first day of school
Let’s talk about this from the beginning:
As I mentioned in a previous post (probably months ago at this point), I didn’t get into any of the doctorate programs I applied to. After receiving the first rejection from the University of Rochester, I pretty much knew that it was over (side note: It is worth mentioning that not two days after getting the rejection letter, I received a call from UR asking if I would like to donate money to the school. Classy, I know.). Week after week, I received another rejection letter, with nothing more than a “You’re a great candidate, but we’re not taking you.” It was pretty depressing.
So I began casting around for ideas of what to do with myself. Obviously, I had experience as an office drone (first at the law office, now at a real estate marketing office) but nothing else practical. I could make a mean sandwich, I could usually interpret what customers meant when they came up to me at Barnes and Noble and said, “Uh, yeah. I’m looking for a book? It has a blue cover?” but that didn’t really lend itself to a profession.
Then I looked into the University of Buffalo (UB) and their Library Science program (MLIS). It sounded pretty awesome: a program that would prepare me to be a librarian in pretty much any field I could think of, with two years of schooling. I’m cool with that. It would get me thinking again, and it had a definite end-game and a goal. So I applied, and after many panicked emails to professors for recommendations, things getting lost in the mail, and having to physically drive to Fredonia to get my transcripts sent, I was accepted to UB. It was pretty exciting and somewhat scary: I was making a pretty big decision on relatively short notice (I pretty much did everything in about a two week period).
But since the middle of April to now, I have done research and I have looked at message board threads where professionals talk about what the field looks like now and how things are going, and I feel pretty good about it. The funding situations are kind of bleak, but what academic/humanities-based area isn’t having that kind of problem? I found out that my first MA is going to be worth something in this field, as well as the importance of joining organizations. As soon as I have the cash, there is going to be an application and fees in the mail to the New York Librarian Association (NYLA) and to the American Librarian Association (ALA).
I just started classes this past week. In all of the time I spent at UR, working my ass off in those classes, I didn’t get as much out of it as I have this week in two sessions. This is where I am supposed to be. The value placed on information, the questions being asked about documents, documentation, preservation, worth, and aesthetics has made my head spin in an extremely pleasant way. I have been thinking about all of it for the past week, when I received my first syllabus and started researching library organizations (something for my first assignment). I am so thoroughly in love with this field already and everything I find out about it makes me more and more interested: the expanse of information, the collection of everything and anything… it makes my hoarder heart flutter. I’m sure that there will be a number of things to come along and break this impression I have, but I’m enjoying the puppy-love phase of my relationship to it as long as possible.
I think part of the reason I’m enjoying it so much is that it took my by surprise. I went into this with a very utilitarian mind-set: I would get the degree, then I would go out and get a job. But there is a lot more to it than that. Without an interest, a true interest in the field, there is no way someone could just get along. There is a lot of crap to be dealt with and there are a lot of bumps in the road that mostly are out of the hands of the librarians and are on the desks of fiscal managers and bureaucrats. But there are an immense number of amazing things that go with it.
I am taking the basic intro to Library Science class as well as the information and technology class. The tech class is pretty concrete and basic as far as information dealing with digital info, websites and databases, but the teacher is funny and is really knowledgeable. The other intro class so far is amazing: the discussions we’ve had and the things we’ve read have been amazing. There is so much significance being placed on truly defining what we, as librarians, will be doing and where our values lie. The five things laid out by Raganathan really sum it up:
1. Books are for use.
2. Every book its reader.
3. Every reader his book.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.
As always, I am going to say the weary phrase “I am going to try and keep up with this more often.” But now, with classes, I just think I might. I’ll have more to talk about.
And to cap it off, here’s an awesome video our teacher showed us in the intro class:
HOBY and why
Tomorrow, I am going to be training high school juniors to be staff members of the Central New York conference of the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership program. I am in for year number two as the head of staff and I am far more excited about it than I was last year. Since it was the first time I was going to be doing what I did, I was nervous more so than anything else.
As an explanation: HOBY is a program with the tag line: We teach you how to think, not what to think. It is a way for students to explore leadership and outside-of-the-box thinking that a high school environment isn’t completely friendly to (socially as well as academically, given the desire for standardize testing). We encourage these tenth graders to look at the world as a place that they can influence in any number of ways, through service to the community. We place a huge emphasis on volunteerism, for working towards the greater good by helping wherever we can.
For my own part, I have been returning to the conference since 2002, when I was an ambassador (the scared-pantsless tenth grader attending). To say that it was one of the most influential moments in my life would be an understatement. Graduating from high school, earning my master’s degree and moving out had less of a profound effect on my life than HOBY did. It fundamentally changed me. I am who I am because of what I learned there and the people that I met. My confidence and my desire to help others, while present before, were coaxed into the open after one weekend that showed me that there are other people like me, who care about more than the present.
Over the last nine years, I have attended 11 conferences (eight in Central New York and three in Maine) and have gone to Houston for training. I have been a junior facilitator, senior facilitator, a general go-for staff, the head photographer and now the head of staff. I have donated hours and days of my time for this program, all for the love of it. All for the chance to give another scared-pantsless tenth grader to have the same experience that I did. And I hope there have been a few over the years.
I am going to be asking these returning staff a few questions tomorrow, and I figured, why not answer them myself? I already answered why I’m coming back, so here are the answers to the other questions:
What was your favorite moment last year? I have quite a few. There are the revelation moments, like short meetings, people going to bed without argument, having serious conversations with a man with a clapping chicken on his head and conference being over without any major difficulties. My greatest fear was that something awful was going to happen that I wouldn’t be able to handle and that it would be my fault… but that shoe never dropped. But for a singular moment: sitting in the lodge at Camp Hollis, laughing with Erica, John, Danielle, Kristen, Ashley and Sara.
What are you hoping to gain this year? This sounds like a selfish question, but it is valid. I hope that the staff benefits just as much from the conference as the ambassadors they’re trying to help. For me, I hope to gain new ideas from the staff on how to better run the conference and to make as many people happy as possible. I want everyone to have the best possible environment to expand their leadership abilities and to feel like they can take the instruction we give them and run with it. I want to find better ways for people to air complaints and to make it so that small annoyances don’t become reasons for disagreements or discontent. I want to learn something from our ambassadors, something I didn’t know before or a different perspective on an issue or idea.
What do you expect this year? I am half expecting that all the things I thought were going to go wrong last year are going to go wrong this year. But, thinking from a more positive perspective, I am expecting to have an enthusiastic staff that will overcome any of the doubts and fears that the ambassadors have. Having spoken to quite a few people on staff already, and knowing how excited the returning juniors are, I think that even the most resistant ambassadors will come over to the cheerin
g, ridiculous and happy HOBY spirit.
HOBY has become such a fixture in my life that I cannot really remember a time without it. The people I have met there are as much my family as they are my friends. I don’t think I’ve ever fell in love with such a wonderful group of people so quickly in my life. They have been so influential to me, I wish I could truly do something to thank them for all they have given me over the years.
I'm the one in the orange hat and glasses
The Resistance by Muse, a review
The Resistance, Muse
This past Tuesday, Muse released their newest album, The Resistance. After their phenomenal outing with Black Holes and Revelations, I my expectations were very high. With songs like Supermassive Black Hole, Knights of Cydonia and Map of the Problematique, how could they top that?
Quote me: they topped it.
The Resistance is a pseudo-concept album using protest, love and space. Yes, you read that correctly: space. The album uses synths, screaming guitars and falsetto that hasn’t been heard in such a rockin’ atmosphere since Freddy Mercury was belting out Bohemian Rhapsody. In their liner notes, Muse leading man Matt Belamy references Tchaikovsky, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and “1980s cheesy stadium rock” (The Resistance). In the same note on the song Guiding Light, “There is a guitar solo with a deliberate screaming harmonic. These types of harmonics have been banned from rock music for at least 18 years, possibly longer” (The Resistance).
The album has eight singles, where the themes of public uprising against the government through violence, using love and sexuality as a form of resistance (a la 1984‘s Julia and Winston). It’s heavy in its concepts and vacillates smoothly between catchy tunes and beautiful classical-inspired piano solos. The song “The United States of Eurasia” features a portion of Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat Major, while while “I Belong to You (Mon Coeur S’Ouvre A Ta Voix)” features parts of Mon Coeur S’Ouvre A Ta Voix from the opera Samson and Delilah.
The final three songs are a three part symphony titled Exogenesis. It tells the story of humanity, having destroyed earth and in need of a new place to live, sending astronauts into space to fine somewhere else. The astronauts realize, in the third and final part, that unless humanity changes their ways this cycle will repeat itself. It is, quite simply, beautiful. The conclusion has such a hopeful sadness… It makes your heart clench.
There are few albums in my adult life that I have did the proverbial rewind and listen again thing with. The Crane Wife by The Decemberists and Amaterasu by David Fridlund are the only two before The Resistance. There is a great deal to it and I felt like I missed things the first few listens. There were things I became focused on each time: the eastern flavor to The United States of Eurasia, the love story of Resistance and Undisclosed Desires and the political tones of Unnatural Selection. You can at the same time casually listen to this album and pick apart every word.
Overall, I would highly recommend this album. I’m still listening to it, in full, over and over.
so tell me a little about yourself…
Let me preface this by saying: I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I have a masters degree in English, dreams that didn’t come true and almost no direction whatsoever. So when I say I’m interviewing for jobs, it means that I’m taking a shot at some stability as well as health insurance and weekends. If that means I’m selling out to the man, I honestly don’t give a shit.
I had an interview today through a hiring service which helps people to get jobs in offices as secretaries or paralegals. Gigs that are (for the most part) 9-5, Monday through Friday and paid vacation time. Kind of nice, right? I thought so.
It was wonderful to have someone interviewing me that didn’t expect me to have an absolute passion for what I would be doing. I didn’t have to have a life-long dream to be a secretary, nor did I have to act like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life; I could be honest and say that I’m not sure about my life, that this would be exactly what it will be, just a job. That doesn’t mean I won’t work hard, it just means that it’s not my passion. She understood this and it was wonderful.
After my experience interviewing for a secretary position at the URMC, where the woman wanted me to basically gush about how much I wanted to be a secretary, this was a refreshing new perspective. What I do doesn’t have to be who I am. I can be a hard worker, a fast learner, but I don’t have to be Kristen the Secretary or Kristen the Paralegal. I like that. It’s a new sort of freedom, as I’ve been Kristen the Student for so long. And I think that the interviewer got that from me and I appreciate that.
Granted, I keep thinking I have homework to do. I have this fear that I’m going to wake up some morning, thinking I have a paper due when I’m not even in school anymore. And people say tobacco addiction is rough; I think this college hangover will be worse.
