Day 98: Never, ever do that again

In a completely unexpected and unforeseeable turn of events, it turns out that leaving your house at 10 am, fully ready for the bus ride home but not actually catching that bus until 9:30 pm is a world of misery. Particularly when you compound it with 3 hours of sleep and schlepping around not only my own travel bags, but also a ridiculously heavy good deed.

Who knew?

The good deed? I'm transporting Zikomo bags back home for my sister. Being in International Development, she sells these bags on the behalf of a women's cooperative in Malawi. If you want to read more about my sister and what she's up to in "InDev" as they call it, she's started a blog too! She's going to be doing a work placement in Botswana next year so the blog is mainly to document that.

I haven't really learned anything so far today, except to be thankful for the caps on bottles of rubbing alcohol... In my sleep deprived state, I reached for my can of Amp Energy Drink and my hand came back with my bottle of rubbing alcohol instead. No, bad hand, that is not for drinking and will certainly not keep me awake through class!

Speaking of class, it was really bizarre today. Constantly contradictory and confusing, and at times disturbing. Here's an example of one of the lessons my professor wanted me to learn today...

(Faux) Lesson 98: Stalking is cute and romantic, but it is not ethical.

I was severely unimpressed. Stalking is not cute, it is not romantic. It is creepy, disturbing, unethical and immoral to boot. Don't do it!

Day 97: Mostly Serendipitous

Serendipity is a huge topic in librarianship. Heck, it's a huge issue in information and knowledge organization, period.

In fact, serendipity is one of the things most organizational systems are designed around. Dewey and Library of Congress, the two ways of organizing a library that you are most likely to be familiar with, both aim to "facilitate serendipity" by grouping similar volumes together. It's why you can go to "The Cookbook Section" or "The Canadian History Section"of the library and why we don't just organize all the books, fiction and non-fiction, by author's name or title. We want you to go to a section looking for a specific book and realize "hey, here's that book I was looking for, but this one right next to it is actually going to be better for what I need!"

We can get into all the arguments we want to about whether or not it's really serendipitous if it's been arranged that way, engineered serendipity if you will, but the fact is that it is useful, helpful and just plain fantastic whether or not it's "true" serendipity.

But I'd always just taken the word for granted. It's probably this or that Greek root meaning "divine guidance" or some such, peppered with a little Latin, left to stew in 3 or 4 different romance languages, before finally being looted by English. Or so I thought...

Lesson 97: The term "Serendipity" was inspired by a (mostly) Persian tale called "The Three Princes of Serendip" in which the titular three princes come upon information through happenstance and coincidence and are able to infer all manner of things.

The tale had been printed, reprinted, retold, reformed, combined with other tales, modified through the years adding elements from different tales from other locales or inspiring similar tales in other locales, but eventually made it to a book Horace Walpole read as a boy. It was this "silly fairy tale" that inspired him to coin the term "serendipity" in 1754.

If you're interested in reading a summary of the story, learning more about these Princes of Serendip and how the word serendipity came to be, I found this article in two parts that explains it all quite in depth.

Happy reading!

Day 96: It's All Coming Up Rainbows!

Somedays, you just learn more than others. Today was one of those days. So to avoid getting too far ahead of myself, Today's post will be formatted rather differently. Two lessons, with related factoids. So without further ado, the first lesson of the day (in chronological order).

We had a guest lecturer in class today. She used to work in Texas and she had some fantastic anecdotes to share.

Lesson 95: Bats are bad news for libraries.*

Factoid 1: There are 32 different types of bats in Texas, only one is endangered but three are at risk.

Factoid 2: To get bats out of libraries, you have to wait till they leave for the night, shine a huge spotlight in and then seal up the ways they used to get in. However, this only works for most bats, some will stay behind. So good luck with that!

The second lesson came from finally making it to that vintage boutique and trying on that potential wedding dress.

Lesson 96: Standard clothing size was established in the 40s and 50s. But due to vanity sizing, we are no longer truly using "standard sizing" but the more ambiguous "catalog sizing" which has smaller numbers for the same sizes. This means that your size on the tag of vintage clothing will be a much higher number than what you think your size is.

Factoid 1: My waist is no longer 27". It is now 25". This means that I can actually fit into a vintage dress that's approximately a modern size 2! Though the (very obviously original) tag calls it a size 10.

Factoid 2: Owning a Wedding Dress is a surreal experience, particularly when the wedding itself feels so far off.

That's right, I bought my dress! My friend Aimee came with me to the vintage boutique up on Rachel and upon trying the dress on it fit like it was made just for me! It looked perfect and we even managed to find the perfect shoes! I can't wait to wear it!

The boutique, Boutique Léora, is unfortunately closing in June but Nicole Pelletier, the owner, is an absolute marvel. If you have the opportunity, you should definitely go in and visit. She mentioned that she's hoping to reopen in a new location, and I really hope she'll be able to!

I'm on cloud 9 today!

*my notes actually read "bats will fuck yo shit up" but this just seems a more relevant way of phrasing it.

Day 95: Scab

We had another strike vote, and have approved unlimited strike action that we'll apparently have a vote weekly(?) to renew...

But yeah, yeah, I did it, I'm a terrible person. I've crossed the picket line. Much as I may disagree with the tuition hike, I can't afford to pay for classes and not attend them either. Class was so under-attended today, I think it actually improved the discussion...

Lesson 94: Some aspects of this program feel incredibly redundant, but the best way to deal with it is to sit back and enjoy the company of your classmates.

Or dress like Batgirl.

That made my day infinitely better; spending it dressed as my favourite female librarian.

But I digress... There are really only so many times you can talk about the information seeking models of Belkin, Dervin, Kuhlthau, Taylor, et al. and library anxiety before it just all starts to blur together. Your peers are your best option to avoiding losing it entirely.

Hooray for friends!

Day 94: Of Wedding Dresses and Possibilities

I worked yesterday's full day shift at the library and it was not nearly as quiet as it should have been. We had quite the patron encounter. But after the shift, Kristie and I went to get La Banquise poutine for dinner before dropping her off at the bus station. It was such a great cherry on the icing of a regular cupcake of a weekend! I may have spent a great deal more of the weekend working on my various projects that were due today than I had wanted, but it was still fantastic to hang out with Kristie so much!

To make matters even better, we walked past a vintage boutique with the most absolutely perfect dress in the window! I'm going to go try it on, but I emailed the owner of the store and she says it's a size 2, and it doesn't appear to be made of the most forgiving fabric.

I somehow doubt I'll be able to squeeze my debatably size 6 frame into a solid 2...

Lesson 93:  Don't try to do everything.

I've been pretty good at keeping on top of everything this year. Honestly, much to my own surprise. But after our collection development paper was postponed by a week, all of a sudden, my leisurely visit with Kristie wasn't quite as unencumbered as it had been when we planned it.

Despite that, my groups and I managed to get the assorted projects that were due today done and to celebrate, I really wanted to go to trivia as I normally do on Mondays and unwind.

However, after class and going to see Rick Mercer on campus, I decided I'd have a nap before trivia. Trivia's at 8 and it wasn't even 4 yet, so I had lots of time.

And yet, I slept right through till 11pm. So here we are. I have another practicum placement interview in the morning, but I'm awake. At 11pm.

Really, I should have stayed awake till 8 and just gone to bed instead of trying to do trivia in addition to my awesome weekend of chilling with one of my best friends and a ridiculous amount of projects. But now I've messed up my sleep schedule. I just hope I can make it right...

Day 93: The Strike

Today was the day.

The big Strike... and boy was it big! I had work, so I couldn't go to the rally, but it was terrifyingly huge.

I could hear it from my apartment, which is blocks away from the square it was starting in. And on my way to work, I could see them travelling up Peel as I got closer to it, then as I came up to Drummond and looked south(ish) I could see an equally huge crowd down there, which didn't seem right. When I got up to Sherbrooke and looked down it, the scene was positively shocking... people from building to building from Peel as far as I could see.

Very impressive!

I've heard people saying that as many as 200,000 students were in attendance, though I have yet to see any sort of "official" number... most of the news outlets are simply writing that "thousands" of students were there.

Lesson 92: You know you have a self-depreciation problem (inferiority complex, impostor syndrome, call it what you will) when instead of "Omg! Yay! I did so well!", your first reaction to being hired/accepted to a position is "oh god... Just how terrible were the other applicants?"

...

I am quite unimpressed with myself for just how many times I've had that reaction. But I suppose it's just fuel for the fire. Yeahhhh.....

On the other hand, I'm really really super excited because my friend from Scouting back home is coming to visit me this weekend! I've been trying to get as much work done on Collection Development before she gets here, but I've got so many things to do (practicum placement interviews, work, training for work) that I'm not nearly as far along as I'd hoped. Besides, you can only do so many APA citations before you feel like your brain is about to start bleeding...

Day 92: Political intrigues abound!

That fake spring I mentioned earlier is now a full on fake summer... It's so hot outside! Absolutely fantastic, but it's bound to end by the weekend... At least according to the weather report. Not looking forward to that... but anyways.

As you may or may not be aware, Quebec students have been in quite the tizzy lately. The provincial government wants to raise tuition by 1,600 odd dollars over the next 5 years, which is a pretty substantial increase when Quebec student tuition is only just over 2,000$. As a result, the schools have held strike votes, and nearly everybody has decided that going on strike is the thing to do, though I'm a little lost on how you can strike when you're the one who's paying. While I admittedly didn't participate in the school's democratic process, I was under the impression that it was a reasonably fair vote that was more or less representative of overall student opinion on the matter.

However, the student representation in the vote process may not have been exactly representative.

Apparently, while the meeting had achieved quorum that was largely because the pro-strike students had really mobilized and came out in force to the meeting whereas most ambivalent and anti-strike students actually had no idea a strike vote was happening.

Lesson 91: Quorum is when an assembly has enough members of the group it is meant to be representing in attendance that the decisions made are considered binding, and to be the overall opinion of the group.

I don't really know much about student or university politics in general, so this entire business has been rather enlightening.

I guess it's another occasion where I'm seeing how I shouldn't take things for granted. Whereas normally, I'd be right and a PGSS meeting would probably wind up being roughly representative of overall student opinion, a meeting where an item on the agenda is extremely important to a particular group of people is bound to wind up quite a bit more polarized than usual.