My last three weeks have been almost entirely focused on one thing: comps. Comps, or comprehensive exams, are essentially the last barrier, the final gate keeper to keep students out of the clubhouse of being official librarians. Two days of testing sessions, three hours each. They ask five questions each day, and you have to answer two in a academic-style essay, complete with references to appropriate literature. The questions can be about any topic related to librarianship, and that perhaps is the worst part: not really knowing what will be asked. So you study everything, soaking up as much as you can and trying to focus on what you think the faculty will want you to focus on.
I felt nervous as hell when I got there the first day. My heart was jam-jam-jammering in my chest and my stomach felt like it wanted to separate from my body and walk away. I wasn't alone. People were cramming until the last minute and everyone seemed to have their own personal nervous tic (finger-tapping, pencil twirling, hair twisting) on full display. A woman in the row behind was chatting with someone and talking about how much she needed to pass. She already had a job starting in June on the condition she passed all her tests. But to top it off, her husband had just lost his job. As bad as my nerves were, I'm sure hers were a lot worse.
Once the computers were on and I had the questions in hand, I felt better. It took away the mystique of the whole affair and, once made real, took away some of its power of me. I think I did ok overall----two of the four questions I answered I feel like I did pretty well on. The other two I probably did well enough. But now the waiting game begins. It'll take about a month before we get the results. In the meantime I have classwork, reviews, and real life to catch up on. Until next time....
Excelsior
Showing posts with label School. Show all posts
Showing posts with label School. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Week One of My Last Semester
My one class this term---my last term---is a Young Adult Literature class. The class will be a a lot of work, but fun work. We're reading 2-3 books a week and have a handful of large projects. We're reading a lot of the "classic" books for young adults, which is good for me. I've read some of the newer ones over the past year, but somehow I've missed a lot of the classics. The most contemporary thing I read for classes in high school was probably Herman Melville. Plus when I was a teen Young Adult sections in libraries didn't really exist. I just didn't get exposed to what we call Young Adult books now. I pretty much lived in the sci-fi section and rarely ventured anywhere else unless I had to. I'm looking forward to it, because It'll fill in a lot of holes in what I've read. I'll probably share short, abridged reviews of what I read, just to make sure I'm thinking about these books fully.
The prof is the head librarian at a private high school, so he's bringing in a perspective I haven't gotten yet. I like him, probably because his teaching attitude is much like my own. Laid back, open to ideas and putting much of the responsibility as far as big assignments and being ready to discuss everyday on the students. As much as I've enjoyed my program, a couple of the profs treat the grad students like they're still in high school.
Our first "project" is a short personal essay about our reading habits: what they were like when we were teens, what they are like now and how these reading habits can help or hurt our working with teens. Depending on how my essay goes, I might share it here as well. At the very least, I'll being sharing an odd mixture of book reviews of the next several days.
Excelsior
The prof is the head librarian at a private high school, so he's bringing in a perspective I haven't gotten yet. I like him, probably because his teaching attitude is much like my own. Laid back, open to ideas and putting much of the responsibility as far as big assignments and being ready to discuss everyday on the students. As much as I've enjoyed my program, a couple of the profs treat the grad students like they're still in high school.
Our first "project" is a short personal essay about our reading habits: what they were like when we were teens, what they are like now and how these reading habits can help or hurt our working with teens. Depending on how my essay goes, I might share it here as well. At the very least, I'll being sharing an odd mixture of book reviews of the next several days.
Excelsior
Saturday, November 17, 2007
If It's Mid-November, It Must be Paper Season
I've been quiet this week because I've been struggling to figure out what I'm doing for all my papers and projects will be for my library school classes this week.
First on deck, due the Thursday after Thanksgiving, is a 20 page research paper that uses at least 5 academic journals as sources. Although I'm still pulling the ideas together, I'm doing social networking sites and how they are being used in academic libraries. Fortunately, it's an area I'm interested in. For the most part what I've seen libraries doing is using social networking tools as portals to get to already existing tools on websites. I'm hoping I find some examples that step beyond that. At least at the moment I'll be focusing on Myspace, Facebook and Second Life.
Due the following Thursday, I have a group paper/presentation on disaster plans----not my choice. I realize it's important, but it's fairly boring research. One person in our group took the task of a small case study of the University of Maryland's policies while I'm doing the broader background research on the topic. A third person is putting the presentation all together.
The third paper is due the Monday after that. This is for my Humanities Research class, and I've been debating back and forth about what I want to do. Basically we have to research and write an annotated bibliography of sources for a particular area of research. I initially wanted to create a bibliography for avant pop, a lit movement that ran from the mid 90's and into the early 21st century. It involves a lot of my favorite writers (Kathy Acker, Stephen Shaviro, Lance Olsen, and more), but the problem is that most of the sources are online. My prof wanted no more than 1/2 of the sources we use be online, so that one was out. My next impulse was to create one for Cyberpunk. But after spending four hours in the library last night, I decided to broaden it to Sci-Fi in general. It should be fairly easy to pull together. I definitely plan on doing one for avant pop at some point---I'm sad to say it doesn't even have a wikipedia entry. But in the interest of time and ease for my paper, the broader topic makes more sense at this point.
Anyway, I'm catching up on reviews for the magazine as well, so I should have some appearing here over the next several days as well. Until next time...
Excelsior
First on deck, due the Thursday after Thanksgiving, is a 20 page research paper that uses at least 5 academic journals as sources. Although I'm still pulling the ideas together, I'm doing social networking sites and how they are being used in academic libraries. Fortunately, it's an area I'm interested in. For the most part what I've seen libraries doing is using social networking tools as portals to get to already existing tools on websites. I'm hoping I find some examples that step beyond that. At least at the moment I'll be focusing on Myspace, Facebook and Second Life.
Due the following Thursday, I have a group paper/presentation on disaster plans----not my choice. I realize it's important, but it's fairly boring research. One person in our group took the task of a small case study of the University of Maryland's policies while I'm doing the broader background research on the topic. A third person is putting the presentation all together.
The third paper is due the Monday after that. This is for my Humanities Research class, and I've been debating back and forth about what I want to do. Basically we have to research and write an annotated bibliography of sources for a particular area of research. I initially wanted to create a bibliography for avant pop, a lit movement that ran from the mid 90's and into the early 21st century. It involves a lot of my favorite writers (Kathy Acker, Stephen Shaviro, Lance Olsen, and more), but the problem is that most of the sources are online. My prof wanted no more than 1/2 of the sources we use be online, so that one was out. My next impulse was to create one for Cyberpunk. But after spending four hours in the library last night, I decided to broaden it to Sci-Fi in general. It should be fairly easy to pull together. I definitely plan on doing one for avant pop at some point---I'm sad to say it doesn't even have a wikipedia entry. But in the interest of time and ease for my paper, the broader topic makes more sense at this point.
Anyway, I'm catching up on reviews for the magazine as well, so I should have some appearing here over the next several days as well. Until next time...
Excelsior
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Back to School
Classes at library school started back up this week. I've had one Monday, a class on Humanities Research. The professor is kind of, well, an odd duck. A lot of students don't like him. HIs lectures are free-wheeling stream of consciousness, often diverging completely from the topic at hand. He also frequently works in references to himself for no reason at all---his ties to French Royalty, his published books, his friendship with big name critics. When I was buying my textbooks Monday morning, I ran into someone I know who expressed great sympathies for my taking a class with him.
I took a class of his last spring, though, and I really like him. I find him entertaining, he really cares about the students and he does know a lot. The work he gives, although sometimes tedious, really pushes the students to learn how to use a variety of sources: databases, standard print reference sources and even old, rare (and hard to find) volumes. I also really appreciate his point of view that librarians need to keep informed of the subject area they work in, and not just know how to look up information. For example, along with the three library science text books we're also reading Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, a book that examines western culture from 1500 A.D. to the present day.
My other class is on Thursdays, and is on College and University Libraries. I'm mostly taking that for career reasons. Although I'm working in a public library now, I don't know where the jobs will be when I'm done. I felt like I needed some exposure to how Academic Libraries work before I graduate, and with so many colleges in the area I hope it will help with my job search I've heard mixed things about the professor. That he's kind of dry, but really knows the material and that he gives challenging but fair assignments. We'll see how it goes. All in all, I'm looking forward to the semester.
Excelsior.
I took a class of his last spring, though, and I really like him. I find him entertaining, he really cares about the students and he does know a lot. The work he gives, although sometimes tedious, really pushes the students to learn how to use a variety of sources: databases, standard print reference sources and even old, rare (and hard to find) volumes. I also really appreciate his point of view that librarians need to keep informed of the subject area they work in, and not just know how to look up information. For example, along with the three library science text books we're also reading Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence, a book that examines western culture from 1500 A.D. to the present day.
My other class is on Thursdays, and is on College and University Libraries. I'm mostly taking that for career reasons. Although I'm working in a public library now, I don't know where the jobs will be when I'm done. I felt like I needed some exposure to how Academic Libraries work before I graduate, and with so many colleges in the area I hope it will help with my job search I've heard mixed things about the professor. That he's kind of dry, but really knows the material and that he gives challenging but fair assignments. We'll see how it goes. All in all, I'm looking forward to the semester.
Excelsior.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Recovering From School
My little over three week vanishing was all due to crazy out of control summer school. I only took two classes, but the summer terms are about 1/3 as long with the same level of work. Project built up on top of project and I often found myself scrambling against deadlines. Even more than normal. After working and then spending several hours every day reading and working on homework, the last thing I wanted to do was spend time writing something else. But now, hopefully, I'll be getting back into the habit of blogging and catching up on things.
My class projects were really varied. I Organized my t-shirt collection, complete with a database with full catalog entries. Wrote an essay on the value of Google Scholar and another on Zines in public libraries. But probably the most time consuming project was the lesson plan for my Information Literacy class.
For Information Literacy we had to work with a College Freshman English teacher and develop a lesson plan for a 75 minute library instruction session. Each class came with a theme and I got to work with a class that focused on horror film criticism. The big project for the students asked them to pick a horror film monster that appears in two different movies----Dracula, the blob, etc.----and write an essay exploring the portrayal of the monster and what it has to say about a particular theme. For example, they could write about two different versions of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, examining the paranoia in both and try to determine the societal cause for that fear. So it really was the perfect match for me.
The professor I worked with was pretty cool. We only communicated over email, but I found that she's big into sci-fi criticism and theories dealing with viral language. As far as the class, she was interested in literary theory applied to films and really wanted to get her students into exploring themes more deeply. So I designed a lesson plan that taught them how to use subject encyclopedias and databases to dig up info on their themes and narrow down their topics----like most college freshman, the ideas the kids have are pretty vague, like Dracula and evil.
To jazz up the session a little bit I worked in searching Youtube for video clips. But I really brought out my inner geek with the props I chose.
Yep, I bought a pile of action figures for the students to fidget with as they researched. That big guy in the back is a giant roaring King Kong, which I found in the discount aisle at Target. The big ape is flanked by a Werewolf, a somewhat gay looking Dracula, a Zombie and a very buff Frankenstein's Monster---all of which I found at a Spencer's Gifts at the local mall. I have no idea what I'll do with these toys now that my class is over, but I'm amused that grad school is giving me the excuse to buy toys.
Anyway, I think I did a good job. The comments I got on my lesson plan were all pretty good, and it was fun putting it on. Info literacy was a good class---both challenging and fun. I hope I find ways to apply some of the education theory in my work after I graduate. But as much I enjoyed, I'm really happy to have the next three weeks or so off from school. I need some time to shift my brain to thinking about other things.
I have a big pile of book reviews to catch up on, so those will be appearing over the next few days. And this weekend I head to Memphis, TN for several days. It's Miss L's hometown, and we're going there to visit her family and friends and possibly eat BBQ. More on that on another day.
Excelsior.
My class projects were really varied. I Organized my t-shirt collection, complete with a database with full catalog entries. Wrote an essay on the value of Google Scholar and another on Zines in public libraries. But probably the most time consuming project was the lesson plan for my Information Literacy class.
For Information Literacy we had to work with a College Freshman English teacher and develop a lesson plan for a 75 minute library instruction session. Each class came with a theme and I got to work with a class that focused on horror film criticism. The big project for the students asked them to pick a horror film monster that appears in two different movies----Dracula, the blob, etc.----and write an essay exploring the portrayal of the monster and what it has to say about a particular theme. For example, they could write about two different versions of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, examining the paranoia in both and try to determine the societal cause for that fear. So it really was the perfect match for me.
The professor I worked with was pretty cool. We only communicated over email, but I found that she's big into sci-fi criticism and theories dealing with viral language. As far as the class, she was interested in literary theory applied to films and really wanted to get her students into exploring themes more deeply. So I designed a lesson plan that taught them how to use subject encyclopedias and databases to dig up info on their themes and narrow down their topics----like most college freshman, the ideas the kids have are pretty vague, like Dracula and evil.
To jazz up the session a little bit I worked in searching Youtube for video clips. But I really brought out my inner geek with the props I chose.
Yep, I bought a pile of action figures for the students to fidget with as they researched. That big guy in the back is a giant roaring King Kong, which I found in the discount aisle at Target. The big ape is flanked by a Werewolf, a somewhat gay looking Dracula, a Zombie and a very buff Frankenstein's Monster---all of which I found at a Spencer's Gifts at the local mall. I have no idea what I'll do with these toys now that my class is over, but I'm amused that grad school is giving me the excuse to buy toys.
Anyway, I think I did a good job. The comments I got on my lesson plan were all pretty good, and it was fun putting it on. Info literacy was a good class---both challenging and fun. I hope I find ways to apply some of the education theory in my work after I graduate. But as much I enjoyed, I'm really happy to have the next three weeks or so off from school. I need some time to shift my brain to thinking about other things.
I have a big pile of book reviews to catch up on, so those will be appearing over the next few days. And this weekend I head to Memphis, TN for several days. It's Miss L's hometown, and we're going there to visit her family and friends and possibly eat BBQ. More on that on another day.
Excelsior.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Onward
Well I've made it through another semester of grad school. Monday was particularly fun, since our prof sprung for a catered dinner afterward. Nothing extreme.....a couple of pasta dishes, some salad and a lot of wine. It was a nice bit of relaxation after the stress of the exam. Plus I got sent home on the metro with a big jug of wine. And if you're ever starved for entertainment I highly suggest waiting around on a metro platform with bottle of wine twice the size of your average milk bottle. I got all sorts of strange looks that night.
For some reason I feel different at the end of this term. My other classes have been so theory based, but the two I took this term were more practical. I feel better prepared to work as a librarian than I did a few months ago, and that's a nice feeling. But it might also be that now I'm more than halfway through the program, I can feel the end that's coming about this time next year. I'm still enjoying classes....and looking forward to the ones I'll be taking this summer....but I'm ready to move on to that next phase of my life.
But what I'm really curious about is my paper. What I thought would be a simple ten-pager on comic book criticism turned into a 30 pager without a lot of difficulty. There are apparently a lot of people out there saying some pretty cool things about comics. I discovered the International Journal of Comic Art, an academic-level journal edited by a prof at Temple University. I also discovered Mechademia, a fun looking academic journal that focuses on anime, manga and the surrounding fan culture. I'm curious to find out what my prof thought, because if my paper's good enough I might look into sending it out to one of these crazy places.
My last big discovery, though, was something I should have stumbled across long ago: a comic series called Strangers in Paradise. I've heard about the series for a long time....l mean it has the unusual distinction of winning both Eisner and Glad awards....but I've never picked it up. I bought the first trade collection on a whim and loved it. The story centers on two women, Francine and Katchoo. It's a mixture of stories told in present time and flashbacks, and the core of it is whether the two women are close friends or something more. It's very dramatic but also surprisingly character driven. Some of the strongest characters and most vivid writing I've seen in comics in a long time.
I'll have some reviews and other nonsense up soon. Right now my head is still full, so I think I'll empty it out by watching some mindless cartoons. So until next time...
Excelsior.
For some reason I feel different at the end of this term. My other classes have been so theory based, but the two I took this term were more practical. I feel better prepared to work as a librarian than I did a few months ago, and that's a nice feeling. But it might also be that now I'm more than halfway through the program, I can feel the end that's coming about this time next year. I'm still enjoying classes....and looking forward to the ones I'll be taking this summer....but I'm ready to move on to that next phase of my life.
But what I'm really curious about is my paper. What I thought would be a simple ten-pager on comic book criticism turned into a 30 pager without a lot of difficulty. There are apparently a lot of people out there saying some pretty cool things about comics. I discovered the International Journal of Comic Art, an academic-level journal edited by a prof at Temple University. I also discovered Mechademia, a fun looking academic journal that focuses on anime, manga and the surrounding fan culture. I'm curious to find out what my prof thought, because if my paper's good enough I might look into sending it out to one of these crazy places.
My last big discovery, though, was something I should have stumbled across long ago: a comic series called Strangers in Paradise. I've heard about the series for a long time....l mean it has the unusual distinction of winning both Eisner and Glad awards....but I've never picked it up. I bought the first trade collection on a whim and loved it. The story centers on two women, Francine and Katchoo. It's a mixture of stories told in present time and flashbacks, and the core of it is whether the two women are close friends or something more. It's very dramatic but also surprisingly character driven. Some of the strongest characters and most vivid writing I've seen in comics in a long time.
I'll have some reviews and other nonsense up soon. Right now my head is still full, so I think I'll empty it out by watching some mindless cartoons. So until next time...
Excelsior.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Finals Time
There won't be much to see here for the next week or so. I'm fully immeshed in studying for finals and finishing up my final papers. Thursday I'm attending a workshop, so I may post about that. Or I may not. Regular posts should resume by May 2.
Can't wait until the term is over. I want to spend my couple weeks off from classes hiking and (finally) reading the newest Thomas Pynchon novel. I'm thinking about blogging that monster chapter-by-chapter. We'll see.
Excelsior.
Can't wait until the term is over. I want to spend my couple weeks off from classes hiking and (finally) reading the newest Thomas Pynchon novel. I'm thinking about blogging that monster chapter-by-chapter. We'll see.
Excelsior.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
What, Me Worry? (or it's Term Paper Time)
Photo just below is stack #1 and stack #2 of books I have to go through for my reader's advisory essay on graphic novel/comic book criticism. Stack #3 and Stack #4 are still in my car, and I have probably another 10 more on my bookshelf that I already own and have read over the past couple of years. The paper's due Monday April 16 at 6:50 pm. I'm also doing a presentation on collection development the same day.
It's actually not as bad as it might look. A lot of the books are encyclopedias, subject guides and bibliographies, so I don't have to actually read every page of those. About ten or so are books of criticism or cultural/historical studies of comics that I will need to read all of between now and Monday. So I've got a lot ahead of me, but it's not too bad. Especially since they are books like Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine and The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History. If I had known this is what I'd be doing in library school, I would have signed up years ago.
Excelsior.
It's actually not as bad as it might look. A lot of the books are encyclopedias, subject guides and bibliographies, so I don't have to actually read every page of those. About ten or so are books of criticism or cultural/historical studies of comics that I will need to read all of between now and Monday. So I've got a lot ahead of me, but it's not too bad. Especially since they are books like Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine and The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History. If I had known this is what I'd be doing in library school, I would have signed up years ago.
Excelsior.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Paper Time
I handed in the proposal for my final paper for my reference services class tonight. We're supposed to develop a bibliographic essay, which is basically an annotated bibliography with a two page intro, around a particular theme or subject area.
I proposed one for graphic novels for use in academic libraries, particularly libraries that support art programs. A number of college art programs are starting to offer comics as a class, and some like the Savannah College of Art and Design even offer it as a track for a thesis project. Oh sure, they try to hide it by calling it things like Sequential Art, but it's all comics. You can't fool me.
There's a lot of literature out there on how to use comics with teens in public libraries, but not much of anything yet for academic libraries. Seems like a tiny piece of territory that's just slightly unexplored, which is something I'm usually good at. Plus it will allow me to justify reading things like the new Jack of Tales trade.
I'll look at works of criticism, history books, how-to books, library-specific books, and kick ass comics. There aren't many professors that would let you get away with a graduate level paper on comic books, but I think this one just might. With his Asian-European heritage, slight southern twang, and constant references to Jane Austen, he's pretty cartoony himself. I have a backup plan just in case, but I hope I don't have to use it. I'm actually looking forward to this (unlike my group presentation on library catalogs...bleh).
Excelsior
I proposed one for graphic novels for use in academic libraries, particularly libraries that support art programs. A number of college art programs are starting to offer comics as a class, and some like the Savannah College of Art and Design even offer it as a track for a thesis project. Oh sure, they try to hide it by calling it things like Sequential Art, but it's all comics. You can't fool me.
There's a lot of literature out there on how to use comics with teens in public libraries, but not much of anything yet for academic libraries. Seems like a tiny piece of territory that's just slightly unexplored, which is something I'm usually good at. Plus it will allow me to justify reading things like the new Jack of Tales trade.
I'll look at works of criticism, history books, how-to books, library-specific books, and kick ass comics. There aren't many professors that would let you get away with a graduate level paper on comic books, but I think this one just might. With his Asian-European heritage, slight southern twang, and constant references to Jane Austen, he's pretty cartoony himself. I have a backup plan just in case, but I hope I don't have to use it. I'm actually looking forward to this (unlike my group presentation on library catalogs...bleh).
Excelsior
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