Day 109: Metadata will be the death of me

They said at Access last weekend that "A URL is your contract with the world". By putting something up online, you're agreeing that it will always be at that URL, and if it moves, you'll leave breadcrumbs to lead the user back to the material.

Similarly, I've always understood that a syllabus is a professor's contract with their students. "This is the class, this is how it will be taught and this is how you will be evaluated". It can only be changed in exceptional circumstances and for very good reason.

Lesson 109: Good form or no, some people will break contracts no matter what.

We've been informed of yet another change to our course (or is it a change? no one seems sure).

We now have a take-home essay portion to our mid-term, due immediately before our in-class portion. And we'll have about 24 hrs to do it. Work? Class? Irrelevant. 24 hours. Make it work.

So basically, the majority of us are being told that we are required to pull an all-nighter to write the take-home portion before going into class to do the in-class portion.

Everyone seems pretty resigned to their fate at this point... *sigh*

Day 67: Only Work Today, But I Forgot!

I forgot to mention! I had told you all about my exams, but didn't think to share if my impressions were borne out by my final grades.

Which they did, more or less.

I think I did a few percentage points worse on my information and society exam than I had expected, but all in all, I got exactly the grades I had expected (not the ones I'd hoped, but the ones I expected).

Which means I passed my first term of my Masters program! And well! What a relief!

I checked it with Jon there giving me hugs and literally cried I was so happy.

I guess I'd been more worried about it than I gave myself credit for...

Day 65: Aaaaaand Scene!

Final exam: completed!

Today's was Information System Design's final exam. Honestly, I was really, really worried about this one. A lot of people took it earlier in the month because of a whole kerfluffle that happened, and they insisted that it was much easier than the last exam from this course, but still I was wary.

But it was so much easier than the last exam from this course!

It wasn't cumulative, as had been promised at the beginning of the term, and so it only covered google and dialog.

Dialog's a pain, but as long as you knew the commands it was all good.

And now my vacation begins! Tonight there's a big SIS party/potluck thing and tomorrow I bus home.

I hope this vacation is as amazing and restful as I dream it could be!

See you in January! (wow, 2012!)

Day 64: Only one more to go!!!

Today's exam was Bibliographic and Factual Sources. I had heard horror stories about that exam, but nothing could have prepared me for that thing.

Oh. Wow.

Honestly, I did my best. I studied all that I could. My brain was crammed with every possible fact I could fit in it, and I think that I did ok. But those questions were beasts! Absolute beasts. And realistically, this exam did nothing to prepare me for any real world scenario.

I stand by my assertion that that class would feel much more useful as a project-based one.

Let's just hope my course evaluation comments get heard on that.

Day 63: Halfway Done!

As I mentioned yesterday, my exam this morning was Information and Society.

It was ok as far as exams go. I mean, there were a few easy questions, a few ones I couldn't even guess at. I feel like I did all the studying I could have, there were just a few things that hadn't stuck in my head. Things like people's names rarely do stick in my head properly.

Luckily, my prof made an extremely comprehensive review slideshow, and really I don't think I really should have bothered studying anything else. So I had covered everything before the exam.

Lets hope that my final grade bears that out!

I'm 100% positive I passed. The only variable is by how much.

But that's true of most of the classes I've ever taken.

Day 62: Opening a book and seeing its spine through the pages

Something about that pains me, the spine of a book showing bare. And it hurts even more to hear the crackling tear of the spine breaking. Any yet, the things I do for my job... Today I started tattle-taping journals, and ideally, the stuff needs to be right along the spine which means... I'm a sad panda. Sad panda, indeed.

But there's no real lesson there. Anyone who has ever opened a new book knows whether or not breaking the poor thing's spine hurts them... Except piano books... They need that lesson or their pages will try to close as you play.

Still, I digress.

Today was exam numero one!

The dread pirate Cataloguing.

Tedious as ever, and yet I still enjoyed it.

The multiple choice and definitions were reasonably easy, with joke answers strewn in... often as the answer. Going over the class slides and post-it noting my AACR2 was all the studying needed to be sure.

Pro tip: Emily Post's Table Manners for Adults has nothing to do with cataloguing if you couldn't have guessed.

Dewey is tougher when you can't check your answers like a math problem. That is, when you can't use Dewey online to see what the number you've built leads to, it's tough to be sure of the answer you've given.

But all in all, I feel that that particular exam went well, all things considered. Nothing in particularly really stumped me, it was just a long slog to create the Dewey Decimal Classifications and the Machine-Readable Cataloguing records.

Next up: Information and Society, tomorrow morning!

Study, study, study!