Finals Time

April 20th, 2010 by pladd

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It’s finals week and I am writing a giant paper on children’s information seeking behavior. I’m also writing an 100 page screenplay with James Fox as part of Script Frenzy. I don’t know why NaNoWriMo always decides that the best months to interfere in my life are the same months that bring finals. Not that they’re forcing me to write anything but, like the bad ass time traveling super hero I’m writing about, I can never turn down a CHALLENGE. Since I don’t really have that much time to give you all the exciting details, I’ve decided to do this soap opera recap montage style:

Last Week on: Patricia’s Life
INT. MANNING HALL – SEMINAR ROOM – FRIDAY MORNING
The seminar class wanders one-by-one into the room, yawning because it’s so early. Since they’re the only class in the entire School of Information and Library Science that meets on Friday, the halls are eerily quiet and echo ominously.

PATRICIA
Why are you wearing shorts when it’s cold outside all of a sudden?

PROFESSOR
You’ve got to commit to shorts at some point in the year and never look back
(pause)
This is exactly how they dress at the Australian stock exchange. It’s business casual.

INT. PATRICIA’S APARTMENT – KITCHEN TABLE – FRIDAY
PATRICIA sits on the floor working on her research at the giant coffee table she uses as a regular kitchen table.

INT. PATRICIA’S APARTMENT – KITCHEN TABLE – SATURDAY
PATRICIA sits on the floor working on her research at the giant coffee table she uses as a regular kitchen table.

INT. PATRICIA’S APARTMENT – KITCHEN TABLE – SUNDAY
PATRICIA sits on the floor working on her research at the giant coffee table. She pauses briefly to write a hurried three more pages of Script Frenzy script. It involves space dinosaurs for some reason.

INT. PATRICIA’S APARTMENT – KITCHEN TABLE – MONDAY EVENING
PATRICIA gets up to start making meatloaf cupcakes for dinner when she hears something at the front door.

PATRICIA (v. o.)
Hmmm… it’s still light outside so that can’t be Steven yet. INTRUDER!!!

Patricia looks around for a weapon to defend herself. Suddenly, STEVEN walks into the room.

STEVEN
Hey girl hey!

PATRICIA
(sets down chair) Oh.

INT. MANNING HALL – CLASSROOM – TUESDAY MORNING
For some reason, UNC still does paper course evaluations that are on a scantron. PATRICIA is annoyed that she doesn’t have a pencil and is forced to write her detailed explanation of how this class could be greatly improved by not requiring it with a tiny golf pencil that won’t even fit in her hand.

EXT. BUS STOP – TUESDAY AFTERNOON
PATRICIA is reading another book about children’s information seeking while waiting for the bus. Its cover has a strange picture of a child in a library looking AS CONFUSED AS IT IS POSSIBLE TO BE.

SKETCHY GUY
So whatchya reading?

PATRICIA
This stupid book about child information seeking behavior.

SKETCHY GUY
(confused and slightly repulsed–the appropriate reaction)
Why?

PATRICIA
I guess because I’m a librarian.

SKETCHY GUY
Huh. You’re kinda hot for a librarian.

PATRICIA
Ummm… What?

SKETCHY GUY
Like… you’re not old.

PATRICIA
And I’m not shushing you?

SKETCHY GUY
Yeah!

PATRICIA sighs.

Stay tuned next week for:
INT. SPACESHIP – THE VASTNESS OF SPACE

PATRICIA
Your plan to steal all of the world’s gemeralds to power your evil space station is foolproof, Dr. Fiend.

Dr. Fiend cackles evilly and strokes his pet mongoose.

PATRICIA
But there’s ONE thing you DIDN’T COUNT ON!

Close up on PATRICIA’s narrowed eyes:

PATRICIA
I’M NO FOOL!

EXT. A BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN MEADOW – DAY

THAT GUY WHO LOOKED LIKE SNAPE WHO WORKED AT BLOCKBUSTER
You see, I had to leave my job at blockbuster, even though I loved answering your inane questions about which movies would be best for a “Burned as a Witch” drinking game.

PATRICIA
But… but WHY?

SNAPE GUY
DUMBLEDORE NEEDS ME

EXT. ATOP THE WILSON LIBRARY DOME – NIGHT

PATRICIA
Come on, Steven, just come down from here with me and no one will get hurt

STEVEN
NO! I’M A GARGOYLE!!!!!!

—

It’s gonna be great.

Posted in transcripts |

This Just In: Library Science Professor Has Never Been To a Library?

April 2nd, 2010 by pladd

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Reports remain inconclusive at this time, but we do know this:

At approximately 11:47 AM, Eastern Standard Time, on March 30th, 2010, a library science professor who shall remain unnamed was presenting data to a class on computer use in America.

Professor: So since this percentage of people use computers at the library, we can infer they don’t have them at home.
Someone in class: No, you can’t. What if they just want to use the library’s databases or programs?
Someone else: They could just need to go to the library to print.
Professor: I don’t know about that. Printing is so expensive! For toner and things. I’m not sure how libraries deal with that.
The Class: (stares)
Me: Chapel Hill Public charges ten cents a page.
Someone else: Yeah…. so do all of them.

She seemed genuinely surprised that you could print things at a library. I’m not saying this means she’s never been in a library ever, but maybe not since 1985. I’ll continue to gather data on this…

Posted in transcripts |

Possible Job Ideas: My Reading Class Decides

January 20th, 2010 by pladd

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Me: Okay, this is just a pretest, so don’t freak out if you don’t know all the answers. If you got them all right, you would have nothing left to learn and I wouldn’t have a job.
Boy 1: Don’t worry, Miss Trish, I will get every other one wrong just for you.
Me: Thanks, way to take one for the team. Of course, I will be sharing your scores with your parents.
Boy 1: Never mind, I’m going to get them all right. You can be a janitor or something.
Me: What if I’m terrible at mopping? You don’t know my cleaning skill set.
Boy 1: Okay, a window washer.
Me: Those are robots now!
Boy 1: A WINDOW WASHING ROBOT!

Then they made plans for my future career as a window washing robot (one girl wanted me to be a Roomba instead) and it took so long to get them back on task that they rushed the test and got a bunch wrong. Ah, job security.

Posted in transcripts |

Possible Job Ideas

January 17th, 2010 by pladd

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Every time we have a guest speaker in one of our classes, I become more and more convinced that my Master’s degree will make me less qualified for gainful employment. It doesn’t matter what they’re supposed to be talking about; it always devolves into “You poor suckers, you’ll never get a job, and certainly not around here where there are more librarians than environmentally-conscious hipsters (and there are A LOT of environmentally-conscious hipsters). And ESPECIALLY not if you want to work in youth services or at a public library. You are screwed with a capital S.” The situation is pretty dire. Especially now that I find out I have to compete with degree-holding pets too. Can you imagine going for an interview against Oreo Collins the tuxedo cat? You’d be all “I wrote my Master’s paper on–” and he’d interrupt with “I AM ADORABLE! PET ME! PET ME AND THEN HIRE ME!” and start to play with your shoelaces.

Anyway, since I am nothing if not organized, I’ve decided to plan ahead and think of other possible awesome job ideas. To help me, I’ve assigned all my fifth graders to write five paragraph essays about “What would the best job ever be and why?” But so far all I’ve gotten were doctor and astrophysicist. I know, lame. When I was in fifth grade I would have totally written about either water slide tester or Disney princess.

Although I’m not entirely without hope:

Boy: Can it be ANY job?
Me: Anything. Even water slide tester.
Boy: I don’t know if that’s a real job.
Me: I think it is. But even if it wasn’t, made up jobs are okay too.
Boy: Alright, I’m going to choose shark.
Me: What?
Boy: Shark.
Me: Ummm… can you think of three reasons to write paragraphs about?
Boy: OF COURSE! You get to eat people, you get to swim around, AND you get to BE A SHARK.
Me: I know this class doesn’t have grades, but you just earned an A+.

So yeah, so far it’s looking like shark is the best bet.

Posted in transcripts |

Writing Assignment: Create Your Own Planet

December 15th, 2009 by pladd

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Essay excerpts:

My planet is called ChocolateLand because it is entirely made of chocolate. If you go there, you’ll have to meet everybody, but watch out! They will probably try to lick you because this is how they greet each other. Their food is sugar.

The kids on my planet get taught by wizards. They learn magic, fighting, growing plants, and hypnotism.

If you do something bad, you get sent back to Earth. Or you go to the mines, where they mine for water, which is very rare.

On my planet it rains dolphins.

Posted in transcripts |

How to Motivate Children and Other Stories

December 8th, 2009 by pladd

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Me: Okay, so… two of you did your writing homework.
Children: (general murmurs of unapologetic excuses)
Me: Whatever. So for next week I want you to invent a planet and tell me about it. You could–
Boy 1: Ooh! Ooh! Oooooooh!
Me: Ummm… yes?
Boy 1: I have clay left over at home can I make a model of it?????
Me: Sure, I guess.
Girl 1: OOOH! I will stop and get clay on the way home!!!
Boy 2: CAN I DRESS UP LIKE AN ALIEN FROM MY PLANET??
Me: Okay?
Girl 1: I’ll dress up AS MY PLANET!!!!
Me: Whatever, as long as you also write.

Next week I will get confused parents escorting in aliens holding soccer balls covered in molding clay asking me why their homework was to dress like aliens and how that will help them pass the EOG. I just know it.

Girl 1: … and then I’ll have to sit with the adults at dinner and it will be SOOOOO boring.
Me: Yeah. Adults can be way boring.
Girl 1: I mean, YOU don’t count as an adult.
Me: Really?
Girl 1: Yeah, you have to be married first.
Me: Okay. I’ll remember that.
Girl 1: AND you have the mind of a kid!
Me: ….
Girl 1: It’s a good thing!!!
Me: Okay. Thanks.

Posted in transcripts |

The Mysterious J Route

December 4th, 2009 by pladd

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I live about a half hour walk from campus so I almost always take the bus. The only bus that goes by our apartment complex is the lovable J Route that, during certain times of the morning, becomes so crowded with students from the apartments around here that we are forced to stand awkwardly against each other and drive by most stops after mine. The first week it was fun to watch the people at these stops throw up their hands angrily as the bus sped by, but now they’re quietly resigned. You’d think that with us all being students, you’d get to know the same faces of the same people going to the same classes at the same time every week. This, strangely, is not so. I always seem to be waiting at the stop next to completely ridic people whom I then never see again. I always want to surreptitiously take their picture with my phone, but that would be kind of obvious. Instead, I have started keeping a list.

List of Ridiculous People I Have Seen On the Bus
1. Guy in trench coat and Dr. Seuss hat. Added weirdness: this was before it got cold out, so there was really no reason for long sleeves.
2. Mystical Gypsy Fortune Teller Lady. You know that stereotypical character the heroes in the movie/tv show always consult once randomly about their fate/birth mark/mysterious past? I sat next to her on the bus once.
3. Girl with large, oddly red layer cake. It was like blood red, and huge.
4. Small child that stared at me, making roaring noises for fifteen minutes. ROARRRRRR!
5. Mormons. Asking everyone who got on what questions they would like to ask God. I said, “Why are manatees such useless wastes of space?” They chose to ignore this, but my follow up question would have been, “If he’s so omnipotent, why couldn’t he make them to get out of the way of my speed boat?”
6. No Pants Girl. First day of legit chilly weather and she was wearing a sheer skirt and a thong. How do I know she was wearing a thong? Because her skirt had no lining so I could see it. Well, more like I could see that she wasn’t wearing anything else more substantive. She seemed confused.
7. Sleepologist girl. Today I overheard this conversation–actually, overheard is maybe a misleading word. I was standing five people away from these two and couldn’t HELP hearing because the one was pretty much shouting:
Girl 2: cuts everyone in line to stand in front of Girl 1′s face HEY!
Girl 1: makes some kind of sleepy grunt noise
Girl 2: HEY! What time did you go to bed last night?
Girl 1: I don’t know.
Girl 2: WHAT TIME?
Girl 1: I really don’t know.
Girl 2: I WILL NOT ASK YOU AGAIN!!!
Girl 1: I guess around 3.
Girl 2: THREE?!?!?! You NEED to SLEEP!
Girl 1: I did sleep.
Girl 2: ONLY FOUR HOURS IS NOT SLEEP.
Then they had a brief debate about exactly how many hours and minutes she’d slept. This seemed to be confused by the fact that they kept hearing the other say different times, and neither seemed to be able to subtract in base sixty
Girl 2: Well, whatever. THERE IS NO WAY THAT WAS REM SLEEP!
Girl 1: Rapid eye movement sleep.
Girl 2: NO, you need AT LEAST six hours a night. And NO sleeping in the library! And no excuses about coffee.
Girl 1: It was Mountain Dew or whatever.
Girl 2: NO EXCUSE! Watch TV for thirty minutes under the blanket, lie on your bed in the dark, close your eyes, and try to think calming thoughts.
The bus arrives. I sit near the front. They sit in the back. Despite other people on the bus, I still hear vague shouts of “SLEEP!” and “THIS IS NOT A REQUEST!” throughout the bus ride.

I can only assume Girl 2 was some kind of sleepologist in training and Girl 1 was her test subject who kept refusing to follow orders.

Posted in lists, transcripts |

Goodbye Rice email address

November 20th, 2009 by pladd

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Supposedly today is the day Rice finally deletes my old email address, although I have gotten three things from the TFW list serv today so this may be a lie. Still, in preparation for the impending severing of my last link with Rice University (besides my ongoing frenemy relationship with World’s Most Powerful Cyborg, William Marsh Rice [more on that later]), I went through and saved any old emails I thought would be pertinent to archive for posterity. Because I’m just that much of a librarian. Here are the best bits from the last year (I got bored after July 2008). I arranged them in such a way that, I think, they tell a kind of story about my time at Rice:

July 2008
“If I can’t fuel my car with them, what am I supposed to do with all these cans of creamed corn?”

September 2008
Dear James Fox,
The narrative force behind my dream last night was rescuing you from the Amish. I’m not sure why they wanted you in the first place, but it would explain your fear of modern things like shaving and haircuts. If you are actually being held hostage by the Amish, I will of course rush to your aid. Although I suppose I would hear about it by carrier pigeon or through the Amish Underground Railroad, not email. It will be just like my dream except Rob will not be there complaining the whole time and I may actually do something useful instead of running away from haunted trees. Apparently Amish country is full of them. In conclusion, sorry I didn’t rescue you from the Amish. I promise to try harder next time/in real life.
Patricia”

October 2008
“Rachel says you are only allowed to cheat on your boyfriend if you are in another country (where it doesn’t count), with a foreign exchange student (like being in another country), or with someone who has the same name as your boyfriend (comes with the good excuse: “Well… he said his name was Steven… I thought it was you”. Understandable mistake.)”

December 2008
“I am not saving you from zombies. You took the class; you fend for yourself. That’s the deal. Besides I’ll have other stuff to worry about, like looting and making sure I’m the second hottest person in my Zombie Fighting Team (one hot person always dies so that you know it’s serious). Just fyi. It’s good to be ready for any eventuality”
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in archivery, transcripts |

Too Old to Go On: I Think My Tutoring Group May be Slowly Killing Me

November 17th, 2009 by pladd

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Me: You aren’t reducing these fractions; do this page over.
Girl: OMG! Fine. Wait, do you even know what OMG means?
Me: OF COURSE I do. My generation invented OMG.
Other Girl: Yeah, she’s not THAT old, God. Everyone knows that OMG means Oh My God!!
Yet Another Girl: Yeah, both ways of TAKING THE LORD’S NAME IN VAIN!
Other Girls: (awkward silence)
Me: Yeah, so reduce these fractions.

And then today:

Me: Yeah, you will have to shuffle these flashcards yourself, I cut my thumb this weekend and now I can’t do a surprising amount of things. Like texting. It’s mad annoying.
Girl: You TEXT?!?!
Me: OF COURSE! Why is that so surprising?
Girl: It’s just… my parents don’t know how to text.
Me: I’m not the same age as your parents. I’m closer to YOU than to your parents.
Girl: Um, whatever, you can DRIVE.
Me: OMG.

And, to twist the knife:

Boy: Why is there a drawing of a birthday cake on that whiteboard?
Me: I don’t know, it was just there.
Boy: Is today your birthday?!? Are you thirty?!?
Me: WHAT? No! I’m only twenty-two!
Boy: Oh. Well, that’s only eight away from thirty.
Me: (sigh) Good mental subtraction.

If you’re interested, I’m up to about 26,000 words on my novel, about half of which is from the perspective of Middle School Patricia. Mr. Snape Darcy, her dream man, makes regular appearances. It’s pretty epic.

Posted in transcripts |

Kids Today: Ridiculous

November 6th, 2009 by pladd

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Monday, tutoring group
Boy: Ugh, I hate it when my phone vibrates, it feels like my leg is going to fall off.
Me: Who’s calling you?
Boy: My friend. He probably wants to come over and play Xbox.
Me: You have an Xbox? Wish I had an Xbox.
Boy: Psh, you can’t play Xbox, it’s for boys!
Girl: Nu-uh!
Me: Are you a video game chauvinist?
Boy: Name one Xbox game.
Me: I can’t have an Xbox, I’m too poor.

Tuesday, tutoring group
Girl: Where do you live?
Me: You’re just trying to distract me so I won’t make you do more decimal division.
Girl: No, I really want to know! I love decimal division! Decimal division is for rockers! (does rockers sign)
Me: ….. Awesome.
Girl: You’re kind of helping so you can be like my backup singer. Or second guitar.
Me: That’s like… my dream.

Wednesday, tutoring group
Girl: Do I really have to keep multiplying fractions? I know it already!
Me: Okay, do the Challenge page. That will prove to me that you’re a MASTER!
Girl: Whatever.
Me: (to the tune of the Pokemon theme song) I WANNA BE THE BEST AT MATH, like no one ever was. TO MULTIPLY FRACTIONS IS MY REAL TEST, TO REDUCE THEM IS MY CAUSE…
Girl: You are the most annoying tutor ever.
Me: You mean you’re not so inspired right now?
Girl: Can I be with Mr. Cameron next time?

Then I realized that my tutoring kids are probably too young to even know what Pokemon is, let alone know the theme song. To be fair, the only reason I do is because Thomas had the CD and made us listen to it in the car for a period of two months. Rob also told me that the kids he works with had no idea what a velociraptor was because they were too young to have ever seen Jurassic Park. And if they did see it, they would probably be all “This movie sucks. That dinosaur doesn’t even look real!” IN MY DAY we made do with moderately realistic computer animated dinosaurs and puppets! Kids today. Ridiculous.

Posted in transcripts |

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