What comes around, goes around...

If you've already read this post, you know that I played hooky from my dreadful internship and throwing caution to the wind as to how to explain my truancy.

Am I always this irresponsible? Hell no.

Have I ever done anything like this before? Probably, I don't know.

Was I worried about the ramifications of my disappearing act? Oddly, no.

As you might recall, I opted for a frenzied house cleaning spree over an afternoon feebly attempting to catalog items under the tutelage of a chastising, belittling *martyr (Patricia).

I did not call in. I did not inform them in advance that I wouldn't be coming that day. I just never showed.

How did I later explain my absence?

Easy. I decided to turn the tables on Patricia and give her a taste of her own medicine. I decided that, when asked about my absence, I would simply tell Patricia that I told her a week ago that I'd be gone that day.

Cruel? yes.

Unusual? Not so much.

Keep in mind that we're dealing with a woman who frequently berated me for not doing things she hadn't even taught me yet, then insisting that she had told me before. (A quick check-in with the other intern, Steven, revealed that he'd been taught things that I had not). Perhaps it was immature to pull a stunt like that, but I did what I needed to do, for my own sanity. Nobody was harmed by my irresponsible behavior and the additional day away from the library was good for my soul.


*A good friend of mine suggested the making of T-shirts, replicating the font from the '70s era "I'm a Pepper!" shirts, that say "I'm a Martyr!" We could then give one to Patricia and one to my mother.

I'm not ignoring you. I just hate you.

The other morning I woke up, after hitting the snooze on my alarm eleventy gazillion times, and proceeded to go about my morning routine to prepare for a day at the Internship from Hell (which, by the way, has gotten much worse than what has been described here). I'm drinking my delicious French Roast coffee, reading the newspaper and checking my email. Same as always.

When I was taking my breakfast dishes to the sink, I noticed that the dishwasher was full of clean dishes, so I emptied it and then put the few dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. I then proceeded to wipe down the counter, which morphed into pulling out the spray cleanser, moving each and every counter-top appliance, then vigorously cleaning the entire counter.

A thorough cleansing of the counter led to the microwave getting the star treatment makeover and each and every cupboard being wiped down until I noticed that the floor was in need of sweeping and mopping. After cleaning the kitchen floor to a state beyond pristine, I noticed the clock. A fair amount of time had passed since I'd finished my breakfast and I should've walked into the library over an hour ago.

Oh crap.

I stood there and fretted for a bit and then sampled various excuses in my head to explain my tardiness/absence. I was sick/had an appointment/had a family emergency/got into a car accident/etc. I feared using any of these excuses lest I jinx myself and have the inevitable karma-kickback occur. As I was pondering my escape, I noticed that the living room was in need of dusting.

My newly-dust-free living room also needed to be vacuumed and not just in a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am way, but really thoroughly and by moving every single item of furniture to clear away the underneath debris. I then proceeded to painstakingly vacuum every speck of dust from each and every stair leading to the upstairs portion of our townhouse. I windexed every glass surface, making every mirror sparkle and rendering nary a smudge on the tv, coffee table, china cabinet or on any of our hanging art. I wiped the dust off of the tops of the molding throughout the house and wiped down each and every faceplate of each and every lightswitch.

What the hell was happening here?

I looked at the clock and, noticed that it was in the middle of the afternoon. I felt a panic attack coming on and tried to consider my options. What should I say to them? I knew that if I emailed them, it would look cowardly and as if I were lying. I could call but, at this late in the afternoon, what on earth would I say? And would they really believe me? I hadn't planned on bailing for the day...I. Just. Didn't. Go.

I called my lovely wife, who suggested I call - and the sooner, the better. I told her I didn't think I could do it and that I had to leave for work soon and I still didn't know how I was going to handle the situation.

Despite feeling anxious and freaked out about my options and the ramifications of no-showing at my dreaded internship, I felt oddly calm and content at the same time. I couldn't really identify if what I'd experienced earlier in the day had been a full-blown anxiety attack or some sort of manic episode or something different altogether. What I did know was that I just couldn't leave the house and kept feeling compelled to clean (and to do so with a Martha Stewart-like standard). It was as if I was not able to leave the house at my own free will and a magnetic force was keeping me rooted.

I went to work later that afternoon feeling great and wishing I could blow off the remaining week of the internship. I'd figure out later how I would weasle out of my unexplained absence.

The Inept Intern

My introduction to the professional world of information organization began with watching Patricia pull up an unfamiliar computer screen from who-knows-where and proceed to rapidly click in various parts of a template, changing some things, adding others and then calling it good.

"See," she said, " that's all you need to do."

On my second day, it was revealed that I was conducting searches with the incorrect criteria and, since my method would often return the same results as the desired criteria, it didn't occur to me that I might be doing it incorrectly. Well, until it was pointed out to me:

"What are you doing? Why are you searching that way?"

Um, because I'm a total idiot and wasn't paying attention when you whipped through an instruction session that I wasn't able to follow, but thought that I had. That's what I wanted to say. Instead, I sat there somewhat paralyzed willing the ground to open up and swallow me whole and then wake up in my bed to discover that it was only a bad dream.

Nevermind that I'd never used this particular software and that I'd had no experience at all doing any hands-on cataloging. I started asking questions at the rate of one per millisecond. I wanted to know exactly what she was doing, how she was doing it and why.

I've taken on an internship in a local-ish suburban/rural public library where it seems many of the library employees don't really care so much about reading, aren't very friendly and know pretty much diddly-squat about pop culture. On top of that, none of them seemed to have any clue as to who Nancy Pearl was. This, it seemed, was a mere job to them. Employment and nothing more. What kind of Librarian Twilight Zone have I stumbled into?

I continued asking a lot of questions. I wanted to know what I was doing and not just learn the factory imprint of the task, but to capture a true understanding of the philosophy behind the required actions. This seemed to perturb Patricia. I suspect that when she signed on to obtain an intern, she saw this as an opportunity to keep costs down and productivity up and not so much as an opportunity to nurture a curious mind and mentor a student in her chosen field.

My suspicions of her irritation with my continued queries were confirmed when, several times throughout the day, others would say hello to her and ask her how she is doing and she would reply by bemoaning her lack of productivity due to "all of the interruptions" and then I would feel terrible about being the cause of 99.9% of those interruptions.

So I stopped interrupting her.

I would then save all of my items with questions in a pile so that I only had to interrupt her once. This didn't go over so well, either. She simply couldn't understand why on earth I would let it all pile up like that. Frankly, it made perfect sense to me, particularly since the same question would often apply to multiple items and so one answer to one question would knock out about four or five items. She reprimanded me with her words, telling me to ask her when I had a question. Of course, then she would don her headphones and privately listen to music while she worked.

I then seemed to be on the right track for a couple of weeks. Well, seemed anyway.

I came in one day to a stern Patricia face and when the lips moved, the words "We need to talk" emerged, piercing me and causing me to contemplate turning on my heels and walking out to my car, never to return again. What would happen if I did that? Would I still have enough credits to graduate in June? What about the $$$ I'd plunked down for this opportunity?

Turns out, there were some steps I was overlooking in my cataloging. Why was I overlooking these steps, you may ask? Because I had not been taught them - that is why.

Problem is, Patricia was convinced that she HAD taught me these things. How can this be, you ask?

Well, there is another intern, also in my grad program, who is there to learn the same things as I. Turns out Patricia (perhaps not realizing that there are two of us) sometimes teaches him things on days that I'm not there and is under the impression that she has taught me these things. So I am then held accountable for things I haven't even been taught.

Very frustrating, particularly when I try to tell Patricia that I haven't been shown how to do something yet and she is convinced that I have and tells me that she must not have made herself clear. Ayayayayay.

And if that weren't bad enough, I watched in horror as Patricia tormented a high-schooler (let's call him 'Tim') who is volunteering at the library and was under Patricia's charge. Tim was working on putting some labels on some new cd cases and was listening to his iPod and working quietly. He gets up to use the restroom and, after about 7 minutes, Patricia begins to wonder aloud what is keeping him. She exclaims, "I seem to have a student who is more interested in hiding in the bathroom than in working."

A pit began to form in my stomach and my heart ached for Tim, who was in for some sort of degradation that will likely be the cause of a lifetime of gastrointestinal issues. I began an attempt to telekinetically lure Tim from the bathroom to save him from what looked to be complete and utter humiliation.

But I have no telekinesis, I only pretend that I do.

A good three more minutes passed and Patricia was at the bathroom door, knocking loudly and saying, "Are you going to come out soon?"

It was then that I made a mental note to myself to only visit the restroom when Patricia was on her lunch break.

Librarian Funland, Part 1 --- Two, two, two posts in one!!

I just attended my first librarian conference evah. I gotta say, I arrived clueless and am still pretty much the same. Oh sure, I found a shortcut from our hotel to the conference sight on the (*actual) last day of the conference, but I still am completely baffled as to how I fit into the larger picture of this thing.

Are they unwelcoming to newbies? To students? To both?

Don’t get me wrong – I had a great time, but that was mostly due to the social aspect of it all. I could have done that without the Ay-El-Ay. It’s my understanding that they held a newbie meeting on the second day, first thing in the morning, but it’s also my understanding that it was lame and that the speaker neglected to show. Thankfully, I chose not to get up at the crack of dawn to attend this unhelpful meeting – I would have wanted my precious sleep back.

I’m left wondering, are the tips of the trade offered in this newbie gathering something that could be offered online or sent by snail mail or email to conference participants who are first time attendees? Or what about having seasoned attendees volunteer a couple of hours of their time to meet with a newbie and give them a hands-on introduction to navigating the conference and determining which meetings and discussions are right for them? Now THAT’S a user-centered approach!

I have to say, I was enormously intimidated by the whole thing. Here I was, among approximately 11, 999 other librarians (and presumably some other librarians-to-be) and every single other person seemed to know what to do, where to go – they all had a PURPOSE! Now, granted, they were all librarians and we’re a pretty resourceful bunch. And, in all fairness, I was perfectly fine navigating the city of Seattle and sniffing out places to imbibe and to dine. I never got us lost, but some of my restaurant choices were beyond filled to capacity or they were rockin’ the $$$$$$. I blame *Giada, in part.

So what went wrong, you ask? Oh, plenty. First of all, the conference website (which was posted who-knows-when and I seemed to find sometime in October-ish) showed the dates of the conference as Jan. 19-24, which led me to believe that the dates of the conference were Jan. 19-24. Silly me. The *actual (see above) days of the conference seemed to be Jan. 19-21 (or 22 at 1pm, if you wanna get technical). When peeps were asking me how long I was staying and I said, “until the 24^th,” they would shoot me weird looks and ask why. What gives? some would ask. I’m still asking myself that same question.

Now perhaps part of the problem lies with my film festival background. When a film festival says that it runs from xx-xxx, it means exactly that – and all of the days are important, with the last two being almost as important as the first (Closing night!! Awards ceremony!!). How the hell did I know that the last 2 ½ days of this conference were mostly board of directors meetings and such? After all, they didn’t post the discussion schedule on the website, so I had no clue! Not that I’m complaining about extra days in Seattle…I just think the librarianfolk should know how to better organize their information! So there I was doomed before I even arrived, the laughing stock of all of my librarian friends, and wondering what else would reveal itself to me as a byproduct of my newbie cluelessness (and you call yourself a budding librarian, Bad Kitty?).

Librarian Funland, Part 2

The first discussion I got up the nerve to attend turned out okay (well, aside from the tights mishap, but that is another story altogether). It was packed – the Fire Marshall would have had a tizz – it was about digital reference and I learned a thing or two.

The next discussion I went to (determining after the first that they were not so scary, after all) was scary. It was a discussion about reading suggestions for a particular population of YA (that’s Young Adult in librarianese) readers, but that is beside the point. I walked into a conference room that was sparsely populated, with a conference table at the front and nametags at each seat. The table held five shiny pitchers of cold water for the thirsty committee members assigned to the seats. The remaining 30-40 chairs, in two groups of four in each row, functioned as 'the audience.' It appeared that we would be observing their committee meeting in progress!

Wow.

Well, sometimes, things are, indeed, as they seem and this was one of those times. Yet, upon watching their committee meeting, I felt horribly out of place. What was the role of the audience? Were we permitted to ask questions? Could we have some of their precious water (for which they appeared to have at least 30 or so paper cups)? I decided to stay and watch (discussion sessions, in general, appeared to be 'come and go as you please') in hopes of learning more about the conference protocol.

And learn I did. What did I learn, you ask? Well, I learned that I know nothing about attending professional conferences for my chosen profession. As the participants (at the table, not in the audience) were talking, suddenly one of the committee members would ding a bell! The speaker would apologize and continue…why were they dinged?? Was their time up? Did they say something they shouldn’t have and, if so, what? If I were given the opportunity to speak, would I also be dinged? Were there other faux pas for which one might be dinged?

This was getting scary. I did not want to get dinged for my missteps, but how would I learn what the missteps entailed? I then realized that I was the only one who’d brought coffee along with me into the meeting…would I be dinged for that? I just really wanted to know the rules and I found myself tuning out the valuable information and worrying about the rules.

And then the bespecled man at the end of the conference table was reading aloud the comments he’d received from his teen patrons regarding the book they were discussing. He went to great lengths to point out the spelling and grammatical errors of said teen and acted befuddled at the teen’s use of slang. Please. Does this guy realize what an ass he is?

Now, I was REALLY perplexed by the rules.

When it was time to take a break, halfway through the discussion, I found that I was ogling the water pitchers. I was dying of thirst and really wanted some water. Yet, it appeared to be for the purpose of committee consumption only. Perhaps if I asked very nicely and humbly if I could just have one cup...and would they ding me if such a request were out of line? I was just shy of salivating when I considered approaching the conference table. I'd assessed each committee member's potential response for my request to partake in their icy cold beverage, based solely on the personality I'd assigned them in my head as they were conducting their discussion. The woman I'd determined to be the gentlest and the friendliest was at the back of the room, already engaged in conversation. My second choice was a 30-something man rockin' a cute fauxhawk and who had suggested recommending Fuck This Book to teens. He was nowhere in sight and I contemplated standing near his seat, eagerly awaiting his return. He was the committee member I'd decided that I'd most like to have a beer with.

Finally, I could stand it no longer and, as the break was nearly up, I approached the less-desirable left side of the table, where the asshat man sat, and I addressed the uptight middle-school librarian on his right. "Pardon me," I said to solicit her attention, "I hope this doesn't seem rude, but I notice that you have several water pitchers up here and more than enough cups for your committee...would it be possible for me to have some of your water?"

I was nervous as I waited for her to respond. She was looking at me as if I were a little bit crazy. Yikes, I suddenly worried, perhaps it was somewhere written or taught (in the newbie meeting with the no-show speaker) that participants may not approach committee members and ask to have things that are on their meeting table.

After what seemed an eternity, she shot me a "yeah, sure, go ahead," and resumed her conversation with a quiet woman who hadn't spoken during the entire meeting. She seemed more perturbed that I'd interrupted her than that I'd wanted some water.

I can't wait to attend my next conference!

ode to Doris (for my dear grandmother, who left the earth on this day)

When people in the family have told me that I’m “just like Grandma,” I know that what they’re often referring to are the... shall we say?... more challenging aspects of Grandma’s personality. That’s fine by me, as I know that I also take after my Grandmother in other, more flattering ways.

Grandma was always very proud of my academic achievements – yet she contributed to some of my successes there as well. When I was in high school and had to read George Orwell’s “1984” for my Honors English class and was struggling with writing a corresponding essay, my grandmother (an avid reader) read the book overnight so that she could assist me with writing my paper the following day.

Speaking of reading, I have many fond memories of my grandmother reading to me when I was very young. So often, Grandma would take me to the library and let me select as many books as I could carry. I was always in awe with the tall stack of hardbound books that she would check out. In fact, Grandma claimed that she helped me obtain my first library card when I could barely write my own name. I so loved going to the library with my grandma and this experience has had a profound impact on my use of the public library throughout my life, on my continuing education, and on my choice of career. I am nearly halfway finished with my Master’s degree in Library Science so that I can later become a librarian (which is what I always secretly wanted my grandmother to become).