Staying Above Water

I was a swimmer in high school, I taught swim lessons for 8 years, and coached swim team for a year during grad school. The more your body is out of the water, the faster you'll swim. Think about it--you can move more efficiently through the air than through the water. That's why the freestyle stroke is most efficient. It allows your body to be above the water much more consistently and easily than any other stroke. Right now, I think I'm doing the breast stroke. Next semester? Freestyle.

Oh how the time flies

This phrase must be one of the most used phrases in America, well aside from maybe "when in Rome..." or "...you know what they say". But right now, I'm feeling the time fly. It's Sunday. I'm working feverishly to finish this paper (15 points...oh no!), and I REALLY need to clean the house. Somehow I'm attempting to do both. Find relevant article. Clean the toilet. Write a sentence. Throw in the wash. Read an article. Write my blog!! Fold the wash. WRITE THE PAPER ALREADY!!!

And now I look at the clock. Could it really be nearly 7? It's gonna be a late one, ladies and gentlemen.

Sometimes Being Slow Pays Off

So I have finally figured out how to budget my time to manage my demanding job and demanding school work. The details of this are generally uninteresting so I will only detail enough to explain the flaw in my plan. I had decided that Mondays and Tuesdays are lecture days. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays are dedicated to reading (and posting to discussion boards if necessary). I'm a really slow reader. On Saturday I catch up on assignments for 2600, and Sunday I do whatever else I haven't done yet, which is typically a lot and includes reading announcements, exploring other parts of Blackboard that aren't required, and checking my email...in that order.

So last night at around 10:30 I finally got to reading through class announcements and my email, where I discovered two things: I missed sign-ups for the group projects, and I didn't see that we didn't have to post our Zotero demonstration until next week.

Ok so being slow definitely does not pay off all the time. I have no idea what group I will be put in for the group presentations in July, BUT I am done my Zotero demonstration (which by the way, is quite entertaining mostly because I was SOOOO nervous even though I practiced 4 times).

My advice to my readers... all two of you... don't be slow. But if you are, sometimes you'll win!

Zotero Demo

Check out my demonstration on how to download and use Zotero, a Firefox application:


http://www.screencast.com/users/jpilling42/folders/Jing/media/7d9a1cbe-d176-457b-9dee-cb34d3400a22

Penguins Stink

No, not the animal. Sorry Pittsburgh fans. I'm from Philly, and morally I was pulling for the Red Wings. Ugh. Please, no gloating.

I am 5 weeks into the semester. Thank goodness! I love the content and the readings, but the adjustment has definitely been rough. I just can't wait to start fresh for the fall semester, and hopefully I'll pull through with decent grades this semester. I have 3 more hours of relaxation. Tomorrow I will spend the entire day with a book in my face...

The Mondays

I have a case of the Mondays. Today I spent the entire day deleting emails from my inbox at work, as it had filled up, only to figure out--at 6 pm--that the problem wasn't my inbox or sent items or deleted items, but rather that my files weren't syncing, and therefore all that deleting did absolutely nothing. No offense to people who work in the IT industry. You have to deal with your fair share of people who have no idea what they're talkng about, but sometimes some of us actually know what they're talking about. For instance, I put three calls into our technology services center. The first was predictable, and probably correct. I just needed to delete a lot of emails. The second, after I had deleted over 500 large emails, was met with the response that my emails are a mess and I shouldn't have ever let them get that way (I can't delete emails because time after time a student comes to me with questions that I've already answered...keeping those conversations cuts down on my workload significantly). The third call went unanswered, after I was finally able to verify that it wasn't my "messy inbox" causing the problem.

What does this have to do with library sciences? Well, a lot actually. First, I've already become more confident in my computing skills, hence why I stuck to my guns, knowing that there was a problem beyond the obvious. Second, just as I will as a librarian, I handle a LOT of emails from my constituencies, and any way of streamlining is well worth it, even if that means saving every single email. Thirdly, well, I'm trying to archive my emails. What's wrong with that? Just like a book, article or newspaper, you never know when it might come in handy. Once it's gone, there is no salvaging it.

I Love to Read...but not that much.

I am an avid reader. I always have a book with me wherever I go. I read at the gym, on my lunch breaks, in the car, on the weekends, on vacation...

But I cannot read a 38 chapter book, 9 articles, 2 chapters of another book and other suggested readings all in one week. It's impossible! In fact, I believe that even if I quit my job and did nothing but read I'd have a hard time finishing all that reading in just 7 days.

That's a lot of reading!