A few weeks off!

I turned in my last paper of the semester on Sunday evening, and classes don't start back up again for the Spring 2010 semester until January 6, so I've got a little break from school now.

Grades still aren't in for my Management of Info. Orgs. class which is driving me crazy! We turned everything in for that class before the end of November! As a result, 60% of my grade is still unknown for that class, and grades aren't due until 12/16, so it's possible I won't know until then!

On the plus side, grades are in for my Info. Needs of Young Adults class, so I can at least relax about that one.

Yesterday, I ordered some of my textbooks for next semester. For some reason, I always get excited about that, and yes, I know that probably makes me a big dork, but I don't care. Even when it's stressful (which it is quite frequently), I am still so happy I decided to go back to school for library science. I love all of the new things I am learning, and I can't wait until I can put it all to use one day!

The Fall 2009 semester is coming to a close

Tuesday night was my last Management of Information Organizations class meeting. Monday night I turned in my last assignment for that class, so I am officially 100% done with that class other than waiting for grades.

Tonight is my last class meeting for my Information Needs of Young Adults class, and my last paper for that class is due Sunday night at midnight. I should probably try to get a little bit of work done on it right now before class starts. I really don't want to spend the entire weekend working on it.

Both classes have been a lot of work and challenging in their own ways, but I think they've also both been really good classes. I'll be glad to have a few weeks off of school work. Maybe I can finally get that extra paper I need for my school media portfolio done (that was for a class I took last fall but didn't know it had a school media-specific project at the time).

Just a few more...

On Sunday night, my team turned in our Strategic Plan, and last night we presented it to the class. Now I just need to finish my individual reflection journal about the experience of creating the Strategic Plan, and I will be done with that class; it's due this coming Monday.

Monday night I turned in my poetry anthology project for my YA class. It's due this Friday, but due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I needed to turn it in before we go out of town. One more small assignment due next week and one more paper due the week after that in that class, and then I'll be totally done for the semester!

I can't believe this semester is almost over. It's been so much work! I feel like I say that every semester, but I feel like it's especially true this semester. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though, and I can't wait.

Good book and end of semester progress

On the school front, I turned in my YA lit paper last night. Next week two more big projects are due. On Monday, my team will turn in our Strategic Plan, and on Tuesday, we'll present it to the class. I have my YA poetry anthology due on Friday (because Thursday is Thanksgiving), which basically means I need to have it done and turned in on Wednesday, before we leave for New Jersey. I'll need to work on homework there too though, since I have my Reflection Journal about the Strategic Plan experience due Monday, 11/30, and a Read and React in my other class due that Thursday, and then my final paper of the semester due 12/6.

This weekend I will be busy working on my YA poetry anthology, helping to finalize my team's Strategic Plan, and working on my piece for our group presentation.

A few weeks ago, between work and school, I managed to fit in reading a book that I really loved. It's a beautiful YA retelling of Cinderella called Ash and is written by Malinda Lo. I wasn't ready to return it to the library when I was done. I love fairy tale retellings in general, but Cinderella is usually not one of my favorites (the exception being Ella Enchanted, which I love). Some people may be turned off by this book because Ash does not end up with the prince. Instead, she falls in love with another woman. Here's a video of Malinda Lo talking about it:

Booktalk

One of the major assignments for my Info. Needs of Young Adults class is to perform a booktalk for a group (no less than 6) of young adults. On Monday morning, I performed my booktalk assignment for two 7th grade Honors English classes at Rachel Carson Middle School. I think it went OK, but the kids looked kind of bored. I'm hoping that had more to do with the fact that it was 8 am on a Monday morning than with how boring I actually was.

A booktalk is essentially an advertisement for a book. It's supposed to get people interested in reading it, and there are many different ways you can do this. You can focus on a character, a scene, the plot, or the setting. You can do it in first-person as if you are a character from the book if you want. Whatever it takes to get potential readers interested.

Because the English classes will have an assignment coming up for which they will have to select a novel in verse to read, I chose a novel in verse to do for my booktalk. I wasn't totally happy with how my booktalk came out, but I ran out of time to revise it, so here's what I came up with:

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham

Missing an arm is like wearing a coat,
a really big, hot, ugly coat
that I can’t take off.
Ever.
It’s all that people see (Bingham, 2007, p. 116).

Jane Arrowood named her right arm Chuck. Chuck isn’t her real arm though. She lost her real arm in a shark attack. Chuck is her prosthetic arm, and she doesn’t like Chuck very much. Chuck is itchy, makes her look like Captain Hook, and can’t help her do the things she used to love.

Before the shark attack, Jane was an artist. She was the best artist at her high school, and now, she can’t even draw a circle. She used to love to cook too, but now she can’t even take out the trash without making a huge mess. Under the circumstances, it's understandable that she might feel depressed, and sometimes she does, but most of the time she’s just angry. Angry at her brother for not going into the ocean with her. Angry at the people on the beach who just watched, and angry at the guy who videotaped it and sent that tape in to the news. She's even angry at well-meaning strangers who send letters and flowers and teddy bears.

Dear Jane:

My Uncle/Aunt/Brother-in-Law’s Friend Had Their Leg/Foot/Toe/Finger or Hand Amputated Because of Diabetes/Frostbite/Circulation Problems/War/Job Injury, But You’d Never Know It, Because They Are So Funny/Athletic/Good-Natured/Spiritual/Successful/At Ease with Themselves/Happy.

If I have to listen to one more story,
I will scream (Bingham, 2007, p. 142).

They’re just trying to help, but she doesn’t want to be inspired. She wants to know why this happened to her. Is this what her life will always be like -- searching the internet for tips on how to button her pants one-handed, having panic attacks at the thought of going out and being stared at or talked about? Will she find a way to make art again? Get dressed by herself again? What does she need to do to stop being Shark Girl and start being plain old Jane again?

Bingham, K. (2007). Shark girl. Cambridge: Candlewick Press.

Ethics and Booktalks

The focus in class last week in my Information Needs of Young Adults was on booktalks - how to do them and why they are important. A week from today, I should be performing my booktalk assignment. Let's hope I can pin down what book I want to booktalk and actually get it written before then :)

This week, the focus is on fantasy, and our related readng was Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I enjoyed it a lot, so it should be fun to discuss in class on Thursday.

In my Management of Info Orgs class, group work is starting to ramp up. This week we don't meet in class, but as a group we have to complete an ethics assignment. This will be a warm up to working in the same group for the rest of the semester to create a strategic plan.

Week 6 already?

Last week and this week in my Info Needs of Young Adults class we are discussing the developmental task of intimacy (friendships, romantic relationships, and sexuality). Last week we discussed the novel, Doing It by Melvin Burgess, and this week we are supposed to read a non-fiction book about sexuality/reproductive health/sexual identity geared towards young adults.

I picked up two books to choose from, Cycle Savvy: The Smart Teen's Guide to the Mysteries of Her Body by Toni Weschler and The Underground Guide to Teenage Sexuality by Michael J. Basso. I'll read both and see which one I like better to use for class. I got the Basso title from the recommended list our professor provided and the Weschler one because I read her adult book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility, out of curiosity several years ago and learned things about menstrual cycles that I wish I had known as a teenager. I'm curious to see how her book geared towards teen girls handles that information.

This week in Management of Info Organizations, we are discussing leadership. For class tomorrow night we are supposed to select three seminal leaders in the field of library science, preferably ones related somehow to the group we are assigned to (I'm in the school media center group). We'll discuss our choices in class. I chose:

• Melvil Dewey - Dewey Decimal System, helped found American Library Association, started first library school, and more
• Mildred L. Batchelder - children's librarian, a school librarian, the first school library specialist on the staff of the ALA, first executive director for ALSC, and promoted the sharing of quality international children's literature (hence the ALA award named after her for best work translated to English)
• Frances Henne - key figure for developing standards for school libraries/school media centers, especially making sure school media specialists work with teachers to create lessons, etc.; very involved in the American Association of School Libraries
  

Students in Emotional Distress and Communication Issues

This week I have two big assignments due (three if you count another case study).

LIS 5565 - Information Needs of Young Adults:
Description of my local laws and policies that deal with how a librarian or school media specialist should deal with students in distress. This covers topics such as suspected child abuse or neglect, suspected drug abuse by a student or young patron, and suspected suicidal tendencies in a student or patron.

So far, the most challenging part of this assignment has been to a) figure out the correct APA citation format for the local statutes and b) to find anything at all that applies to a non-school librarian. I'm hoping that just means that there aren't laws in VA that apply to librarians for these cases. I ended up having to ask the FSU law library how to do the citations because my APA 6th edition guide didn't have examples that seemed to apply to what I found.

I got a large chunk of this assignment done this weekend, but I need to finish two sections and clean it up. It's due on Thursday by 7 pm.

LIS 5408 - Management of Information Organizations:
Communication Barriers Memo. A faux memo (for their eyes only) to a member of senior management within our current work organization discussing communication challenges within the organization and potential solutions. We're supposed to describe examples from our actual jobs.

Another case study. We have to do 4 out of 8 case studies in the first part of the semester. I've done two so far. I'd like to get them all out of the way as soon as possible, so I'll probably try this week's case study. This week the case study is about how to deal with a colleague who continues to take credit for work they didn't do themselves. They sure don't make these case studies easy!

I haven't started on either of these yet, but I've thought about them. I need to finish up this week's reading first. Both are due on Sunday at 11:59 pm.

Busy, busy, busy

The third week of the semester is coming to an end, and I already feel like it's been months.

Last weekend I had my first two assignments of the semester due in my Management of Information Organizations class:

1) a personal statement discussing what life events led me to the MLIS program at FSU, whether I think that information organizations should be service oriented, and whether I see change in the future for information organizations
2) the first of four case studies that I'll need to complete throughout the first half of the semester - this one was about a newly hired head of an archive/library who was charged with bringing it up-to-date, but the employees were very resistant to change and not technically savvy.

This weekend I have another case study due, this time about whether or not it would be a good idea to use a volunteer in order to preserve many rare resources at a historic state park and make them available to the public, or if a different solution would be better.

The first assignment in my other class, Information Needs of Young Adults, is due this coming Thursday. I have to interview a teenager (thanks Patrick Henry!) and then write a paper about what I learned in the interview.

I've also gotten a head start on reading some of the assigned books for that class. I have finished Doing It by Melvin Burgess (contains quite a bit of crude language and content that is likely to be shocking for many parents), The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (I found it really depressing, but hopeful at the same time), and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (the 2009 Newbery Medal winner).

I thought all three were very good in different ways.

Fall 2009 - first week of class completed

The first week of the semester is complete, and I think both classes will be good (but hard and a lot of work). I've had one professor already and really like her, and my impression of the other professor is good as well.

Tuesday was my Management of Information Organizations class and last night was my Information Needs of Young Adults class. In that class we broke into small groups to discuss what our goals for the class were as well as what our favorite book we had as a young adult and why. It was fun, and almost every person's "favorite" book was one I love too (Anne of Green Gables, Pride and Prejudice, A Wrinkle in Time, etc.).

Getting Ready for Fall 2009

Grades are in for the summer semester, and my 4.0 streak continues! Woohoo! I know that this coming semester is going to be a challenge though, so I'm not sure if that 4.0 will survive this coming semester.

I'll be taking the last of FSU's four "core" classes - LIS 5408 - Management of Information Organization:

This course is designed to develop a conceptual framework for integrating fundamental management concepts, principles, theories, and practices into an effective personal management process that relates to information organizations of the 21st century.

From what I've heard, this course is a lot of work including a huge group project.

I'll also be taking LIS 5565 - Information Needs of Young Adults:

Study of media for young adults in relation to their characteristics, needs, interests and abilities. Evaluation and use of printed and audiovisual materials.

I'm really excited about this class! If it's anything like my Information Needs of Children class, there will be lots of great books to read and projects that are interesting. I just ordered the books for this class, and we'll be readings some books that I've been meaning to read for awhile; I guess now I have a good excuse to finally read them!

My textbooks are ordered, and I'm ready for the semester to start. I just wish that the break between semesters was a week or two longer to give me a little bit more relaxation before getting back to the hard (but interesting) school work I know will be coming this semester.