1/4 of a librarian!

That's me friends! In a heartwarming Christmas miracle, my cohort has survived first term.  There were many, many times we didn't think we would.  Among the skills we are learning to be Super Librarians we also became adept at coming up with countless metaphors for how much grad school crushes your soul.  Really, I never thought I had such a way with words until library school.  Turns out, library school and "fiery pits of hell" do indeed belong in the same sentence.

In relation to the above, if you value your life I suggest you never, ever, say to a library student the following: "you need a Master's degree to be a librarian? But all you do is check out books!" If you want to unleash a stress-induced, sleep-deprived rant and have your eyes clawed out, then by all means go ahead.  But the next person who says this to me is going to wish they'd never been born.  You really think we'd put ourselves through this hell if we didn't need to?!?!

But it's all water under the bridge now! I have officially been on vacation as of 12/10/11.  My last assignment/presentation were finished on 12/05/11 though so I have for all intents and purposes been on vacation as of that date.  Classes the last week were somewhat of a formality.  Attendance is mandatory in order to maintain our ALA accreditation and not have final exams.

With the exception of Research Methods and Statistics (a required course), next term is shaping up to be 10x better than this one.  I'm taking Introduction to Archives Administration, Children's Materials (birth-7 years): Evaluation and Use, and Descriptive Cataloguing.  I have no class on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.  Classes are three hours, once a week.  I wish they were twice a week like in undergrad.  I found it a lot easier to stay on top of things, and the material was more fresh in my mind.  Course selection was stressful (is anything not stressful in library school?).  I am trying to balance classes I think will make me more employable with ones I think will actually enjoy and will not make me rip my hair out.

I'm trying, as usual, to stuff all my favourite things about home into this break.  I'm doing some yoga, am going to see The Nutcracker, the Stanley Park Christmas train, and Fort Langley, and am trying to set up an exercise schedule with friends.  Even though I lost 10 pounds last term I am definitely not in shape.  It's dreadfully hard to get motivated to workout when you've lost weight rather than gained though.  Plus my brain is so fried from school all I'm good for this days is sitting on a couch curled up a nice toasty blanket.

Hope you are all enjoying your Decembers!

bisous,

LFB

Frugal Toad contest!

The Frugal Toad is having a contest to win a 75$ amazon gift card or paypal cash-enter here!

Financial bucket list!

Somehow or other, I started reading a lot of personal finance blogs.  Must have something to do with being a poor student and dreaming of the day when I will not be a poor student.  Something like that.  My favourite PF blogger is Krystal, over at Give Me Back My Five Bucks.  Not only is she a fellow Vancouverite (ok so I'm a bit of a cheater) but she explains things in clear straightforward terms (I'm not the brightest crayon in the box over here lol).  I'm trying to win her "500 Give Me Back My Five Bucks competition" sponsored by Life Insurance Finder, the life insurance experts All I have to do is blog about my financial bucket list so here it goes:

1) Live within my means (which are microscopic right now).  This means not buying something unless I absolutely need it.

2) Create a real legit looking budget and stick to it

3) Find an app to track my spending-trying Piggy right now.  I really want to know what I'm spending!

2) Avoid putting new charges on my credit card if I can help it (meaning pay for flights home for holidays ONLY)

2) Get a job in my field after obtaining my Master's and pay off my student loans.

3) Save for a car

4) Start an emergency fund

5) Build (okay, from scratch) my savings

6) Save for a down payment on a house

Obviously some of these are short-term and some are long-term, but there you go!  You can enter over at GMBMFB now!

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  : )

Les boulangeries

In France I developped a daily (ok, sometimes three times a day) boulangerie habit.  A tarte aux framboise for breakfast eaten on the way to la fac (that's the university, fyi), a petit pain aux trois chocolats for a mid-afternoun snack (did I ever tell you about the time I stopped into my favourite bakery RIGHT AS THEY WERE COMING OUT OF THE OVEN?!?!), and a little something for dessert.  I was obsessed.  And the best part? I didn't gain a SINGLE pound the entire 3.5 months I lived there.  It. Was. Heaven.  Needless to say when I moved to Ontario and discovered a little French bakery located in an indoor market about 60 seconds from my apartment, I nearly cried.  At 2.25$ for a little macaron, I definitely cried.  But Oh. My. Lord.  I got a pistachio one and it just about melted in my mouth. Definitely not something I'll be getting very often :( Donations to the Poor Grad Student Macaron fund are currently being accepted :D Oh, and I asked if they ever had tarte aux framboises (my all time fav) and they said not usually, but I could order them.  For my birthday instead of cake? I think so.

If there's one thing worse than being a poor student...

it's being a poor grad student.  I received my "Notification of Assessment" from BC Student Loans today, and I'm approximately six thousand dollars short of what I need.  Did you know that the maximum given is the same for undergrad and grad students? Freaking ridiculous if you ask me.  FYI student loan geniuses, grad school is WAY MORE FREAKING EXPENSIVE THAN YOUR GARDEN VARIETY UNDERGRAD!!!!!!!!  I'm applying for positions at the library of one of the affiliate university colleges on campus.  They're looking for a few people for 6-10 hours a week.  I really REALLY did not want to work during grad school but hey, what's a poor student with a maxed out credit card who can't get a line of credit to do?  My boyfriend seems to think robbing a bank is a bad idea.  I say he is no fun.  What could possibly go wrong?