Saturday, November 20, 2010

Reaction

Yesterday, my esteemed professor posted the "Answers to All Your Questions: I have purposely held back on answering many of the minutiae of your questions for the simple reason I wanted you to figure things out for yourselves."

In all honestly I wanted to kick this ass in the teeth after reading this. When people give me vague answers, it means they either don't know what they want, or the are clueless fucking dicks. Because I couldn't get an answers to most of my questions, I ended up doing considerably more work then anyone else did on class. I wanted to cover all of my options and write at least 3x the mount that most of class mates did. Thanks, for the extra stress and waste of my time. Anyway . . ..

I am done. At least I think I am, I won't know till I see my grades. Anyway, today's capstone presentations went off without much fan fair. I was 5th from the very end, so as people did their presentations I rewrote what my own. I started off with 8 cards (many two sided) filled with facts about me and my capstone. As of this morning it took me 9 minutes to give my presentation. I knew I needed to cut it down and after a few presentations it was easy to figure out what needed to be cut. Instead of talking about 4 artifacts and long introduction, I cut it down to 4 cards by nixing 2 artifacts and nixing nearly all of my intro. As the day went on, I rewrote the intro and expanded on my 2 two artifacts and broke it down so I wouldn't be reading much off cards. Keep it natural and hit the points. Decent presentation, but I could have shown off my website a little bit more. My fellow presenters passed me the following notes:

"Nice touch to all the film strip graphics."
"Thanks for traveling a long way to do your presentation! Sounds like your are going to have a successful career in library sciences".
"Congrats! to [sic] bad there isn't a voodoo doughnut. You deserve the bucket!"
"Like your tie" Bibliography was one of favorite projects too" Portfolio program great way ti integrate your information skills."
"Kudos on building your own (web) site! I was going to try but ran out of time. Great job! Thanks for sharing your capstone."
"Interesting background and how it led to this program. Thoughtful content on your artifacts."

"I really like your tie" <---- At least three feedback notes indicated this. My tie, originally from Montgomery Wards is fucking awesome.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Over Easy

I'm about 4 hours from boarding a plane and heading off to Denver for my very last class. I'll be giving presentation on most everything I've learned in Grad school, it's what they call Capstone. I generally think of it as a easy out for not doing thesis, that having been said, I think I've spent more time and effort on this stupid thing then I ever would have done on thesis. Plus it doesn't help that I've had probably the 3rd worst teacher/proff for this class to boot. OK, maybe worst isn't the right word here, maybe useless works far better? He never answers the questions I've had for him or when he does, it's usually useless information. THis class has been far more stress then it ever should have been, especially when you consider that it's a one unit class, that's had as much work to it as my current three unit classes for some dumb, and I do mean dumb reason. Anyway, I'll be in Denver starting tomorrow and coming back on Monday morning.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

So it's Been a While . . .

I haven't made a post in a while, probably since I really haven't had anything to add to the discussion or that my life hasn't been that interesting. Anyway, here's what's up.

I'm almost done with grad school! I have small paper and presentation to do in Denver, and then I'm done. DONE I tell you!? Now what? Well not a lot, I'm looking at jobs in the library field and not finding much. The close to home jobs are currently a no. No in the respect that either I'm not remotely qualified or I don't want to do it. I came close to applying for a job at Merylhurst, but then I remembered that I'd be working for the woman that I took cataloging with. She was possibly the second worst teacher I've had in the Emporia program. I ended up repeating the class and got an A. No way she'd hire me, and no way I'd work for her. I know, why waste our time applying.

In other news, instead of sitting around on Tuesday night and watching depressing election results, I took a trip to Bend Oregon and caught Billy Bragg play a pretty intimate show. Absolutely wonderful night and trip. Actually I hadn't really planned it this way, when I found out he was going to be in Oregon and playing locally I found out he was going to be playing at the local McMinnimin locals. I don't really enjoy this venue and at $72 plus fee's I was really turned off. Then I saw he was playing in Bend for $23 and no additional fee's. I've never been to Bend and it seemed perfect. It didn't hit me that it was going to be election night. The only down side I thought at the time was that Nevill Staple was suppose to open for Bragg here in Portland. I'd have liked catching Staple too. But after 3 hours of Bragg, his great song writing and cheeky humor, it was nearly perfect. Anyway, my only kick me moment was finding out that he was OK with photography and I left the M6 in the hotel room. I did have the cheap and old point and shoot that snuck in (even though I didn't have too). Photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/filmtwit/sets/72157625177144097/