MLIS graduation / Impending Provo existence

My graduation.

It happened.

On May 21st.

I totally forgot about it.

But that hardly matters though, since I wasn't planning to go anyway.

But YAY I'm done.

Now I am the master. (hehe...) Again. Master, to the power of two!

Now I'm a little bit bored...

What should I do now?

Options:

1) I could always take advantage of the full tuition waver I qualify for now that I'm a spouse of future BYU faculty. I never did get to take concrete and steel design. (And now you all know of my impending Provo existence. My future self will be living there. Starting end of August. With my current husband. I will have more to say on this. Later.)

2) Or maybe I'll get a real job?

a) as a librarian?

b) or civil engineer?

3) Or a fake job perhaps?

4) Finally join an orchestra?

5) Finally resume piano lessons?

6) Become an amoeba?

I'm thinking options 3-5 sound the best. Option 1 strikes terror into my very soul. I am a Ute, after all. However, I may succumb. Eventually.

last stretch

So I'm into my last semester of my library and information science degree. I cannot tell you how glad I am to Git-R-Done. I was so enthusiastic at the beginning (3 years ago), but that is long past. Now my enthusiasm is for finishing. My mother is astonished that I don't care about attending my graduation. But, I'm just done. Don't make me go to campus one more time. Don't make me wear that hat and wait for hours while the trillion other people graduating in my program receive their diploma. This will be my 3rd university degree, after all. I think I'll go the beach instead.

(yes I know I'm so conceited now aren't I)

By the way this is my new fav song. It has an awesome cello part!

fear of public speaking

I hate public speaking. I can guarantee that

1) I will never ever become a motivational speaker

2) I will never ever volunteer to speak in church

3) I will always make sure my husband speaks after me so he can use up extra time (speaking thrills him..I can't understand this, but I accept. Gratefully)

I also hate giving presentations. I can't make coherent sentences on the fly. I say things like, "hi welcome to i can has cheezburger presentation this is laura"

Or rather I just did. Good thing I was just practicing.

I have to practice presentations like 10 times minimum. Around time 4 or 5 I start to develop a pattern of phrases and transitions that sound semi-intelligent, so repeat them in the next practice runs. Once everything I am saying is a semi-intelligent repeat of something I said in a previous run, then I know I am safe. Until next time, that is.

we can all has cheezburger

I am currently taking a vocabulary design course. The final (group) project of the semester is to select a website that needs reorganization in some way. I suggested (thanks to being married to a vocal fan of the website) icanhascheezburger.com. Yes. I am creating a metadata schema for this website. It is by far one of the more entertaining subjects I have studied of late.

One of the metadata elements my group has created is for humor. The values are terms that answer the question, "why is this funny?"

This question is, to say the least, hard to answer.

One question we might ask is this: Why is Dave Barry funny? Some may argue that he is not funny. I am one of these people. Anyone can make fun of current events. (In fact, I have a draft post entitled "my Dave Barry post" that is in the works.) My husband, however, is extremely (extremely!) pro Barry so I answer the question for his sake.

Dave Barry makes fun of life. Life is hard. So we laugh. Laughter is just a mechanism for survival, however, so he is only funny technically (because it triggers laughter in a roundabout way).

Dave Barry, the "technically" funny guy. I am prepared for Barry lovers to now throw rotten fruit at me.

(post tone: sarcastic)

excessively important comparisons

A group of students at U of Washington made the following video, a parody of Lady Gaga's Poker Face. See below.

Librarians Do Gaga:

explanation

You may be aghast at the inexplicable increase of posting lately. Three days of consecutive posts compared to a lot of nothing.

Well.

Let me tell you the reason.

The reason is:

oBvioUS

Can you guess?

(the capitalized letters above happen to spell BUS. Did you notice? This has nothing to do with the reason though. Ha. I'm super tricky like that)

So.

the oBvIOuS reason is...

(that time the caps spell BIOS. If you don't know what BIOS is, then consider yourself lucky)

school is out and I am a free woman till fall!

Yayayaya

Now I can watch this video over and over with no time restraint:

It's official. DDC says so. Pluto is no longer a planet.

While playing around with the geographic heading information for the Dewey Decimal Classification System, I discovered something totally interesting:

So remember in 2006 when there was a heated discussion among scientists about whether Pluto should be a planet or not? Pluto lost and was demoted to "dwarf planet". Several events followed this resolution.

First, a new facebook group was created, called "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet". I joined, naturally.

Second, we all contemplated an existence without Pluto. What would become of those memorization aids for learning the planets? My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us NOTHING. That's what. No pizza for you.

And third, the Dewey Decimal Classification System was updated. The classification "Pluto and transplutonian planets" was altered to "Trans-Neptunian objects". Thus all those books about Pluto are now technically about "Trans-Neptunian objects." How depressing.

And that is it. There is no hope for Pluto now. DDC is the final word.

The end.

The Dewey Decimal System of Love

Today I listened to 3.5 hours of lecture on how to construct dewey decimal system classification numbers by subject analysis. It gets super complicated in the details. I'm taking a course on cataloging and classification this semester, and I'm really liking it.

That said, it reminded me of a book I came across several years ago called the Dewey Decimal System of Love. I've never read it, but thought the title was pretty memorable. The reviews about it on Amazon are pretty terrible, so you should probably avoid it:)

Then there is Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. It's written by that Sanderson guy (aka Brandon) who is finishing the Wheel of Time series (and has done a pretty good job with Book 12, from the recent reviews). But I haven't read Alcatraz OR book 12. Yet. DH read Alcatraz recently though. He liked it.

On Weird Al's Birthday, DH and I watched a bunch of clips from UHF on youtube. One of which is from a UHF television show called "Conan the Librarian." This clip is pretty awesome. After watching this clip I thought there MUST be someone with a blog called Conanthelibrarian.blogspot.com. And there is. But it has been woefully abandoned. Shame on them.

librarian avengers

So, this is really funny. See article below.

Why you should fall to your knees and worship a librarian

MLIS

Of late, I have begun to pursue a second career option. I began a second masters degree last fall in Library and Information Science through San Jose State U.

Getting an MLIS never would have occurred to me if it weren't for Reija. Reija of red hair, who just had to suffer through a gross anatomy course at Rochester med school. Here is a picture of me "wearing" Reija's hair:

I always wanted to have red hair.

Ahem. Well, what's the point of getting a degree in library science, you may ask? One year ago I would have told you that there was no point, that there couldn't possibly be anything to learn about being a librarian, especially at the masters level. But then, at the time, I thought that all librarians did was check in books. The facts are, many people these days who get an MLIS degree don't work in libraries because their skills are applicable to many other jobs and are highly in demand. Interesting article that helps illuminate the profession: here

So, back to Reija. I was trying to think of another career option and she told me the answer. Get an MLIS, she said. "It's hip." That, combined with my book obsession and worship of my library card was enough.

Lesson learned: If Reija tells you to do something, DO it.

PS: Reija, I am missing you.