1) Decide on a title for your class using a random amalgamation of these words: information, human, knowledge, database, metadata, seminar, user(s), design, administration, interaction, critical, studies, scholarly, communication, academic, information science, crucial

2) Create a course description by using more of the above words. Create long, buzzword-ridden terms for simple concepts, and then further confuse by referring to them only in unexplained acronyms. Example:
Anomalous State of Knowledge (ASK)

3) Create a personal website and a page on either Blackboard, Sakai, or Moodle classroom management systems. Find out which management system other professors are using this semester and avoid it. Include copies of syllabus and assignments in both places as well as in a printed hand out on the first day. Each of these syllabi/assignment descriptions/schedules should be subtly different, especially in terms of: due dates, page lengths, room numbers, required reading.

4) Introduce each class with a PowerPoint presentation. Take at least the first fifteen minutes to fiddle with the computer/projector. Fill your presentation with confusing and unlabeled graphs and diagrams that supposedly explain key concepts from the readings. Stress the importance of understanding these diagrams but never fully explain them.

5) Tell one rambling story from your job experience as a librarian. Make sure it is completely outdated, romanticized in your head, or at least totally fabricated. End it with dire warnings about the future of the profession and how everyone sitting in class will NEVER find a job EVER, particularly not one they like.

6) Break the class up into random groups to discuss the reading for the next hour. Attempt to group students so that they are with those they have the least in common with (e.g. one music librarian, one elementary school librarian, one digital archivist and one confused business school grad student).

7) Wander around amongst the groups and offer them “Just something to think about” using as many buzzwords as possible

8.) Bring everyone back together to decide upon the point of the reading

9) The point will be: “It really depends on the community you’re serving”.

10) Ramble for precisely five minutes after class is supposed to be over so that everyone JUST misses the bus.

I could TOTALLY do this for a living if this whole librarian gig doesn’t happen. As my professors are trying stridently as a group to assure me it won’t.

I spend all of my time in a building designed by M.C. Escher hearing people who haven’t worked in a library in 10+ years prattle on about “What IS information” and “the philosophical meaning of the public library” and how we decide what’s GOOD for our patrons, as if the very fact of BEING a professor in library science weren’t elitist enough. Sometimes other people talk and it is interesting. Most of the time other people talk and they are either A) trying to impress the professor and therefore incomprehensible, B) telling meandering and irrelevant stories about their personal lives, or C) both. When I am not there, I am at home reading the same thing but in written form, and pretending I agree for grades. Sometimes there are also practical assignments, which tend to take three weeks and twenty-five group meetings.

2. I have a job

I get paid to part-timedly do a full time job. It’s like being a public school teacher, but with even more complainy parents and way less vacation.

3. I AM IN GRAD SCHOOL

I don’t think this can be stressed enough

4. The Winterpocalypse is coming

The Weather Channel’s headline this morning was “Winter Misery”. I have decided to just prepare for a hurricane while wearing three sweaters.

5. You can’t believe everything you read

Interesting story: the runner up for the title of my blog was “The Daily Narwhal”. The joke would be that it would neither be daily, nor a narwhal. Hilarious!

Now I am going to read 100 pages of something about how “people negotiate their information needs”, buy batteries, and go to sleep for the first time in like two days.

1. Getting off an entirely too crowded bus without smacking anyone in the face with my bag Some of the undergrads still need to learn how to do this
2. Looking like an incredibly serious studier in the SILS library when I am really just reading trashy teen girl novels This week’s is about a slutty California girl and a prim English girl who switch places! Recipe for amazing? Or just trite Prince and the Pauper knock off?
3. American Born Chinese
4. Finding information about causes of the American Revolution (still in progress)
5. Wheedling Steven into doing ALL of the cooking
6. And the laundry
7. Being cold
8. Bribing children into doing what I want
9. Writing poorly plotted novels way fast.
10. Negotiating an apartment full of appliances/fixtures that all ALMOST work exactly right
11. Making my parents feel guilty about how I’m Gonna Make It On My Own Christmas is going to be awesome
12. Ignoring my blog for long stretches of time Luckily I don’t think anyone’s noticed. Or maybe sadly.
13. Every program in Microsoft Office Except PowerPoint but we’re starting that today! It’s funny how the waiver form for this course wanted you to know all these programming languages, but the actual course is just an intense semester-long Microsoft Office tutorial.
14. Being resigned Some battles aren’t worth fighting. Like the battle to get my collection development prof to give us any grades ever.
15. Not slipping and falling down the stairs every time it rains You may laugh, but they are MAD dangerous. Three people have already plummeted down them.