Day 69: Not Going To Say Anything... I Am Matuer.

Swave and deboner too!

.... Jokes that only really work when spoken. Ignore me.

Anyways... Today was my last first class of the semester. And because it's basically How To Be In Charge 101, we did an activity I've done quite a few times before, it's kind of a thing in Scouts.

It's a NASA activity in which you've crashed on the moon and your survival depends on reaching the mothership over 200 miles away. You have 15 items, and in order to succeed must rank them by importance.

Now it's an easy activity if you know Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or even if you just know what you need to survive. Priorities include not running out of air to breathe, having enough water to make sure you don't dehydrate before you get there and food to make sure you don't starve. 200 miles could take you 3 days if you go without stopping for sleep or anything, or over a week if you actually rest or are injured etc.

Lesson 65: Things are never as easy as you think they should be. Or alternatively: Being fully grown and well-educated does not mean you understand space.

Some people in my group had assumed that we weren't on the moon as it currently exists, but one on which we did not require breathing apparatuses (apparati?). They couldn't fathom that NASA would have given us things that wouldn't have been useful in this exact situation, therefore the fact we had matches proved that we could breathe on the moon. One guy wanted us to leave the oxygen behind entirely...

Matches, the raft, the compass, they were on the shuttle for if we crashed in the water... On Earth.

And yet, the whole group got derailed because of this.

Things are never as easy as you think they should be.

I'm Batman. And I can breathe in space.

Day 4: Classes? We no need no stinkin' classes!

Off-center day of classes! My class that's normally Wednesday was actually today (a Friday?) because next Wednesday the professor's actually in Greece, so we need to get started so as not to fall behind. Confusing. Following that trend, my lessons today were all about confusion.

Lesson 5) People are generally uninterested in libraries and as a result seem to think they are organized by magic. They are also incapable of understanding interchangeable use of the terms "bookshelves" and "stacks" without a whole song and dance.

Bonus unnumbered lesson for non-library people: you know bookshelves. Bookselves are shelves for books, you've seen them in the library and you probably have at least one in your house, even if you don't use it for books. Point of interest though, when we have bookshelves in the library, we also tend to call them "the stacks". I don't want you to be confused when we refer to "that stack over there". We aren't talking about a pile of books, that's just what we call the shelves. Same thing when we refer to entries, we're talking about catalogue entries, usually on the computer, not entrances.

I feel that sometimes we can be confusing without meaning to. Just remember that we are professionals, experts if you will. Just like I wouldn't necessarily understand if you started talking about things from your field with the terms you use with your colleagues, we will use our terms when talking with you because that's how we speak when we're in the library, and sometimes we forget that we're not just talking to another colleague. So please accept my apologies for this in advance.