My crazy week

Normally, I keep pretty busy in the course of my week, in addition to working full time, I play in an orchestra twice a week, have a Monday night commitment that I’m pretty locked into, and lately, band rehearsals on Tuesdays.

So far, I have been able to manage my time and get my homework done when it is due. Well, it seems as though all my activities have come to a head this week on Tuesday. I somehow managed to triple book myself, and every event is important. I have an orchestra rehearsal from 5-6:30pm, then a lecture/school session at 6:30pm-8pm, then band rehearsal from 7:15-whenever, then another group chat at 9pm. I was not including orchestra in the “triple booking” because I think I’m going to either ditch it or leave early.

What was I thinking??? I know you’re thinking, “well, ditch the band rehearsal.” I can’t. It is our run-through for an important show on Wednesday night.

It is so funny to me that despite my efforts to write everything down in my planner and in my Google Calendar (which is a pretty neat tool… you can tell google to alert your phone via sms when you have an event) I still managed to mess up on Tuesday.

There are so many organizational programs and tools out there, like Blackberry, Outlook, and web-based applications like Google Calendar, but they are only tools. I still have to apply my organizational skills to the tools, and because my organizational skills are sometimes flawed, I will always have to fight the tendency to forget to write things down and/or forget to check the calendar before I book something else. This does NOT come naturally to me.

Whether or not the technology does help me organize my life is dependent upon how often I utilize the tools and it doesn’t always make my life easier. Whether these tools make your life easier depends on how you use them.

So. Wish me luck on Tuesday…I probably won’t cancel anything. It’s gonna be a fun night.

Cello and cataloging

I took a cataloging class last semester. One of our assignments was to make up a fake book title, using our names as the author and catalog it according to both Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classifications. Because I play the cello, I made up a book title that had to do with playing the cello and classified it accordingly. Then I got curious, and wanted to see how many books my library had on the subject. Our library had three books about playing the cello, but what I discovered was that they had ALL been assigned the wrong call number. I left them alone at the time because I figured there were only three of them, and no one would really know that the books were classified incorrectly except for the people in tech services and possibly the librarians.

I was telling this cataloging story at lunch and our cataloger happened to be there. Well, she couldn’t leave it alone, so she went upstairs, found the books, realized that they WERE classified incorrectly, and changed all the call numbers.

The two things that amuse me about this incident is that catalogers do not like it when they know there are mistakes in a record and that the numbers the books had previously been assigned were only one decimal off from where they should have been classified. So they went right back in the same spot. But now they are probably happier, because they are now classified correctly.

All this to say that hey, I can effect change in my library!

Procrastination

I really procrastinated on a paper that was due last night. I was trying to think about why. The reason is not because I find the assignment difficult or challenging, but because I was not interested in writing on this particular topic. It was a too broad in my opinion, and I did not feel like I had enough resources to write this paper. This is ironic considering I am studying to be a librarian, and though I am familiar enough with how to find the information I need, this particular topic was SO broad that I had trouble pinpointing one or two key ideas on which to base my paper.

Reasons I procrastinate include:

1. Topic is too broad and I have trouble narrowing it down.
2. Not have enough information to make convincing arguments.
3. No interest in the subject I’m writing about.
4. Not understanding the contextual value of assignments– if an assignment seems like busywork, then I’ll just avoid doing it.

Some of these reasons do correspond to an article I read about why students procrastinate. I don’t know why I’m so unmotivated in this particular class, but it borders on resistance. I am not an “engaged student” in this class.

However, the paper is now finished, and I can move on. I will gladly receive the “C” I deserve and continue on to enjoy the weekend.

Presentations

We have been studying blogs and blogging in my social software in libraries class. It has been a thought-provoking topic for me.

The blog discussion led me to explore some ideas this morning about presenting. I have to create a presentation for a conference I’m attending in May. It will be rather boring, I’m afraid, so I have been looking into trying to spice up the content with a good graphical presentation. I have been looking into alternative methods of presenting other than using powerpoint. I found an interesting idea about using Dreamweaver instead.

By using dreamweaver, the presentation becomes less linear and more visual. My problem is that I need to start thinking about how to represent my content in a more visual context, and really think about how I’m going to make this presentation interesting.

We have been talking in class about how to make blogs more engaging and interesting, and I find that there is a high degree of cross-over between making content interesting in both blogs and presentations.

I might give Dreamweaver a chance this afternoon.