Category: Grad School

The First Paper

My left arm hurts like hell, the result of a tetanus shot I had to have today in order to continue with school. Seems UNCG shredded my last set of immunization records ten years after I graduated (they keep them forever now, for all the good that does me) so I had to reach back into my childhood (and my mom’s files) to piece together what I could. I would’ve needed the tetanus booster anyway, but it’s still annoying.

That said, I’m in a better frame of mind than I was three days ago. I was just a little overwhelmed that I had so much going on all of a sudden. I knew it was temporary, but that didn’t help much. When much of your income is derived working for TV stations, September is a rather hectic time to be starting anything labor-intensive. And underneath it all, I suspect I was really freaked out at the looming due date of my first paper as a graduate student.

As is the case with so many other scary processes, I really just needed to dive in and get started on the damned thing, which I finally did today once most of my paid workload had calmed down a bit. I found a good chunk of supporting research (damn, there’s a lot of information available online when you have access to a major university library), made up my outline, and finally realized late this afternoon that I would probably get through this paper with no problem and might even do a passably good job on it.

The topic, for the masochists among you, is the effect of commercial search engine technologies on the value of the information acquired through them, and related implications for information professionals. Do I know how to have a fun weekend or what?

Apologies

I know I’ve said this before, but my apologies to everyone I’ve completely ignored for the past ten days or so. You can’t imagine how overextended I’ve been between the fact that this is the busiest time of year for pretty much all my web clients and the fact that my first two weeks back in school proved a bit more hectic than I’d envisioned. Throw in one major family gathering, one part-time job, and several assorted minor crises, and you have me, as of today.

It’ll be better in about two weeks.

If you’re starved for content, though, you can watch me being mentioned on the local morning news.

Back to School

Random snapshots from my first week as a graduate student:

  • What could be more annoying than slogging your way through a dense, 20-page treatise that atempts to determine the difference between “knowledge” and “information”? Maybe its conclusion that, in the end, it doesn’t matter anyway and that the terms will be used interchangeably throughout the entire text? Aaargh…
  • An urban college campus makes for a nice “feel” but also for lousy parking.
  • It’s nice having access to a university library again, particularly with a good chunk of it being available from home as well. Right now I’m amused by being able to download a century’s worth of articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post for free, but my current obsession is subject to change without notice.
  • I hate group projects.

Nothing Much to Say

Reflections on my first week back in school (among other things) are yet to come, but it’s been sort of an all-around crazy week, and the weekend isn’t looking much calmer, so it may be a while.

But just so you’ll know I’m still alive, here’s a random shot of downtown Winston-Salem that has nothing much to do with anything I’ve said here.

Art Prints and Textbooks

Check out my dad, having an 82nd birthday dance with my mom, less than two months after his hip replacement surgery.

Before meeting up with my parents, I stopped by campus to buy my textbooks. I’m not sure what shocked me more: the price of the books or the fact that everyone on the entire campus looks about thirteen years old.

It’s very odd making my third return to UNCG. Everything is so different, but small, random things are exactly the same as they were during my first two enrollments, like the tables in the student union where they sell the very same Doors and Bob Dylan posters “art prints” they’ve been selling at the beginning of each semester since about 1968, as far as I can tell.

Am I nervous about entering a classroom for the first time in sixteen years? You betcha I am.

The Wizard of ID

I just keep coming back like a bad penny hairstyle:

1982: I was a fresh-faced recent high school graduate. OK, my face wasn’t really all that fresh, and the photo was actually taken while I was still in high school…

1983: This is the only one that was issued to me as a continuing student. It just happened that 1983 was the year UNCG decided to redesign its ID cards.

1989: I returned to finish what I’d started in 1982. I succeeded this time.

2007: In which I am a graduate student…

Randomly Friday

Random Friday stuff:

  • This is pretty telling on several levels: NBC’s Thursday night lineup was beaten by a telenovela on Univision, a Spanish-language network that doesn’t even have over the air affiliates in several large US markets.
  • Had breakfast in the now smoke-free Lighthouse Grill this morning. It was really nice, but we still sat in the (former) non-smoking section, because that’s where the windows are.
  • I’m now officially registered for classes in the fall. Yer Humble Host has begun the transition from part-time, amateur information geek to full-time, professional information junkie with a Master’s degree. I just hope I don’t wind up leading story time for the kiddies at some suburban branch library.

Randomly Wednesday

After taking my first GRE practice test, I now realize that I am quite verbal, and need some quantitative review. Who didn’t see that coming?

Actually, I’m pretty math-minded as a general rule, but some of the more, ummm, obtuse concepts of geometry really tripped me up, mainly because I didn”t give a flying fuck about them in the ninth grade, and I pretty much still don’t. I find very few real life applications in my daily life. I’m surprisingly OK with much of the algebra, although I have a tendency to make stupid mistakes when I’m not paying enough attention.

Other and unrelated Wednesday stuff:

  • Good news always makes me a little giddy.
  • We spent the weekend in Charlotte, and the main thing I kept thinking was how much I used to love parts of my alternate hometown back when it still used to be a city. But more on that subject later.
  • Rhetorical question: why do so many fundamentalist Christians believe that “religious freedom” means that they have the right to practice their own religion however they see fit, preferably with government sanction, but that no one else has any rights at all and should pretty much just “get over it”? I guess that myth of perpetual persecution helps keep the faith ever stronger, huh?
  • Things I particularly hate today: pollen, Discover, and PDF documents made from scans of the document rather than source material.

Coming Home, Sort Of

Despite what Thomas Wolfe said, I guess you can go home again. Sort of. It’s just that everything looks much different.

I spent tonight in the same building where I spent much of 1982 through 1984, in the student union at UNCG. I was attending an information session for prospective graduate students, since I’m planning to get my MLIS. (And yes, that’s an announcement of sorts.) But there’s no resemblance whatsoever between the Elliott Center of my misspent youth and today’s version.

To start with, the building is about twice as big. It now has a food court and a Barnes & Noble, not to mention an entirely new auditorium. If that weren’t enough, though, they’ve also gutted the old part of the building. Nothing I remember is there anymore. No more radio station hallway where we used to play record frisbee with Survivor albums, no more Student Government office, no more lower level men’s room where I used to, ummm, never mind…

It’s disorienting as hell to be in a building where you’ve spent literally thousands of hours and not to be able to find your way around.