oh hayyyyy there blog

Yes, I'm still alive.  Grad School is no joke kids :P For the past two weeks I have considered my life a success if assignments are handed in on time (how well they are done, that remains to be seen lol), I eat SOMETHING (this may mean cereal and pumpkin pie for dinner scarfed down at 11pm when I finally got home from a 12 hour day on campus, and if I shower.  Hair not exactly did, practically no makeup, and a lot of comfy Lululemon.   This past week we had a cataloguing assignment due (that class can jump off a cliff, seriously.  at least the teacher can) and a reference question.  For the cataloguing assignment we had to choose three non-fiction adult books published after 2008, with one being part of a series, one with the title page in two languages, and one whatever we wanted as long as it was adult non-fiction.  It took my friend and I three freaking hours to find suitable books with all those ridiculous stipulations.  The reference question considered of us being "asked" by an imaginary patron for studies on injury rates in MMA, as he had a John Hopkins study and wondered if there were more.  I have to say, reference work kind of makes me feel like a Super Sleuth hehe.  Then I saw posters for the new Sherlock Holmes movie and I thought, AHA! I am exactly like Sherlock Holmes.  For real peeps, librarians are hard core.  We don't know everything but we can find anything...which is basically the same thing :D

I am officially on reading week, although we have another reference assignment due Monday (whyyyy prof why?!).  Thursday I'm heading up to Toronto to meet my nephew for the first time, and I am so freaking excited! I bought him the cutest little outfit and I want to go to Chapters to pick up The Very Hungry Caterpillar as well.  Like I'm ever going to give him a present that doesn't include at least one book lol.

I have sweet in sour beef stew in the crock pot that I'll have over rice, and it smells so good! Yay for real food!

bisous,

LFB

First week recap, Bridesmaids, and a s'more cupcake

I have officially completed my first week of Graduate School!  I think I've already gone a bit funny in the head, sadly.  I'm reading an article called, "Information as Thing" and it's a bit of a torturous process.  It literally took me several hours to read four pages.  Maybe the fact that I was super tired and having a hard time focusing might have had something to do with it.  And then the author started talking about antelopes. Yes, antelopes.  What do antelopes have to do with library science, you may ask? I am still wondering.  The author used an analogy that if an antelope is in the wild, it is not a document, but if it is in a zoo being studied and researched, and we are learning from it, then it is a document.  He then proceeded to compare antelopes and ships.  I swear a PhD is just a license to write paragraph-long sentences that make up 20 pages of complete nonsense.  I find this especially frustrating as we are taught the importance of not being wordy and not padding our essays in undergrad.  But get to the doctoral level apparently, and it's the more words the better! Harumph.  Clearly I have already reached the status of cranky bitter grad student.  But you couldn't tell, right?  As further evidence:

On Wednesday a few friends and I went to see the movie Bridesmaids at the on-campus theatre.  Yep, there's a movie theatre on campus.  And two Tim Horton's in the SAME building.  Big schools do have their advantages I suppose.  Coming from a school with a total population of 2000 this is freaking amazing.   Anyways being the first week, and seeing as how the undergrads didn't start classes until Thursday, there were many people in the student centre for various frosh-related activities.  As we were walking out a frosh leader (I presume) said something along the lines of, "aww they're just coming out of a movie" in the most annoying "isn't that quaint? how sad and pathetic that they are not 18 and drunk out of their minds" voice.  For real.  As Jen and I said, we are (not) surprisingly ok with not being 18 and drunk out of minds during the first week of classes.  I'm too freaking old for that :P

One awesome thing about grad school: I don't feel (so) old anymore! In fact, I dare say I may be one of the younger ones! Or at least, many people are the same age as me.  Quite a few already have Master's degrees in fields such as history and literature, and there are several older people who are going back to school after being in the workforce for some time.  Oh and yesterday we got to play with yarn.  That totally makes up for the snowstorm of assignments that will be my life until December.  Right?

I also got cupcakes at this fancy cupcake place in the market on the way home as a treat for my roommate and I.  She just finished her first week of co-op.  I got a s'mores one for me and a milk & cookies one for her.  Pictures to follow, but we decided to wait until she gets home from dinner with a friend to eat them together  : )

Holy lack of updating batman!

I have been severely neglecting my blog, I'll admit.  A lack of comments gave me little desire to write.  I mean, if I didn't want comments I'd write in a private paper diary.  People have public blogs for a reason yo.  Anyways, my blog is going to be getting a re-do soon, and a new name-la future bibliothécaire.  It'll have more of a theme as well.  The name is french for "the future librarian"  Clever, right? See, that B.A. in French came in handy after all! I'll be talking about all things Grad School (specifically library school, obviously) related: classes, social life, being poor, living on a Grad Student budget (and we all thought we were poor as undergrads! HA.), my adventures in the kitchen, etc...

So what's been going on with me? I was offered and I accepted a well-paying job at a museum in my area, but then I was offered a position at a library right down the street from where my boyfriend, the wonderful S, lives.  It is most definitely not well-paying, but hello, I want to be a children's librarian and I will be working as the Summer Book Club Coordinator.  Needless to say it won't exactly pay the bills, which is a little scary considering I'm going back to school in the Fall and already know I did not get a place in Grad Student housing due to the lottery system in place at my school.  This means I will have to find a place off campus, and will probably need to have first and last months rent.  I have never lived off campus before so it's a little daunting.  That being said, the experience I'll get this summer will be invaluable.  My first day is tomorrow.  I'm a little nervous as my expertise is in heritage (I have mainly worked at museums for the past three summers) and I have never run a summer book club for kids before, but I think it will be fun! They said I could do a French story hour too if I wanted, seeing as I speak French and all.

Wish me luck!

Harumph

I am so over this studying thing! SO looking forward to no final exams in Grad School! There will be lots of other work, but finals bite!  I've taken up getting a daily triple triple from Tim Horton's (that's 3 milk 3 sugar...I know, gross!) to get me through these endless days of studying.  I really wish I was in Florida now! Come on May 1st!

Ever since I saw this Banana Republic top on a fellow blogger's blog a few days ago I can't stop checking it out on the BR site!

Super Awesome wrap shirt 

Grr it won't let me post the pic for some reason

Anyways, because I feel like posting a pic here is me, my bff Suz, and her little sister Megan after the B.U. Singers choir show a couple of weeks ago:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ACCEPTED to the Master in Library and Information Science program at UWO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Harumph

It snowed yesterday in good 'ol Quebec.  I cried a little (ok, a lot) on the inside.  I bought a bouquet of daffodils on Wednesday from the Canadian Cancer Society's table in the school library.  It's a fundraiser they do.  So I have daffodils on my kitchen table and snow outside my window.  Something is seriously wrong with this picture!

I'm doing my volunteering at the local library today.  It's the activity time with kids.  Read stories, play games, do crafts, all that good stuff.

When I walked into class on Wednesday my profesor asked me if I had gotten any news recently.  I go ummmm no.  He then asks if I had gotten any GOOD news lately? I'm really confused by this point.  He said not to ask any questions.  The whole time he has this cat ate the canary smile on his face haha.  The first thing that came to mind is Grad School...he is one of my references and I thought maybe he somehow knew I had gotten in? But I just got the email from my school last week saying they'd received all my documents and I was expecting to hear back 4ish weeks from then...it had only been a week and a half at this point.  Then I thought it might be the bursary I applied for (which I found out today I got-800$!!), but it would seem weird for him to know about that.  It's been driving me crazy!!  I'm dying here people!

Flirting with Grad School

Recently I've been doing spending a lot of time researching Masters programs.  I'm not 100% sure about teacher's college, and I've found some really cool programs for library studies.  I would want to be a children's librarian, so I could hopefully find a library job in a school.  I'll be applying to SFU to do teacher's college prereqs, and two Grad schools (one in Ireland and one in Ontario) for sure.  I'm looking at two others in Alberta and Quebec.  I would really really like to get out of Quebec though haha.  Lots of exciting options for next year!