Day 116: So far so good

Pretty well all of us in McGill's MLIS program seem to share a kind of quirky personality trait: extreme unfounded anxiety. The vast majority of us blow every assignment out of proportion and panic about finishing it, panic about whether we've done it right, obsess, obsess, obsess.

Lesson 116: It's a good idea to have a quick and easy way set up to check your course standing.

I have an app called iStudiez Pro that will not only remind me of when my assignments are due and keep track of whether they're group or solo; it also keeps track of the weight of each assignment and allows me to input my grade for each one and see an up to date assessment of what my grade likely is in that class.

This is a Very Good Thing around the end of semester. With all the final projects due, it would be easy enough to panic and succumb to anxiety, so having something easily available that tells you "no matter what you do right now, you couldn't fail this course if you tried" is invaluable.

Based on the mark I got on my take-home portion of the metadata exam, I think I can hit at least an A- by getting 50% or better on the final paper.

Based on all the As I've gotten in web systems design, I just need to finish the group assignment and I'm golden.

That means that the only wildcards are Archives and History of Books and Printing. I've done fine on everything so far in Archives, but I still have two major assignments (term paper and take-home exam) to do. History of Books and Printing is a great course, but is only evaluated on one project, and I don't present mine till the last class of the term.

But all this to say, it's best to give my logical mind as much ammo against my panicky headless chicken mind as possible. So when part of my brain goes "OH GOD SO MUCH TO DO I'M GOING TO FAIL AT EVERYTHING AND BE A FAILURE" my logical mind can lay on the smack down and tell it to shut it's trap; there's nothing to worry about.

Day 39: Stressed? Maybe?

I've had a revelation a long time coming. Kind of a slow boil, and now that I really understand it, I'm surprised it took me so long to fully comprehend.

Lesson 39: Being busy is not the same as being stressed.

In undergrad, looking back, I wasn't particularly busy. In fact, I was less and less busy the closer to the end I got. But I was perpetually stressed. My living arrangements, food quality, work or lack thereof and resulting money difficulty, school, lack of exercise, the very real worry that York would pull something on me and I wouldn't graduate, constantly being on edge for the next thing to go wrong, having no social life to speak of and being too far from any possibility of activities (6-10$ and an hour by transit as a minimum), it all meant that I was just a big, painful ball of stress. I felt like if I took anything extra on, the stress would kill me.

Compare that with now. I'm living within walking distance of nearly everything I want to do, in a good, un-infested apartment that I'm paying reasonable rent for. I'm eating in an appropriate and satisfying manner. I have work, it's not much, but it's something. School is intense, but things going wrong now feels like a rarity instead of an inevitability, and I feel like I'm working with a much more supportive administration. I play Quidditch, which takes up a lot of time, but it's physical and provides a fantastic social aspect. I really feel connected to, and involved with my classmates; I feel included. I get invited to events, and I actually feel like I can attend them. Even on a whim. Even as a split-second decision. And now, I'm even writing NaNoWriMo (there's an excerpt if you follow that link).

I am so very busy! I don't know that I could take on anything extra right now. But I don't feel stressed. I feel stressed only when things go wrong, like my database of doom debacle.

Stress is a sign that things are going wrong, I think, at least for me. Stress and anxiety go hand in hand and they feed on one another and spiral you down.

But I'm not actually stressed. I'm busy.

And busy makes me happy.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Something I couldn't find anywhere to fit in, here's a quote from my Information and Society class where we were discussing Information and Communication Technologies:

"Cloud computing sounds lovely, doesn't it? Care Bears live on clouds!" - Carolyn Hank

Day 38: A Day Late on Group Work

So far, my first year of Library school has been very nearly exclusively group work. Group presentations, group creation of authority records, group creation of a bibliographic database, group annotated bibliographies, group research... you get the idea.

Most of these groups have been small, easy to organize, voluntary and efficient.

However, that kind of luck can only hold out so long... in my case, that was until yesterday.

A larger group, chattering with nervousness, all concerned about completely different issues, is like hitching horses to a cart pointed in opposite directions. Everyone gets worn out quickly and no one gets anywhere.

Lesson 38: I can be a better leader than I ever give myself credit for.

This is something I need to remind myself of, and more importantly, it can be true of just about everyone.

Just breathe, and look at the big picture. That was the only way I was able to get our (supposed to be) half hour group meeting done in under 2 hours. The solution I found was to go through and write down everything that needed to be done without, and this is the part my group seemed to have the most trouble with, worrying about who was doing what. Every time we got sidetracked with that, the group energy would just shoot off into a worry spiral. But focusing just on what needed to be done, we got a whole picture of everything that we could then slice up between us and ensure that the work was divided equally.

I just wish I could have executed that solution sooner.

Add that meeting to the list of things that should be followed by a stiff drink...

Speaking of... apparently, grades for the database and the database quiz are up... I just really don't want to look at them. Some lesson this week will probably wind up related to that special kind of doom.

Turns out that's just for the other section. I get to live in ignorance and stay in the program just a little bit longer [/unnecessary theatrics, melodrama and exaggeration]

Day 37: The Drain Pipe that is YouTube...

I lost an entire 24 hours of my life, at least, to completely wasted activity trying to upload stuff to YouTube. I have 25GB of Quidditch games recorded from the Canadian Cup on Saturday and I hoped I could get them all transferred, edited and at least started on the uploading.

As it is, I did... but all the uploading failed after 12 hours, and all of it has to be redone.

*sigh*

Lesson 37: Never assume anything can be done quickly on YouTube.

As an aside, today is my last day as a free individual. Tomorrow NaNoWriMo starts and I have to write approximately 1750 words per day on top of homework, classes, work, Quidditch and maintaining this blog in order to achieve the 50,000 words in a month goal.

So my apologies if I let any of these things slide. I may start including NaNovel excerpts in my posts...

Wish me luck!

Day 36: Exhaustion

I set a ridiculous number of alarms to make sure I wake up in the morning. I set two on my iPad, 3 on my computer, and at least 2 on my cellphone, all to make sure that when the time comes that I wanted to wake up at the night before, I have no choice but to wake up.

The different alarms coming from different sources all sound at different times and must be found and shut off separately. That makes one so awake, there's no sleeping past your alarm. And that is what I count on.

Lesson 36: Sometimes, no matter how many alarms you set, exhaustion will win out and you will sleep through every one of them without even realizing it.

After the past three days of stress and minimal, low-quality sleep, that is just what happened to me this morning.

So now, I'll study the slides from the class I missed until I have to go to work.

But for the first time this week, I'm starting to feel human again.

Day 35: Of Madness and Midterms

Today was the dreaded database midterm. Dreaded for good reason. Particularly with the database disaster of Monday and Tuesday leaving me with exponentially less time to study than I would have liked, I don't feel that I did particularly well on the midterm.

I feel like I passed, or at least I hope I did, but I don't think I got the higher marks that I feel I am accustomed to. Which has the overachiever in me fuming a little, but the oft-repeated lesson of library school is smothering those flames as best it can. Today's lesson has been repeated by many people; students, professionals, today more than any other.

Lesson 35: Grades don't matter.

As long as you pass, and don't flunk out of the program, no employer is going to care whether you got a D- on a midterm, a C on a cataloguing quiz or even if you got nothing but As across the board.

When we finish school, our diploma says the words "Master of Library and Information Studies". It doesn't then finish with "... who got nothing but Bs the entire time, what an unremarkable and average student". Because outside of academic institutions, grades really don't matter.

I've even started hearing a new variation on this lesson, saying that specialization doesn't really matter. Yes, choosing archival studies over knowledge management will leave you better equipped to become an archivist, but if when you leave school you realize that what you really want to do is be a knowledge manager in a corporation, what is it that your diploma says?

Ultimately, this program will have us prepared to be any kind of information professional we desire to be. We'll also leave with a few specific tools of the trade from our chosen streams, but in the end, all skills are transferrable.

It all comes down to marketing.

Day 34: Feelin' pretty Charlie Brown

For those of you who don't know me personally, or at the least, haven't seen a picture of me, I have very curly hair. As in, I'm planning on being River Song for Halloween. Actually, I'm going to a mad scientist Halloween party, and archeology=science therefore, a sociopathic archeologist is a 100% valid costume.

But I digress, easy enough to do with my current mental state. Waaay too stressed for focus... which brings us to the lesson.

Lesson 34: My hair is a very accurate indicator of my stress level.

The frizzier and more Einsteinian my hair looks, the closer to the brink of dissolving into a blubbering mess I am.

And that is where I am right now. I had a major database project due at noon today, and I was fine until last night. But last night, my partner had finished the last of the work on our major database project when her netbook fell to the floor, crushing the poor USB stick protruding from its edge. The very same USB stick that contained our entire completed database.

Luckily, we had a backup on the school computers, but we still lost a good chunk of the work. So I went over to her place with my iPad and documented the damage, emailed the professor with photographic evidence to beg for mercy, tried to repair the stick, ordered us pizza and polished up the accompanying documentation so that she could blast through restoring the database without worrying about silly things like meals...

I mean, who needs food? Am I right? [/sarcasm]

This morning the professor got back to us, giving us a few extra hours to fix the damage before handing it in. Hallelujah! Mission accomplished.

But still, this morning every single hair on my head has decided it has a mind of it's own and is sticking straight out. And I could really care less. I have bigger fish to fry.

Like tomorrow's midterm. For the very same class we just handed in our database for.

:|

Day 28: Everybody's workin' for the weekend... BUT NOT ME!

I was stressing so much about the assignment that was due today (having been extended from Wednesday, thank goodness). I mean, this week has been so tumultuous and overwhelming, between getting ridiculously sick on Sunday, and getting engaged on Wednesday, having assignments and tests and blaaaaaaaargh.... Anyways, as a result all my plans to work on this paper have been intended and dashed so many times I was worried it would never get done. But...

Lesson 27: Don't worry! Be happy!

Once all that stress and uncertainty is forgotten in the urgency and crush to complete it... All of a sudden it's completely doable, and all of a sudden... it's just done. 

And so my break begins! 

Turkey Time! 

Day 8: Stress, my old friend...

Finally we begin our week of seconds. My second cataloguing class was today. I couldn't sleep last night until I finished the lab/homework exercises from WebCT because I wasn't 100% positive that it wasn't to be done for today (it wasn't. She actually handed it out in class. Whoops...).

Lesson 9) Don't stress, just sleep. You don't need a caffeine addiction to go along with your busy days. It'll just make you more frazzled and worsen your stress.