probably still would have ended up here, but I was miraculously good at that stuff.
I should have done more of the trying to get ahead academically than I did. I should have gotten internships and studied abroad and got experience in my field instead of shaking my ass in lingerie on tables every October. More school, less that ^^

Boom de yada

So it turns out I am not any better at posting in this blog than in any of my others. Even if it's for a grade. Then again, I also procrastinate on the things I get grades on, so it's no surprise that I have not all of a sudden grown into a grown-up in the last 6 months.
I am not sure if I do not like this program or if I do not like the midterms for my first semester of grad school. It's also possible that I do not like grad school. I have one degree. Do I seriously need another? But I'm comforting myself with my Myers-Briggs result saying that I can do this. That I will enjoy the eventual career, that I will not be doing this forever. But you know what I also enjoy? Working at Kroger. Not telling my classmates that I have a grocery job instead of a library position to gain experience. That part is kind of awkward. But I enjoy it. And I wish money did not matter as much and that I could do the minimum wage thing for the rest of my life and that it could work that way. But I am attempting to comfort myself right now because that is the difference between the mentally ill and those with personality disorders and those of us that are capable of dealing: we learned how to comfort ourselves and remember the good in times of bad. So eventually I'll have a career I enjoy. Eventually. When grad school is done depressing me and ruining my relationship with my four-hour away boyfriend and making me fat because life is hard and good food is expensive.
I would just like to write criticism of pop culture television and classical literature. I want to be published numerous, numerous times. I would like to have my free time free. I want to be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer expert. That's all.
So yeah, library school. I love the whole world. I just need to keep reminding myself.

Comes and goes.

der Treppenwitz: i feel like librarians make up more words than other professions.

der Treppenwitz: folksonomies and metadata and whatnot

JediChick221: but we totally have the right to! we're the ones with the dictionaries

der Treppenwitz: absolutely, but i feel like every word we make up is just another type of metadata-- coding content into the word itself.

JediChick221: oooh

JediChick221: that was deep in ways i am not yet prepared to explore

der Treppenwitz: rare flash of genius, right there

Librarienne

Men can be librarians?
I read too many comics.

Yous fancy-pants, all o' yas.

In my Reference and Information textbook for O'Connor's class, which I have not yet been to, they talk about the ethics that go along with being a reference librarian and guiding patrons to the information they desire. Every time I think of ethics, I think of the opening speech from Miller's Crossing. Great Coen brothers movie. One of the best openings I can think of. Johnny Caspar is a typical greasy, angry mobster. Makes me want to watch the movie all over again. "I'm sick of the high hat!!!" Makes me laugh every time.


But that's another one of those things that I hadn't thought of. The ethics associated with librarianship. People trusting you to find information that they need, or they would not have asked in the first place. The text says that patrons may be embarrassed about their question, and librarians should not assume how the patron wants the information presented. Being shy by nature, I cannot imagine asking a stranger a question that embarrasses me, unless it was a doctor or possibly a lawyer, someone I know is bound by confidentiality. It never occurred to me that librarians must also respect the same confidentiality. It is a profession that will not work without the trust of the public.
That's pretty cool.

Which came first?

"..."have you got any soul?" a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, i feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago, i was right out; now i've got loads, too much, more than i can handle. I wish i could spread it a bit more evenly, i want to tell her, get a better balance, but i can't seem to get it sorted. i can see she wouldn't be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so i simply point to where i keep the soul i have, right by the exit, just next to the blues." (Nick Hornby, High Fidelity)

I've had a few blogs before. Starting with OpenDiary when I was a silly 14 year old girl who wrote bad poetry and thought I was much cooler than I was. I moved on to another site whose name I can't even remember, and eventually made it to Livejoural. I use Livejournal still because I have friends with whom communicating is not easy in other forms and dated entries that go out to multiple people at the same time seemed to be the way to go. I have even moved on to blogspot once before with high hopes of becoming one of the amazingly funny blogs that I read daily. Alack and alas, finishing college, graduating, working a summer at a gas station, seeing the boy and moving to Kentucky weren't exactly the best circumstances to write daily witticisms. Such is life.
I do have something to share, that may best describe my relation to technology.

This song is by Neil Gaiman and sung by Amanda Palmer and makes me laugh every single time I even think of it. If you're in a spot where listening to a video that sounds a little more risque than it is, the lyrics are as follows, courtesy of Neil Gaiman himself:

I Google you
late at night when I don’t know what to do
I find photos
you’ve forgotten
you were in
put up by your friends

I Google you
when the day is done and everything is through
I read your journal
that you kept
that month in France
I’ve watched you dance

And I’m pleased your name is practically unique
it’s only you and
a would-be PhD in Chesapeake
who writes papers on
the structure of the sun
I’ve read each one

I know that I
should let you fade
but there’s that box
and there’s your name
somehow it never makes the pain
grow less or fade or disappear
I think that I should save my soul and
I should crawl back in my hole
But it’s too easy just to fold
and type your name again
I fear
I google you
Whenever I’m alone and feeling blue
And each scrap of information
That I gather
says you’ve got somebody new
And it really shouldn’t matter
ought to blow up my computer
but instead….
I google you

And thus. I have quite a bit to say on the importance of the subject of this song in the lives of generation x or whatever we are being called nowadays, but I'll save it for a day when I've run low. That sentence had an astonishing number of prepositional phrases.