Day 100: Officially Half A Librarian!

Happy Friday the 13th! And happy Day 100 and End of Year 1 as well! I'm half way there!

As a grand summary lesson for my 100th numbered day in Library School, let me share the most overarching lesson I've taken away from this year.

Lesson 100: You can do anything. Anything at all. You just have to ignore all doubts about whether you can, and just go go go.

This week has been quite the interesting experience, and very much proving the lesson, so let me spell it out.

Our final research proposal was due Tuesday. Luckily someone in my group was in Montreal and willing to hand it in because I was still in Ontario, just preparing to head back to Montreal. I was taking the midnight bus that night, so I did some shopping in Toronto (five-fingers shoes and fancy Sephora hair-ties) and met up with my friend Elissa for dinner (lobster grilled cheese and a raspberry mojito) before catching the bus.

After a fitful sleep full of interruptions, I was finally back in Montreal, and went home to catch some ZZZs before waking up (at 11) to go to work and complete the last of my final assignments.

On Thursday, our project management final and our collection development final were both due, four hours apart.

I did not sleep Wednesday night. A bottle of NOS kept me company while I stayed up to finish my collection development paper. Although at one point the bottle of NOS convinced me that rather than continue the futile quest to get WebCT to cooperate and allow me to download the PowerPoints I needed, what I really needed to do was read some fan fiction instead.

Despite the distractions borne of no sleep and too much caffeine, I finished the collection development paper and handed it in just under the wire thanks to Aimee being awesome and printing it off for me while I ran to SIS. Then we put the finishing touches on our project management paper, handed it in, and got some celebratory lunch as a group.

Then I had my first training shift in my new job at the Neuro-Patient Resource Centre... on ~6hrs sleep in the past 48-72hrs. Needless to say that afterwards I went straight home and got a proper night's sleep.

Today, I had another training shift at the Neuro followed immediately by a regular shift at the Life Sci. My new boss told me that she was very impressed with how high-functioning I was yesterday on less than no sleep. I still got it! ^.^

And to mark the official end of the semester, we had a party with wine and tasty food, mingling, and superlatives! There were many categories to be won; best dressed, info-retrieval wizard, most likely to be the first to become library director, most stereotypical, most likely to become a prof...

In a three-way tie, I won Most Stereotypical Librarian.

... Maybe I shouldn't buy those cateye frames I've been eyeing... It might cause a singularity of librarianship...

Librarian blackhole; Nothing can escape its gravity. Cats, knitting and baking supplies are pulled in with no chance of release. Knowledge is devoured and it is not known whether it escapes again in some form, but scientists presume that it must, due to the principle of the conservation of mass...

Full results of the vote as compiled by Alex Amar on the Library School facebook group are copypastad for your viewing pleasure here.

Day 88: And breathe that sigh of relief...

After a lovely trip to the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa with the ACA and CLA student chapters, I stayed on in Ottawa for a lovely weekend with my friend Sarah. She had to work a lot, but that just meant that I had an excuse to go eat at the pub she works at! Excellent place. If you're ever in Ottawa and want an excellent breakfast (or meal, period) you really should stop by The Lieutenant's Pump on Elgin.

And yes, you can quote me on that. I stake my vast and valuable reputation as a blogger on it. [/sarcastic self-aggrandizing] Seriously though, they're fantastic.

I mean, a burger with brie, mushrooms and bacon on it? Count me in!

Anyways, I digress.

Point is, I was back at school today. Though tomorrow I'm running off for a whirlwind trip to Toronto, during which I will ideally meet George R.R. Martin and get a book signed (for those who don't know, he is writing the series A Song of Ice and Fire, which has become the TV show Game of Thrones). But still...

Lesson 87: Professors are more aware of students' workloads then they are generally given credit for.

Or at least, I'll give my professor the benefit of the doubt and assume that's why she's given us the best gift she could have: a one week extension for all students on our collection development paper.

This week was going to be absolutely insane with the number of SIS events happening, my day in Toronto, completing a post-presentation write-up by Wednesday, the quiz in management, preparing my group presentation for next Monday, writing my evaluation of a research article for next Monday, spending and documenting 8000$ of imaginary money for our collection development paper due Monday as well, work, and the number of events I've been invited to for this weekend what with St Patrick's Day being so huge here in Montreal.

But now, I don't have to have completed the spending of the imaginary cash for another week.

And I feel like I can breathe again...

So lets see... if I can just get this write-up done now,
study for that quiz and finish readings tomorrow
evaluate a research article Thursday,
then I can maybe go to Gerts Friday,
do more collection development Sat+Sun
hand stuff in + present Mon and work on research proposal
train for the new job Wednesday, complete Collection Development
play soccer, work an 8hr shift, hang with Kristie
complete two essays and a research paper
Enjoy Easter? Go to Music Moot?
Seriously though, are you actually reading this?
It gets tiny like this so you can't actually read it.
This is an aesthetic representation of me losing my mind
Slowly becoming more and more helpless
As library school eats my brain like some zombie
Seriously, stop reading...



....Help me....

Day 72: The Hard, Long Slog

Yesterday, it went down to -20°C (that's -4°F for any Americans in the crowd). Lucky for me that was a one off. Unluckily for everyone, that meant that what was just slushy snowy stuff to slog through two days ago is now a hardened, icy sheet, polished by the boots and bums of those who have been walking, and falling, on these paths, sidewalks, and stairs.

Climbing the hill was more like playing Snakes & Ladders today...

Lesson 68: It isn't that the winter is harsher, colder, snowier or.... Winterier than you're used to. It's how much you're actually outside that counts.

You see, I've been spending the past 4 winters in Toronto (and to some extent Guelph). In Toronto, I lived a stone's throw from campus. It took me about 5 minutes to walk to class, which meant 2 minutes to get to campus. Once I was on campus, it was all cutting through buildings and walking through the tunnels that connected each building to every other. Though the actual underground tunnels had been closed for ages because of vagrants and assaults (or so I was told), there were numerous above-ground tunnels, and buildings that were just plain connected to one another.

I wore the same sweaters as I did in summer, my run-down winter coat, and just ran to campus and stayed in the enclosed areas if it was too cold for what I was wearing.

When I was in Guelph, I'd be going straight from building to car so much that what I was wearing mattered even less.

Now, I'm living in Montreal. I haven't noticed that the weather's any different in severity than the past few winters I've seen. The pattern's different, but it's not any worse or any better. But now, I spend 15-20 minutes a day climbing to class. And another 15-20 minutes climbing back down to my place. Out in the elements. And I can't make it go appreciably faster at all, short of caving and flagging down a taxi.

So I'm cold.

I bought a new coat back in November, which has probably made it better than it would have been, but my summer sweaters just aren't going to cut it any more.

If my classes were at the bottom of the hill, I could potentially use the paths through the underground city (though they don't really extend far enough North or West to be very useful) and I wouldn't really be having a problem.

But my classes are at the top of the hill, and that's a whole other ball game.

Plus, I actually go out now on evenings and weekends because I have a life or something, which I didn't in Toronto. So there's that too.

I do so love the winter though! Particularly the nice big snow falls... It's so pretty! :3

In mod/admin news, I've been writing from the app BlogPress on my iPad, which is a marvelous app, but I was having quite a lot of trouble actually posting from it. That has since been resolved, it was a facebook connection issue blocking my syncing, but all my drafts should now be published. If there's an unaccounted for hole which you've noticed please let me know.

Day 9: On OSAP and provincial weirdness

Today was remarkable in that it was just so inexplicable.

I started out by going to work, doing pick-ups, sorting, loans desk... the usual, punctuated by looking up photos of the aftermath of yesterday's McTavish Reservoir overflow. But then, at the end of work, I had to rush to the bus station to take an impromptu, emergency trip to Ottawa. Why?, you may ask. That is the topic of today's lessons!

As a University student, I have never been eligible for OSAP (the Ontario Student Assistance Program), for various wild, wacky and highly bureaucratic reasons. However, now that I'm not even attending school in Ontario, I am eligible just by virtue of the fact I've been out of high school for just over four years. Which brings us to our first lesson.

Lesson 10) Check your student aid eligibility yearly. You never know when something that didn't seem terribly relevant to you will all of a sudden be the biggest deal to those providing possible aid.

As I have never been eligible, but tried to apply once upon a time, I had an account with OSAP but didn't have any of the details to access it. I know now that because I'd never successfully submitted an application, they didn't even have a name associated with my account. Regardless, they wanted me to go into a financial aid office in person to gain access to my account. But as a cross-provincial student (ie/ an Ontario resident living and going to school in Quebec), this is where our next lesson comes from.

Lesson 11) Provincial student aid organizations are really bad at sharing. If you go to an out-of-province school, anything you do through your own school's financial office will take infinitely longer to process. Getting your account number and password, for instance, is instantaneous at an in-province institution even if it's one you do not and have never attended (such as, in my case, the University of Ottawa) but if done through your own, out-of-province institution would take up to 6 weeks to process. All because you're working across provincial borders. Therefore... Bonus lesson: Deal with all provincial student aid questions while you're home, even if the closest University is one you have never had any interaction with.

Ya..... today really was a three lesson day. And I didn't even have class!