Amanda and I have been working on a project together all semester which was due yesterday. In addition to finishing the project, we had to tell the class about what we'd done. Amanda and I (or at least I) only really thought about this about a half an hour before class began. We jotted down some notes as to what we'd talk about and who'd say who, went to class, and saw the first group's PowerPoint slides on the screen.

Jigga-whaaaa?

Luckily there were plenty of groups who wanted to go before us, so we managed to throw some slides together, upload them to my webspace, and sort of look like we had come to class all prepared and stuff. It's nice to know that PowerPoint slides thrown together at the last minute and at great expense look exactly like well-thought out ones. There isn't much of an art to PowerPoint - it's all in what you've got to say. And we had things to say in droves.

Go Team!

Oops. Forgot to register for classes this morning. Doesn't matter in the least - four hours later, all of my classes are still open.

Hey, this may be the last time I ever register for classes!

Meh.

" THE LIBRARIAN tells the story of a repository for humanity's greatest secrets, all hidden beneath the monolithic Metropolitan Public Library. From the Golden Fleece to the Ark of the Covenant, every enigma and artifact from every known and unknown civilization is protected from the forces of evil who, if given the chance, would use the priceless treasures for their nefarious plans. Only one man can keep them safe: The Librarian."
- TNT Originals: The Librarian

I don't quite know how to feel about the idea that when a librarian finally becomes an action hero, it's a dude.

[thanks to Dharma]

Hi.

How many hours of sleep did you get last night? Was it more than two and a half? Then you are a WINNER!

I, unfortunately, did not have quite as many as you, as I stayed up quite late making a pointless, crappy poster out of construction paper and glue sticks* and sleeplessness. I was running on adrenaline or chai-caffeine or pure, unadulterated construction paper creativity and wasn't even that tired when I went to bed... but I had nothing better to do, so off I went.

I felt better then than I do now. Small sleep is worse than no sleep at all for me. I am slogging through the day. I will prop myself up next to my poster for two hours and smile pretty and maybe I will win a door prize. This piece of shit poster sure ain't winning anything!

Is it nap time yet?

-----
* Yes, glue sticks! Even after they told us not to! I am that kind of rebel!

At least three times today in class, our professor has told us that something is "magic" so as to avoid explaining it to us and to shut up our incessant questioning. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The Police - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic

I went to a meeting today which was the first step in making some significant changes in a terrible class I am in. I think a lot of the people at the meeting had unrealistic expectations of what would come from it. I feel energized and ready to start the process... I think they expected this to be it.

No matter. Something will happen because something has to happen.

I feel like sharing music with you, my close personal friends. Don't know why or how long it will last. So I bring you:

John Lennon - Power to the People (which I had in my head through about three hours of said class this week as "Power to the <p> tag"). Download it soon... I'll probably take it down after a week or so.

Is there a question you've always sought to answer to but have never known how to do it yourself? Are you looking for the answer to that trivia question you could never find? Do you need help finding sources to get started on a paper? Why not try the Internet Public Library's Ask a Question feature. Give a struggling would-be librarian something to do!

Note: Don't use it just for the sake of giving us something to do - use only if you do have a tough question you can't answer on your own!

At the hospital yesterday, the doctor asked my mom what she did for a living. "I'm an archivist," she replied. And of course, as usual, my mom had to explain what an archivist is and what they do. I realized then how lucky I am to be at SI. All my life, I've had to explain what an archivist is. When I told my first grade teacher that my parents were archivists, she tried to convince me that they were architects and I was saying it wrong. All of a sudden, I have a huge group of friends and acquaintances who can be told that my parents are archivists... and they actually know what that means!

At yesterday's football game against the University of Iowa:

Random guy in stands: FUCK IOWA!
*pause*
Me: I don't know... it's an awfully big state. It might take me a while.
Fellow SI-seating section member: Is it bad that I was thinking the exact same thing?
Me: I think maybe SI does that to you. Dirty librarians.

Had a chat yesterday with the teacher who mentioned me in class, wherein I said something along the lines of, "You know, the best classes are the ones that ruin your life." I guess I didn't mean ruin per se, but rather "permanently change the way you look at the world so that you never see things in the same way again." I think I managed to backpedal enough that he got the general idea.

Today I was annoyed to discover a user interface design flaw... with a parking structure. I parked in the S. Forest structure on the "4 - Yellow" level and took the elevator down to the ground floor. When my meeting was over, I remembered that I was parked on the yellow level. While waiting for the elevator to come, I sort of ran my eyes across the sign that pointed out the floor numbers and colors but didn't pay much attention because I already knew where I was parked. I got in... and forgot which number corresponded with yellow. There was no guide inside the car, so I had to open the door, get out, look at the sign and get back in.

What am I going to do about this? Well, probably just bitch about it in my weblog. I ain't no interface designer!

At 5, I have a class where I will have to spend two hours rehashing and reliving my internship, trying to pick out the good points so that I can make a freaking poster about them.

At 7, I have a three-hour class with Business School-style mutants who like to talk for the sake of talking.

But never mind - this is going to be a good day, because I have bubble tea and my bubble tea has a picture of a monkey on the top.

Mmmmmmmmonnnnkeeeeeey shall be my mantra. If you are having a day that looks unpleasant, you may chant along. Come on! Let's kick this day's ass!

Update (6:47pm): My stupid two-hour stupid internship class was only half an hour long this week! Behold the power of the Monkey!

This week's reading in my reference-librarianing class is on the "freedom of intercourse between librarian and readers". I think I should have been taking more LIS classes from the beginning, because we never get such freedoms in HCI...

"Personal intercourse and relations between librarian and readers are useful in all libraries. It seems to me that in popular libraries they are indispensable. [...] During the last five or six years, by the adoption of the means recommended in this paper, a large use of this department has grown up, and it has come to be highly appreciated in the community."

- Green, Samuel S. (1876) "Personal relations between librarians and readers"

Looks like we have another semester of grad student maturity on our hands, folks.

Crikey. Another horrifying (?) overlap of my blog- and real- lives.

Maybe it's because it's from 5pm to 8pm and preceded by seven hours of other classes, but so far, the class I was most looking forward to is looking the least promising.

It is my normal course of action to fall in love with whatever class I am taking (Anthropology, English Language, Evaluation of Systems and Services) and decide it's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

This time, I spent the whole summer claiming to be an information architect and got rather attached to the idea. And now that I'm actually looking at studying it and doing it all semester, it's lost some of the enchantment.

Next semester I'll be taking Fundamentals of Human Behavior, so I'll probably get it into my head to be a Human Being when I grow up. Sigh...

Don't worry - I'm sure I'll grow out of that one too.

Last semester, I spent over $250 on books and coursepacks for one of my four classes.

This year, they've all unpredictably and insanely decided to go the online route, meaning that I'll instead only be spending about $27.17 plus shipping and handling. Plus optometrist bills from staring at a computer all the time. Plus cleaning supplies for when I try to use highlighter on my screen.

Tomorrow is the first day of school! Are my pencils sharpened? Are my books covered in brown paper bags? Do I have a box of sharp new crayons?

No.

On the contrary, I am in no way prepared for school to start again. I haven't bought a single book yet, I never got around to getting my hair cut (it's been... oh, around four months now since I've even had a trim), I don't know what I'm going to wear, and I'm supposed to have started the reading for my Thursday class at the Business School (scary!) and be ready to discuss it with Robin and her sister by, um, yesterday.

My schedule consists of ten hours of class on Tuesday and three on Thursday. Hard liquor may have to be a new addition to Tuesday Movie Night.

Just wanted to let you know that this Onion article is completely unfounded and untrue, in that I'm pretty sure that we don't have an Office of the Bursar.

Other than that, sure. Run with it.

"I don't see why that shouldn't count for credit," my professor said when I described my summer internship to him. Prior to that, I had given up hope of a for-credit internship and was mostly just happy to have something to occupy me over the summer. "They're pretty accomodating." He suggested that they had been known to bend the rules in order to get people credit.

"We will get you credit for this," said the president of my organization. "Just let me know what I have to do."

This gave me hope. So I set up an appointment for today to talk to the person in charge of the I Practical Engagement Program (PEP) to see if my internship could count as a I Directed Field Experience (DFE) and therefore for credit.

I was running late this morning, so I forewent blow-drying my hair or putting my contacts in, dooming myself to a day of wet/limp hair and glasses, but assuring that I would not make a bad impression by being late. I further avoided lateness by parking in a pay lot near campus rather than parking for free and travelling closer. I headed up to her office.

"I wanted to talk to you about my internship and seeing if it could count as a DFE," I began, sitting down. "I, um, I'll be making websites for this study abroad center in Michigan and in France. The problem is, they have IT people and they have graphic designers who have been doing websites up until this point, but they don't actually have a webmaster. But the president of the company and the IT person are both willing to be considered my supervisor and to report on my progress."

The answer is no.

There is no webmaster, the SI student is the most knowledgeable person there in the field she'll be working in, so despite the valuable experience, there will be no credit. She suggested that it would work if I could convince the organization to hire a webmaster. Yeah, thanks for that. You're loads of help there.

I left her office and burst into tears*. Why did I bother setting up this appointment? Why did I bother trying so hard to be on time? I was limp-haired, bespectacled and now soggy-faced.

I managed to have this appointment, burst into tears, mop myself up, buy myself a bubble tea for comfort and get back to my car, all within the course of ten minutes. Why did I bother coming to campus in the first place?

It's quite possible that I could have gotten away with it by just having the president submit my proposal and not asking about it, but now I've gone and told her the truth and I won't be able to pull that one.

I really shouldn't be this upset, because I had resigned myself to doing two different non-credit projects this summer and having to do something totally lame for credit next semester while also taking classes. But every conversation I had presented a glimmer of hope. "They're not really that strict about it," I heard, every time I lamented my no-credit assumption. So why are they willing to bend the rules for others, but not for me?

-----
* Is it just me, or does it seem like I am always bursting into tears? I hope it's, like, PMS or something and not a symptom of a deeper, more permanent psychological problem.

I don't like to admit that I'm wrong or that I can't do things on my own, which is why I am always panicked on Tuesday afternoons. I believe until Tuesday afternoon that I can program Java on my own. That if I keep working at it for two days straight, it will eventually sort itself out. I think it happened once. But the faith is always there.

Well, it's Tuesday afternoon now. And I can't do it! This program has to work. And it doesn't. And I'm lost. And no amount of talking myself through it is helping.

It is very frustrating that I can't triumphantly count down the hours until I'm done with this semester, because I know that I'm not going to have my final project done by 4pm today and I'm going to have to continue working on it for some undetermined amount of time, until it's all over.

No amount of crying is helping either, but that doesn't mean I'm not trying that approach.

I think this year's SI first-year class should make a group effort to all (male and female) grow our hair long enough that it could be put into a bun by this time next year. Ours would be the best graduation ever!!!!1

I r lame.

I just wanted all of you to know that I'm really knuckling down and getting into Full-On Study Mode for finals. I even made up a strict schedule for myself, so that I would know, at every minute of the waking day, where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing.

Ha ha!

And this worked for almost six hours, which really impressed me! Then I had to eat ice cream and watch Labyrinth with Rachel and Mr B------. But it was perfectly justifiable because we... uh... we... found lots of examples of 503 terms at Stucchi's and in the movie.

Ahem.

See, like, Sarah couldn't find her way to the Goblin King's castle because there was no navigational residue at the entrance, so she could go very deep down one path and would have to go back up the stack to go back to the original level and try a broader search and...

Okay, no, I'm just a slacker.

For those of you following The Continuing Saga of Why Data Structures Are Dirty, in our last lecture yesterday we learned that certain types of searches "require a queue as wide as big as the width of a tree" and studied iterative deepening. And Matt said it was boring!

I'm glad to know that A. and I have poisoned the minds of enough of our classmates that the sniggering was at least double what it was last time.

Just kidding. My name is srah, and clearly I have not kicked any such habit, as I have committed myself to a life of weekly suicide, to be committed every Monday night.

I need to take a class outside of SI, but the Business School are stingy and won't let me register for their marketing class without an override, which I won't be able to get until classes begin. So for now, I've registered for four SI classes, with the intention of dropping one (which that will be, we shall never know). Here's the damage:

Dear srah, What are you doing up at this ungodly hour? - A Concerned Imaginary Reader

Dear Reader, Not sleeping, that's for sure! SRAH

I don't know how long I've been at that point, but I woke myself up from a point between asleep and awake where I had been editing my Java program in a semi-conscious state of my imagination. I feel like I was in that state all night, tossing and turning over undeclared variables. I is not feeling mightly rested.

I'm just glad I don't have JBuilder installed in my head, because I think I was really screwing up my program.

Back to bed I go, hoping for something a bit more restful to dream about...

try
{
StupidProgram.doThatThingIToldYouToDo();
}

catch (NullPointerException e)
{
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
System.out.println("DIE STUPID NULLPOINTEREXCEPTION DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!!1");
srah.goToSleep();
}

Next time someone asks you to transcribe dialogue from user testing videos, I suggest that you kick them squaaaaar in the nuts.

That's what I'd do!

Once my professor explained that he was going to be using the word "queue" in the British sense, it was all downhill from there.

My friend-and-fellow-French-major and I had the same thought process, wherein we said to ourselves, The British sense? What other sense is there? ... Well... there's the French sense... (lock eyes, erupt in immature giggles). For you see, the French word "queue" can be a line that you stand in or it can be an animal's tail.

Oh yeah, or slang for "penis."

From then on, any mention of the penultimate entry in a list, slow or fast insertion or "Big Oh" notation would make us bite our lips and shake with unreleased laughter. Meanwhile, no one else had made the original connection that we had, so nothing sounded remotely dirty to them.

So yes, in response to the question that no one asked, graduate students are very mature. Then we had snack time.

I found myself walking down the sidewalk yesterday behind a U-M football player. I can only surmise that he was a football player and not a very [good] one, because he was advertising that he was a football player with every ounce of his being*.

He insisted on being large and taking up the entire sidewalk with his hulking bulk. I was trapped behind him and couldn't see around him, so I had to look at him.

He was wearing his M FOOTBALL-imprinted pants in that way that is so popular with high school boys, so that it was only by virtue of his long M FOOTBALL-imprinted jacket (and the M FOOTBALL-imprinted backpack with the "I AM A U-M FOOTBALL PLAYER AND HERE IS MY NAME"-imprinted ID tag hanging off of it) that I could not see his M FOOTBALL-imprinted underpants.

I was so annoyed with him in so many ways. First, he was in my way. Second, he was annoyingly trashily commercial and I know it's very important to him that he's a football player and all, but I don't give a crap. Third, why does this school dress him but we have no parking and 1,000 people in grad-level classes?

But most of all, it was the stupid pants.

I was really tempted to pull them down and run away, all the while pretending** to be a tiny little female so that he wouldn't hit me. Now I'm thinking I probably should have, because this blog post does not have an exciting, suspenseful ending at all. It only happened in my head, but now you may let it play out in your own minds as well. Happy imagi-pantsing!

-----
* And being a football player, his being had lots of ounces.
** I bet I could pull this off.***
*** I said "pull this off"!

I have discovered the future. And it is not pretty.

Watching Office Space yesterday, I realized that there are at least two jobs in that film that match up to our School of Information training. First of all, after 501, we are trained in consultancy, which means that we could take over for the Bobs. If I chose that career path, I imagine a conversation something like:

srah: Let's see. You're Neil... Diamond? (he nods) srah: Is that your real name? Neil: Yeah. srah: Are you in any relation to the pop singer? Neil: It's just a coincidence. srah: To be honest with you, I love his music. I do. I am a Neil Diamond fan. For my money, I don't think it gets any better than when he sings "Cracklin' Rosie." I mean you must really love his music. Neil: Yeah. Yeah... he, he, he's pretty, he's pretty good, I guess. srah: You're GOD DAMN right he is. So tell me. What's your favorite song of his? Neil: Hmm. I, I, I don't know. I mean, I guess, I sorta like 'em all. srah: HA HA! I feel the exact same way, but it must be hard for you, I mean, having the same name as him. I celebrate the guy's entire catalogue. But anyway, let's get down to business, Neil! Neil: You, you know, you can just call me, uh, Bob. (glare)

However, I think I'm more likely to go into a career more related to usability - something where I'm sort of a go-between between the users of a system and the people who program it. Something along the lines of:

1st Bob: What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the user and bring them down to the software engineers? srah: Yes, yes that's right. 2nd Bob: Well then I just have to ask, why can't the users take them directly to the software people? srah: Well, I'll tell you why... because... engineers are not good at dealing with users.... 1st Bob: What would you say you do here? srah: Look I already told you, I deal with the @#$% users so the engineers don't have too. I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people, can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!

Actually, I think my dream job is more along the lines of Peter's... because I'd really rather just do nothing.

[dialogue from Office Space transcript]

I have my Java Programming lab at 10am on Thursday mornings. Rather than taking over the SHEEPDIP several times a week, SI Computing gives us laptop computers from the Locally Accessible Machine Base for Developing Information Professionals*.

Every week, I have a problem with the first laptop they give me. It has no battery life and I can't get it plugged in before it cuts out and has to reboot, or else it doesn't have the JBuilder software installed. Add to that the fact that my 9:00 class has recently been held in the boonies of the Institute for Social Research and I am always the last person who is set up and ready to get started on the lab.

This week, however was different. I was not the last person to get set up for the lab. Everyone got their laptops after I got there, we opened them up and turned them on.

Then my computer wouldn't connect to the network. Well, I needed network and Internet access in order to download the assignment and save my work, so that would not do. I talked to the SI Computing assistant and she brought me a different one.

I waited the million years for that one to boot up and go through the network prompts, only to find that it was also not connecting. Neither of them seemed to have the wireless network among their list of possible connections. Another SI Computing assistant came in and the two of them fiddled around with things, then gave up and brought me another.

This one did not work either. The fourth laptop wouldn't even boot up. Finally, they gave it one last try and brought in number five. We rejoiced as, at 11:05 in our one-hour lab, I signed in, connected to the network, and went to the website where I could download the files needed for the assignment. Then I went to start up JBuilder and...

JBuilder? Oh yes, this is the one laptop that I always get, the one that doesn't have JBuilder installed. Lovely. I gave up and went to lunch.

I was not the last person to get set up for lab this week... because I was never set up for lab!

-----
* a cart full of laptop computers, known to some heathen unbelievers as the "Mobile DIAD"

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to look at my watch.

OMG, I thought groggily to myself, for I always think groggily in internet acronyms when I wake up in the morning, It's one thingy away from the big 9. I only have two hours until lunch. I need to get up so I can do something productive with my morning.

After I got up and hooked up to the jumpstarting machine that resets my brain every morning, I realized that while it was indeed "one thingy away from the big 9," I had apparently forgotten which way was clockwise and which was counter-.

It was, however, nice to be up two hours earlier than expected. I, ever behind in the internship-finding process, finally sent out my Google application and contacted 13 other organizations with preliminary "Here's who I am, here's what I want, can I send you my resume?" emails. I've already gotten two rejections, but I've also gotten a "Yes, please send your resume" so we'll see where things go. One is a more libraryish-type position, but it's in Brussels and they're willing to give their interns language lessons. Schwee.

I got an internship offer. First-year students at SI live for internship offers. It's in Peru, home of Machu Picchu, where I have always wanted to go. And I, ungrateful tart that I am, am going to turn it down.

When I initially applied for internships through IAESTE, I was a young, energetic Java programmer, full of Hello World! and vim and vigor. I knew that I would pick up useful skills during the semester that would get me a crackerjack internship with plenty of lovely experience!

Now I am old and jaded and have come to realize that if I accepted an internship that involved programming in Java all day, I would soon have to throw myself under a collectivo.

So, in the interest of not forcing my loved ones to pay for the repatriation of my remains, I'm going to have to decline. It feels really rotten to turn down an internship offer when I have no real prospects for any others.

O Google! Despite the passing of your deadline in mid-February, I hope that thou shalt accept my humble application, which I shall be sending on Monday.

2) What did you like most about your assignment?

It makes me feel as though my hard work at SI ain't been in vain fer nothin'.

(Bless you all!)

Definition of a bad day:

Amanda and I woke up early today so that we could see the White House before we left. I had seen it from Constitution Avenue, but hadn't gotten up to the gates. So around 8am, we set off down the street a bit and got a look. We couldn't see many snipers and guards and SS men, so we decided that either they were hiding or they were betting that no anarchists and terrorists would be up and about at 8am on a Saturday.

On the gate, there was a button that said "Welcome to the White House". It didn't say what it did when you pressed it, so we speculated that it might electrocute you or it might be the president's doorbell. We decided not to take any chances, so we still don't know.

We got back to the hotel, packed up the rest of our stuff, and Cari, Matt, Amanda and I went to breakfast at a restaurant across from the Treasury building. A friend of Cari's from MIT met us there. I had scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a fried bagel chip. It was an interesting combination, but very tasty.

Breakfast took longer than expected, so we didn't hit the road until about 10:30. Cari drove the first part, until we got to Pennsylvania. We put on oldies music and sang along.

Listening to the Beach Boys, Cari and I wished that you could take vacations in time as well as space, so that we could go on a trip to 1950s or 60s California. Cari wanted to go on a date with the captain of the football team and drink milkshakes. You know that if you could go on vacations in time, there would always be one kid who had to spend his family vacation as a serf in medieval England.

We stopped in Breezewood, Pennsylvania to switch drivers and go to the bathroom. Cari triumphantly announced from inside her stall that she was finished with her shift. According to Amanda, she made this proclamation just as two 90-year-old ladies walked into the restroom and "shift" did not sound exactly like "shift."

Matt was assigned the Pennsylvania Turnpike part of the drive by virtue of being from that state and therefore to blame for all of the bad roads and tolls and everything else that is wrong with it. We played some more Mad Libs, sang along some more, and switched drivers once Pennsylvania was behind us.

I took over for the Ohio shift, which I had chosen for myself. I picked Ohio because I had been afraid of the multi-lane, high-speed driving in DC and Ohio has a low speed limit that you have to obey if you have Michigan license plates.

We had had a late lunch and snacked all through the drive and didn't want to eat at a Roy Rogers in Pennsylvania, so we finally stopped for lunch at an Ohio Panera at 5pm. Once we were back on the road, Cari pointed out that we had decided to study for our 503 midterm after we stopped for lunch, so we had better knuckle down before the sun went down. We went through sample questions and defined terms, then called it quits and put on the music again.

Once we got to Michigan it was Amanda's turn to drive, but I didn't mind continuing so we just stayed on the road. We finally got around to going through some of Matt's CDs and discovered the soundtrack from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, so we spent the last leg of the journey (including all that extra time when I missed an exit and had to turn around) loudly singing along with it.

I dropped myself off at home and everyone helped carry my stuff inside in exchange for the use of my bathroom. Srahmom, srahdad, Alfie, Señorita C and Grandma were all here when I got home, so the house was pretty packed. I was mostly exhausted from the long day and went to bed around 10:30.

I work work worked today to make sure I finished my project before the end of the program. I took a break around noon when my supervisor took me out to lunch, then came back to the office and managed to finish before he left at 4.

I spent some more time time foodling around on the Internet and taking pictures of the office for ASB, then went back to the hotel.

We sat around and watched various TLC shows to rest up at the end of the week, then got to thinking about dinner. Amanda and I decided we were going to have crêpes, but other people had various objections to this idea. We found a cheap crêpe place in Adams Morgan but it took everyone forever to get organized into a dinner party.

Finally we had 13 people. Ideally we would be splitting into French and Brazilian/Cajun factions, but all of the Brazilian/Cajun people wanted to check out the crêpe place too. Amanda and I wondered how we were going to fit 13 people into a restaurant without reservations on a Friday night, but we figured they would thin out eventually.

The party didn't end up thinning out until we had asked for a table for 13 and the other 7 didn't show up. Oh well. So Rebecca, Matt, Amanda, Cari, Billie and I had our crêpes and the rest hoofed off across the street. Billie and I split a "Haute-Savoie," which had Reblochon cheese, Swiss cheese, bacon and various other Alpine goodnesses. Once we got the dinner crêpes out of the way, it was time for the important part: dessert. I had a mocha crêpe - chocolate sauce and coffee ice cream. Mmmmmm.

One of our classmates had been staying with her sister in DC during the week and they had a party at the end. So after dinner we wandered around in circles and finally found the party. We were all pretty beat by that point, so we gossipped about SI for a while and then left around 10:30 or 11.

A few of our classmates had had problems with the Metro, because they were doing construction and sharing tracks, so it took forever to get anywhere. That, coupled with our sore feet and tired selves, enticed us to take a taxi home instead. We got to bed earlyish so that we would be ready for the next day's departure for Michigan.

Amanda and I made an after-work date today to go shopping at H&M. There’s one just down the street from our hotel, but we hadn’t managed to make it earlier in the week. I found a nice little corduroy skirt but alas, do not have any appropriate shoes, so I have to wait to wear it until I get home.

Seeing as we couldn’t hit up the alumni for internships the other night, we instead hit them up for restaurant suggestions. So tonight we went to the Saigon Inn in Georgetown. I had never been to a Vietnamese restaurant, so I was very excited. Yen once made me some delicious Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, so I was looking forward to having that again and finding out what it was actually called in Vietnamese.

On the menu, it was called... Chicken Noodle Soup. Mystery solved. I guess.

Over dinner, conversation drifted around and landed for a long time on Friendster/Orkut and blogging and srah’s blog in particular. So hello to any of my dinnermates who are visiting for the first time! I also brought up the topic of terrible ways to propose, which my friends have been shooting back and forth over email all week.

After we finished eating, we sat around the table and tried to figure out what to do next. We wanted to do some actual sightseeing, since most of what we’d seen in DC was bars and restaurants. Our waiter gave us advice, directions and a map and we decided to take cabs to the Lincoln Memorial.

The memorial was very nice and we took plenty of pictures to swap later and send to SI for the ASB 2004 website. There was a clear view of the Washington Monument from the memorial, so we also took plenty of pictures with the monument growing out of people’s heads.

We set off in the direction of the Metro and happened upon the Korea and Vietnam War Memorials on the way. The Vietnam Memorial was not at all the way I expected it to be, from what I’ve seen in movies and on TV. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was different. I hadn’t realized that it sloped up and down, I guess.

Once we left the Vietnam Memorial, we realized that we were about as far from the closest Metro stop as we were from our hotel, so we decided to hoof it back home. We passed the Department of the Interior (what do they do, anyway?), the White House, and plenty of other interesting things we would have missed if we’d been underground.

I came home, talked to Mr B------ on the phone, and we all collapsed into dreamless and screamless sleep.

They should have swingers’ clubs just for information professionals because really, so little in life is mutually exclusive.

When you are a student, you have to do research and write reports during the weekends and your free time and at night, after your classes and the jobs you have to work to survive and to pay for your tuition.

When you are in the Real World*, you have to do research and write reports during the day and that’s all you have to do. And you get paid for it.

I suppose I am in school for a reason, and that’s so that I can do my research and write my reports and eventually get paid more for it than I would without all that book-learnin’. I am looking forward to the Real World, I think.

-----
* Not The Real World, but the other one that I don’t talk about as frequently.

I went back to the hotel after work only to find that I was the organizer for the group to travel to the SI Alumni Reception, based on the fact that I was the only one who had called Monique to ask for directions. Directions which I very cleverly wrote down, then left at work. Luckily a few other people had ideas of how to get there, and we were not too late after we subwayed it over there and walked the rest of the way.

The big question of the evening was, “What kind of librarian do you want to be?” The School of Information was formerly the School of Library and Information Science and before that, the School of Library Science. So any alumni from earlier than about 1998 graduated with MLIS or MLS degrees and consider themselves librarians, rather than subdivisions of information professionals in the way that we do. They all stood up and told us that there were lots of job opportunities for librarians in the DC area and that they were hiring. Which was fascinating because lots of us aren’t in the LIS specialization and those of us who are, are first-year students looking for internships, rather than second-years looking for permajobs. That was depressing and only made me more convinced that I should be doing a tailored HCI/LIS degree so that I can actually find a job after I graduate.

I drowned my sorrows by buying a Lindeman’s Framboise, which was the most expensive beer ever. How is an imported beer more expensive in Washington, DC, at a place advertising the largest beer selection in the world, than at Ashley’s in Ann Arbor? Ridiculous! My beer cost ten dollars more than Amanda’s. But it was good and I knew how much it cost when I went in, so I’ll stop complaining now.

A little looser after starting my beer, I was able to mingle and schmooze with the best of them. I had come to the Alumni Reception hoping to network and make connections and find HCI internship opportunities, but the overwhelming librariness of the attendees squelched that dream. So I just chatted for the sake of chatting, with no particular goals. This turned out to be a good thing, because I talked to a library science alum who is now working at the Patent Office, and he told me that it doesn’t matter what you specialize in, because employers will be interested in the theoretical framework SI is providing to us and library science and computers are overlapping all the time now, anyway. So I guess I’m employable, if not internshippable. Talking to him made me feel a lot better, but I still have no idea what I’m doing this summer.

It was getting hot and we were getting tired and hungry, so we got a list of good local restaurants from a couple of other alums, Matt and I traded nametags, and we set off for Lauriol, a Mexican restaurant. I had a lovely, enormous salad, which I will be continuing to eat at lunchtime today, and we swapped stories of talking in our sleep, strange dreams, and the despair and desperation of the internship search.

We wandered back home, getting lost a few times (as usual), then chatted with Matt the Night Owl until I had to kick him out so we could go to sleep.

1) I like group work.

Maybe I’m just saying that because I get a week away from my 622 group and I have not yet gone through next week’s heinous pain that is Project Managing the Survey Report. But working with my supervisor and his assistant, I realize that I actually have some skills to contribute and can come up with some good ideas. It’s not so much that I’m great at HCI compared to other HCI students, but I am more aware of HCI issues than are non-HCI people.

Having this work experience makes me feel like I might be able to contribute something to a Real Job someday in the Real World, whereas being at SI just makes me feel bad about myself. I almost feel like I’m going through the torture of grad school for a reason now.

2) You can do some damn cool things with a Mac.

I’m working in another Mac-based environment here at the CDT.

My favorite feature is the little square on the left of the right-hand side, which resizes your window to “as big as it needs to be.” This is very useful for switching back and forth between a full-screen and half-screen view while copying down text from a web site.

I also like the fact that you can drag things around to save or install them. You can just drag graphics from your Internet Explorer window to a Microsoft Word window rather than copying and pasting or saving and inserting. And they go all cutely transparent while they’re being dragged.

On the other hand, you can’t drag information between text input fields and my little <b>, <i> and <URL> buttons don’t show up in Movable Type. I’m not completely sold on Macs and I’ m not going to rush out and buy one, but the more I learn about them, the more I appreciate them.

It’s only Wednesday! How many more shocking revelations can I have? Perhaps the one later in the week will be along the lines of I have so much freaking homework due next week that I have not started.

There was a trip to the NPR archives scheduled today, but with a limited number of spots and starting at 5:30pm. So anyone who worked until 6 or didn’t make it on the list had to find other plans tonight. Cari went out to dinner with a friend from DC, so Amanda and I sort of lazed around the hotel room until we decided it was time to get something to eat. We ran into Christy and got a call from Matt, who brought along Eunice and Eboni, so we ended up a group of six.

After much deliberation, we decided to explore the Dupont Circle area in search of an Italian restaurant. We ended up at Bertucci’s, which is apparently a chain known for brick oven pizze*.

When we sat down at our table, our server introduced himself as Peter and told us that we could call him “Pete or Peter or whatever.” Eboni wanted to call him P. Diddy. We spent the rest of the evening referring to him as “Pete ‘r Peter.”

I wondered out loud to the group if, since New York City waiters are always struggling actors, Washington, DC waiters were always struggling politicians. We speculated about whether Pete ‘r Peter was wearing a rubber band on his wrist because he was trying to stop smoking and would snap it when he had a craving, or whether he was trying to be 80s. We asked him what the rubber band was all about and he started telling us about his day job, in which he had to collect a lot of papers in some governmental capacity and always needed to have a rubber band on hand. So it looks like I was right.

I asked Pete ‘r Peter what the difference between the Traditional and Neapolitan pizze was and he responded that the Neapolitan pizze would give you special powers. Good enough for me! I ordered one with mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, rosemary and sage. We also ordered a bottle of Chardonnay to split between four of us.

Pete ‘r Peter brought us baskets of yummy rolls and a bottle of Chianti. When we corrected him, he looked heartbroken. I think maybe he’s on drugs. We were like ‘It’s okay... but we would like the Chardonnay...’ So he brought us our wine and kept trying to make up for it throughout the evening, by bringing us a free salad (how do you split a salad six ways? A dessert would have been better) and free rolls and by offering us separate checks at the end of the meal.

Once we had some wine in us, we started singing songs from The Sound of Music and Annie, but we are all librarians or other librarianesque information professionals, so we did so quietly, so as not to disturb the other diners. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel.

Some of the others went out again after dropping off their leftovers, but Amanda and I stayed in and watched TV. We missed American Idol, but watched Scrubs and some really old Cosby Show reruns. Why did Denise do that with her hair? What was Sondra wearing? Did Bill say, “You kids today, with your hippin’ and your hoppin’ and your bippin’ and your boppin’ – you don’t know the jazz music! Or the Jell-O pudding pops!” Okay, maybe not in those exact words, but there was something along those lines.

After Cari came home, we all went to bed. I’m not sure what time it was and whether I was asleep or not or had ever been asleep, but I had the impression that while I was trying to fall asleep, someone knocked on the door. It brought me to semi-consciousness, which is when I realized that the bed was shaking. I was convinced it was an earthquake, but after a while it stopped and didn’t start again.

There’s nothing on the news about an earthquake! It must have been a dream! Either that or my half-asleep brain thought the bed was shaking when it wasn’t. I still don’t know what happened there. Do they have fault lines anywhere near DC?

-----
* If spelling the plural of pizza with an “e” is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

We went out for dinner last night in Adams Morgan (an area of DC with a lot of restaurants and bars). Half of the group went to an Ethiopian restaurant and the other 11 of us had Indian. We didn’t have reservations, but they were still able to seat us all together at one table.

Amanda and I ordered a samosa (sort of a fried pie/dumpling thing with potato, peas and spices inside) each as appetizers, but they ended up being two each. I lurrrrve samosas and these were filling enough that I couldn’t eat much of my entrée, much to the chagrin of the waiter and to everyone waiting for me to finish. I had a vegetarian combo with things whose names I’ve forgotten. One had potatoes and chickpeas, the other had lentils and spinach and they were accompanied by mixed vegetables in another sauce.

My new role in the group is money collector, which I do with pleasure and with an anal-rententiveness of money order and direction that is equaled only in Cheryl. I love to put the money in order – I’m just no good at counting it once I’m done. So we compiled a huge stack of cash and moved on.

Cari had kheer for dessert at the restaurant, an Indian rice pudding. When she ordered, I started thinking about kir, a French drink with white wine and crème de cassis. So when we stopped at a coffeehouse/bar called Tryst, I tried to order one, mostly just to see if I could. The bartender looked at my ID funny, bought my explanation and made me a kir, which he pronounced “kerr.” I don’t remember ever making a connection between kir and cough syrup, but this one was a bit like that. I don’t know if the ingredients were wrong or the proportions were off or what. It was good on some sips and Sudafeddy on others.

I drank my kir and became convinced that I need to do a tailored Library and Information Science/Human-Computer Interaction degree instead of straight HCI. How else am I going to find a summer internship? I’m not qualified for anything.

After the bar, we were all exhausted and headed back to the hotel, trying to stay awake while we waited for our subway train. I made it back and collapsed into bed. Ah, the busy Spring Break lifestyle!

We got up in the morning, showered and dressed and went off in search of a mythical Waffle Shop of which we had heard tell. It was kind of sketchy but cheap and kind of cool. There seemed to be a lot of locals in addition to the people the hotel had directed there.

No one really had any firm plans or things they needed to see, so we set off wandering towards the Mall in a group with Rebecca, Teri, Amanda, Cari, Matt, Tom and Eboni.

A group of SI students wandering along Pennsylvania Avenue is automatically going to be drawn into one building, and drawn we were. After having our pictures taken in front, we headed into the National Archives for some home-grown SI nerdiness. While other people thought deeply about the information in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we thought about conservation techniques and the value of having the original document. I wonder how often that tour guide is asked about the temperature and gas pressure gauges in the cases. He probably thought we were insane.

We continued our amble up to the Capitol, but as it was Sunday, we didn’t bother to go all the way up the steps. We took pictures of the outside and then wandered into the Botanical Gardens next door.

Someone at the Botanical Gardens is seriously obsessed with orchids, because there were orchids, orchids, orchids everywhere. I guess orchids are okay, but I was particularly interested in the papaya and coconut trees, tea plants and herbs. I suppose my heart is in my stomach and my interests lie in What My Food Was Before It Was Food. Young Matthew was impressed by the colors and variety among all the plants and pointed out how amazing it was that they all managed to evolve uniquely and beautifully and yet had no idea what they look like. An orchid doesn’t know if it’s purple or yellow or if it’s square or orchid-shaped. I don’t know why this struck me, but I had never thought about plants’ lack of self-awareness.

It was getting late and we wanted to see more, so we moved along and started back in the direction of the hotel. We stopped in the Air & Space Museum and looked at the WWII exhibit, a human-powered glider, a model of an aircraft carrier that took 1200 hours to make and a collection of aircraft personnel uniforms. I also checked out the WWI exhibit while everyone else was resting. In the entryway of the museum, there was a sample of a moon rock that you could touch. I hoped that in touching it I would have some kind of mind meld with moon people, but it pretty much just felt like touching a rock. Sigh...

At that point, we were pretty pooped (not pooping) so we headed back to the hotel for a rest before dinner. Around 4, we met up with more of our group and went off in the direction of the Kennedy Center. The plan was to eat at a pizzeria under the Watergate Hotel before popping over to the free concert at the Kennedy Center at 6.

The problem was, the pizzeria was closed and there was nowhere else in sight to eat. Those who had been in my group during the day quickly realized that we had forgotten to eat lunch. So we wandered. And wandered. And wandered. When we finally found something, it was closed. We continued wandering and wandering until we started seeing that the people coming towards us were carrying food, food wrappers, crumbs and other signs that sustenance was to be found in that direction. Eventually we found our way to the George Washington University student center’s food court, where we slaked our hunger with Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway and Chinese food.

Thanks to the fast food we’d found, we were still able to make it to the Kennedy Center in time. It is a really impressive building with enormously tall ceilings. They have a free concert series going on this week, so we got to see the Holmes Brothers, which was quite enjoyable.

After the concert, we were all exhausted and our feet hurt, so we stumbled onto the shuttle, the metro, and into the hotel. We collapsed for a while, then all gathered together to watch the series finale of Sex and the City before going to bed.

Amanda, Matt, Cari and I left Ann Arbor at 9:01, just on time. I was surprised that I was the lightest packer of all. I’d been afraid that I would take up a lot of space with my suitcase and additional bags for food and things, but I had the smallest suitcase in the group.

As I was the second person in the car, I sat in the front passenger seat for the first shift. By the time we switched drivers, I had already created a nest for myself with all of my belongings, so I ended up staying in the front seat for the whole trip.

I brought along a book of Mad Libs which was wildly popular. Mad Libs tends to start out tame and get dirty, but ours went from tame to dirty to nerdy as the last and funniest were all filled with SI-related nouns (structuration theory, user interface), adjectives (user-friendly, authentic), verbs (appraising, berry-picking) and parts of the body (visual perception system, ARM). I’m sure that I will soon be sharing the best phrases with anyone nerdy enough to care.

My stately impressions from the trip: Ohio is slow but has some really nice rest areas (we stopped at one with a Panera Bread and a Starbucks). Pennsylvania is full of expensive tolls and has crappy roads and crappy rest areas. If you can avoid going to Pennsylvania, you should. Unfortunately, it is huge and inconveniently located, so it’s hard to avoid. Maryland lasts longer than it should, but we didn’t stop there, so I can’t make any judgments about the state itself.

My shift was the last one, into DC. I don’t know how that happened, but it finally came time for me to step up and do my part for the car* effort. I was terrified. I called Robin for advice, then took to the road. Everyone was required to be awake and alert for my part of the drive, as I needed all of the navigation assistance I could get. I had to drive on heavy-traffic four-lane roads, then on city streets. Once we got into DC, you would think that the street numbering system would be easy. Except that on Constitution Avenue, not all of the numbered streets go through. So we thought that it was only even streets when there was no 15th, until 12th snuck up on us. I had to make up for missing 12th by turning onto 11th but managed to miss that too. When I finally compensated for my errors, I missed Pennsylvania Avenue and ended up having to go around in circles. But we finally made it to the hotel, checked in and were able to relax.

Our hotel is just fine, if a little strange. Cari, Amanda and I are sharing a room with three double beds and two twin beds. The room next door has six beds for four people. This place is enormous and is always either too hot or too cold.

Our carload went out to dinner with Rebecca, Teri and Julie at Clyde’s in Georgetown. Rebecca, Cari and I all had crab cake sandwiches in order to take advantage of fresh local seafood. They were very tasty. After dinner we went to a bar called Old Glory and played “I’ve never…” with each other and with our waiter, Thane.

Everyone with the new Michigan driver’s license had no trouble all evening but Amanda and I, with the old version, got hassled everywhere we went all evening. With the old-style Michigan license, one could get the license at 16, then renew it by mail at 21. When you renewed by mail, they sent you a sticker to put over the old expiration date saying “SEE BACK” and a sticker on the back showing the new expiration date. It never occurred to me how sketchy and suspect this looks because no one in Michigan ever questions it. At Clyde’s, the waiter actually took Amanda’s license with him back into the staff area to check it out further.

After one Long Island Iced Tea, I was rather tipsy (as usual), but I managed to bumble into a cab and home again. We all collapsed into bed, exhausted.
-----
* I wish car rhymed with "war."

My Programming instructor has spent the last several weeks detailing his ongoing relationship with pneumonia. First he was flirting with it, then winking across the room, then holding hands, then he and pneumonia deep tongue-kissing. He told us all of these tales, then coughed across the table at us during lab.

I got sick this week and while I'm sure it's only a cold, it occurred to me that Hans could be contagious. Once this seed of an idea was planted in my head, the hypochondria took off and flourished, until I decided, at about 4:15 this afternoon, that I did indeed have pneumonia and I needed to see a healthcare professional immediately.

I called the University Health Services from work.

"I was wondering if it would be possible to fit me in this afternoon?" I asked.

"Well, we close at 4:30 today, so I don't think you would make it."

She rambled on about how I could come in tomorrow around 9, but we're leaving for DC at 9, so that wouldn't work for me. I was going to give up and just pray I didn't have anything other than a cold when she offered to connect me to a nurse, who could give me a basic diagnosis through the phone.

"Sure, why not?"

She put me on hold. I waited. Someone picked up and asked me why I was calling. I started to tell her my symptoms and she said, "Oh, I'm not the nurse." She put me back on hold. Someone else who wasn't the nurse picked up. She put me back on hold. Finally, the nurse answered. She asked me what my symptoms were and I told her that I was phlegmy and had some shortness of breath.

"I can't really diagnose anything over the phone," she explained. "You should probably come down here."

!!!!!!!!!! UHS is also short for UnHelpful Suck!

So I quickly explained to my boss that I had to get over there, shut down my computer and ran across campus. I hit Fletcher Street just as the bell tower was tolling 4:30 and ran two buildings down to UHS... only to find that it was closed. I begged the official door-answerer to no avail. DENIED!

So hopefully it's all in my mind and I won't be hospitalized in DC unless it's for the subway collapsing on my head.

Or at least tomorrow. I just need to get through about five hours on campus, then I can come home and nap from about 3pm to Thursday morning.

What is wrong with this semester? Why do I feel so tired all of the time?

Remember back when I whinged that there were no songs for the HCI professional? Well, I can't complain about that anymore...

Uh, yeah. I want to cry, and I don't know if they're tears of sorrow or joy. I have listened to it three times in the 15 minutes since I downloaded it, though...

[via little.yellow.different]

SI has a program called Alternative Spring Break, where SI students go to New York and Washington, DC during the week-long break and do projects for real live organizations to use SI-learned skills and gain new skills and experience.

I'd been hearing about this trip all year and had kind of thought about it, but hadn't given it much serious consideration until Young Matthew emailed me and asked me if I was going. I finally checked out the website, realized I had two days before applications were due, got my rear in gear, applied, and was accepted this week.

So later this month I'll be off to Our Nation's Capital to update the website of the Center for Democracy and Technology and do a bit of sight-seeing on the side. Our hotel is apparently right nearby the White House, so I will be close enough to spit on the president.

But I won't, because my mommy says I oughtn't.

Complaining aside, I guess I do have to take some initiative on getting professors to remember my name and/or face. Hence, Take Your Professor To Lunch Day.

On the 10th of every month, U-M has a secret (or perhaps just badly-advertised) program where you can have a free lunch in one of the campus restaurants for up to four people, including a professor, instructor, or GSI. (I can't find a website about it, but if you're on the U-M campus, you can go to room 1310 in the Michigan Union to get a voucher. It will be happening again March 10 and April 9 if you miss this one.)

So Mr B------ and Young Matthew and I decided to be proactive* and woo professors with free lunch.

This has turned out better than we imagined, because the professor we invited got very excited and when we had to inform him that the voucher could only be used at university restaurants, it prompted him to invite us out for lunch at a non-campus restaurant for another time.

* I freaking HATE that word

tbone and I also agreed that a liberal arts education has also ruined our chances at happiness.

At the point where 50% of college-bound seniors in my graduating class were headed for the University of Michigan, I went to Albion College. At Albion, all of my professors had or were working toward PhDs but they actually taught me themselves. They invited me to their houses for dinner, they took me on class trips, they knew me well enough to write recommendations for me, and they still know me when I come back to campus. As an undergrad at U-M, I may have had lectures by a professor, but all of my interactions would be with GSIs (graduate student instructors) while the professors went off and did research and taught graduate students.

That wasn't what I wanted, and I knew that I could go to a small, private liberal arts school for undergrad and go on to graduate school. I would get a more individualized education and I could follow it up with a degree from a big-name school. And once I was at the graduate level, I would actually be taught by professors.

Now I'm actually at this big-name school, doing graduate study, and it isn't at all what I expected. It may be because the School of Information doesn't have an undergraduate component, but I don't see how being a master's student is any better than being an undergrad. We are still in the situation of being lectured by a reknowned professor while our discussion sections are led by GSIs.

I can't say this is all bad, because although the worst instructor I've had at SI is a doctoral student, the best teacher I've had is also one. Another of my favorites is an adjunct lecturer with a master's from SI and no doctoral study.

The problem is that when you need recommendations for an internship, a GSI isn't going to cut it. An adjunct lecturer isn't going to cut it. I didn't take classes from well-known professors in my field until this semester and at this point I don't know how to approach them.

SI is small, for U-M, but it's somehow not small enough for me.

tbone and I have come to the following agreement:

American Idol is ruining our lives. We were both unhappy this week. We have decided that this is because we wasted most of our evenings by watching American Idol. Then after wasting our evenings in pointless entertainment, we had to either feel guilty about not doing homework during that time or feel tired when we stayed up after AI, doing said homework.

Wouldn't you think that would make me resolve to stop watching the show, because it's interfering with my schoolwork and my happiness? No such luck. It's bonding time with friends and family! Can't give that up!

If you are also dangerously addicted to the show, here are a few links that might interest you...

Apparently there is a Sigma Delta Tau sorority on campus! I thought it was just some kind of crude sexual joke when I saw the girl with ΣΔΤ plastered across her ass!

I'd like to give a big shout-out to the folks at SI Computing for making it through the month of January without a significant webmail outage! You go, people!

Directly to Hell!

Because it's out again!

When I'm working in a group, I expect my responsibilities to be Foibles, Hijinks and Baked Goods because if I were my groupmates, I wouldn't trust me with anything important. What do I know about anything, anyway?

So when one of my suggestions or ideas is met with a "Hey, we should do that" or a "Good point!" or someone lets me take charge of a situation rather than gently prying my fingers from the reins, I am constantly surprised and want to inform them of the errors of their ways.

Other than the fact that I seem to always end up in the Crazy Group that is willing to listen to things that I say, I think I actually like group work. My terrible driving need to be liked actually keeps me on task and forces me to have good work habits.

At this point in my SI career...

... if I had a friend who was interested in a career as an information professional of some sort and was looking at U-M, I would tell them to turn around and run as fast as they possibly can.

... if I hadn't already spent a semester's worth of time and tuition here, I would be thinking about dropping out.

... if I felt that the Choice & Learning foundations course was actually building a foundation for my career as an information professional, I would be rethinking my career path.

... I am so annoyed by this class and the idea that I should have to take it that I can't find any words to express my anger and frustration so I just want to scream and cry and swear and tear my hair out (and rhyme, apparently).

Up yours, SI 502! I am not in grad school to do math! I can't even focus on the classes I do like, because you are sapping my time and energy. Kindly eat me.

Economics, as far as I can tell so far, seems to be all about defining problems and finding feasible solutions to them.

Feasible schmeasible. Who's to say it's not feasible to hitch a ride to the Rose Bowl on a giant eagle?

Economics is for people with no imagination.

One Java lab down. I'm not dead yet. I didn't burst into tears, either, and I even followed along as we created programs to do such fascinating things as print a character string to the screen and carry on intriguing dialogue like:

program: What is your name?
srah-user: Mr B------ sucks
program: Hello, Mr B------ sucks!

You may now address me as srah, Java Programmer Extraordinaire! Coming soon to a toaster near you!

Our Search and Retrieval professors apologized for the fact that we are in the crappiest room in the crappiest building on campus (Dennison 269, if you're counting) and explained that SI is too stupid to realize they've grown too big for their own facilities, so we just have to beg to LS&A every semester and they throw us those rooms that aren't fit for their own uses.

Okay, maybe those weren't their exact words.

Anyway, the point is, they knew we had these complaints, they understood them, but they explained that this is why it had to be this way. I can accept that. They also told us that some of the pages in our electronic coursepack would be crooked but that at least we wouldn't have to pay for a paper coursepack. I appreciate that.

Oh, and speaking of paying for things...

My Choice and Learning professors told us yesterday that we had to have their two textbooks and coursepack (total cost: almost $250). I waited for their explanation or apology and it never came. Do they not realize how expensive their damn class is? Do they not care? Doesn't it bother them that because of insanely elevated textbook fees, their students already hated the class before the first class session began?

Apparently not. They asked if we had any questions about the textbooks, but I couldn't think of any that I could ask in a polite classroom setting or that wouldn't adversely affect my grade in the class.

As Teen Talk Barbie informed us, "Math is hard." And in the words of Jimmy Buffett, "Math sucks."

My semester is looking distressingly math- and logic- and computer-science-heavy. I was all ready to put all of my energy into Java Programming as my most insanely difficult hardest class when my Choice and Learning GSI informed us that the myths about his class requiring math knowledge were false.

"You don't need to know calculus!" he laughed, "All it requires is a bit of advanced algebra!"

Alge-who, now?

I have also been informed by an SI alum that you need to know how to take a derivative or at least know what a derivative is and why on earth or where on earth one would want to take one.

Derivi-whaaaa?

So yes, I am planning on failing out of SI. Goodbye, cruel school.

The difference between the dorks and the "cool kids" is that cool kids have to feign (or succeed in) disinterest in everything. They have to be nonchalant and not show excitement over anything. You are a dork if you get excited about things - especially if the majority of the population can't match your excitement.

I think that dorks make the best teachers. Can you imagine one of the cool kids in high school going into education?

"Today we're going to learn about, like, the end-to-end principle or something. Whatever. Why are you bouncing up and down in the back, there?"

It's much better to be taught by someone who is interested and passionate and knowledgeable about the subject matter, because their interest is contagious. One of my teachers keeps getting really excited about our class and asking if he's being too geeky for us. It is my belief that there's no such thing.

Hi, yeah, I'm cursed. First I go blog-ranting on and on about how I hate our courseware program, then 3.5 hours later, I go to my first class of the semester... taught by one of the creators/administrators of said program.

Teacher: Who here has used CourseTools?
*all hands raise*
Teacher: Who has used CourseTools:NextGeneration?
*most hands raise, since this class' website is on CTNG*
Teacher: And which do you prefer?
*chorus of "THE OLD ONE!!!1"s, to the apparent surprise of the instructor*

So much for all of those brownie points I racked up for logging onto the class website at 1am, the moment the instructor sent out the email notification that it was up. Sigh... Being a Complete Dork only counts for so much when you follow it up with insulting the professor's baby. Well, at least Mr B------ is enjoying himself.

FINE! YOU WIN!

Oh, University of Michigan. You have outsmarted me. I wasted all of my energy hating CourseTools.

Little did I know that you would release its freakish, inbred offspring, CourseTools: NextGeneration in its deformed, pathetic foetal form. Little did I know the further pain and anguish that could be caused by a completely unusable system. Little did I suspect how much worse this course management system could get. Little did I know the painful layers of irony in web usability designers being taught via a ridiculously unusable web system developed by web designers trained in web usability at our own school.

Now it's too late. My hate-energy has been sapped. All I can do is summon up a tiny bit of sarcasm in the form of teenspeak.

Teh samester hasnt even b-gun & allreddy im siked about corsetoolz!!!1 Too thums up to ma sk00l!!!1

I thought that $122.50 was an insane amount to pay for one textbook (a textbook on microeconomics, to make it worse) until I discovered that I was getting off lightly. Ouch. At least my $90 Java textbook sounds potentially useful...

Not bad, considering that I have adopted as my new mantra B is for Bubble Tea; that's good enough for me. 6.5? How do they calculate this stuff? And why don't I care?

I started bitching about the user interface of the labeling computers at UPS yesterday because my sister had to go from using the keyboard to the mouse and back again. GOMS GOMS GOMS! The end of the semester has not released me from critiquing user interfaces everywhere I go. I fear it will be with me for the rest of my life. Curse you, Tom Brinck!

Less than six hours until I am free from the tyranny that is the shopping cart first semester. Vay-cay plans? Sleeping, cleaning my room, dreaded Christmas shopping, leisure reading and party-party-partying. Oh, and being a complete and utter nerd, of course.

Mr B------ and I have imagined the inside of SI North, the building where all of our Graduate Student Instructors have their offices. We have speculated that it's full of French whores, lounging on giant mushrooms in old-fashioned lingerie, smoking hookahs and bitching about webmail being down (which comes to mind because it is right now, just as it is every weekend).

You would think that in a school so focused on technology and so full of people studying Human-Computer Interaction, there would be somebody here who could make it possible for humans to interact with computers once in a while. But maybe everyone here is a former French major like me and has no actual skillz.

What are they training us for?

The beast that is Social Systems & Collections has been defeated! Since I couldn't blog during the exam but I kept getting hung up on things, I took some wee notes on my thoughts.

12:50 - I'm hungry. Ten minutes to go, so I'll just log into CourseTools and go get some soup-- HEY! The questions have been posted! Start exam? Eat? Start exam? Eat, I think. Located some cup-a-soup and tortilla chips to nibble on.

12:55 - Now on to the exam! ... but I'm cold. Put on a sweatshirt. Still cold. Put on slippers. Still cold. It occurs to me that most of your body heat escapes through your head. Pull up sweatshirt hood. Still cold. Went searching out a handkerchief and have fashioned some kind of do-rag thing on top of my head. Slightly warmer. Some exam conditions, these.

1:08 - Why do I feel the desire to talk about the Urstodian's personal experiences with information concepts in all of my answers?

1:12 - Three hours for three questions and we're already twelve minutes into the exam! Stop thinking! Start typing!

1:33 - 72 words out of 250 on the first question. Fingers are rather sticky. Stop eating chips and get writing!

1:48 - Stupid dog. As predicted by Mr B------, the Devil Dog disturbs my concentration by wanting to go out.

2:04 - Stupid maximum word counts. I am a concise writer, so when I start getting wordy, you should just be pleased with it instead of making me pare down.

2:08 – 286 words?! No!

2:13 – 247! That's less than 250. Good on me. Moving on to other questions...

2:17 – Distracted by music with lyrics and inspired by Katie, in goes the Jurassic Park soundtrack.

2:50 – Panic! I have bits of the second and third questions answered, but we're almost down to the one-hour mark and neither is finished. Focus! Panic! Focus!

3:43 – Done and done and DONE! 581 words on a maximum of 750 is fine, right? If I'd had days to do it, I could have gone on and on for each of them, but we must cut somewhere. Were my answers too simplistic? Probably. I have no predictions on how well I'll do.

Update: Why I love SI: Five entries on one topic

Bad idea: Scheduling a final exam.

Worse idea: Scheduling a final exam to be taken en ligne from your home. Yes, it's open book and open note and yes, we're bound by honor code* not to collaborate on answers.

It's not cheating that I'm concerned about... it's wandering off to find something to eat and forgetting that I'm in the middle of an exam. It's too comfortable at home! I need to be in a structured environment with someone threatening to slap me with a ruler if I get out of line! I need to be prevented from going to the bathroom until I have finished and turned in my test! I need to be in an uncomfortable chair-desk-thing, scribbling in a blue book until I scream in pain from the hand-cramps. I can't be wrapped in a blanket and sipping tea, or my whole world will fall apart!

Well anyway, back to my reading.

* and the ethics of the information professional (Hedstrom, 2002)

One of the things that makes me sad about graduate school is that it's made me into a complete dork who has no idea how to interact in normal society. Well okay, I was kind of that way to start with. But it really scared me at our Super King Kong Mega Mega Study Group last night that we could tell jokes with punchlines like, "Well I've got a structuration theory for you right here!"

Ha ha ha ha ha. Gives me a little giggle just thinking about it.

So I would like to thank my blog and my readers for keeping me somewhat grounded in the reality of everyday human life. I will try to repay you for organizing into a social system around the collection of my thoughts by targeting my product to the specific needs of my user group - needs which I will recognize through my own observations, since they couldn't tell me because so many of our habits are tacit...

Crap.

Well, since I have clearly failed in my mission, I'll just leave you with another humdinger of a punchline from last night's dorkbacle: "But we couldn't... because that would violate... the Open-Close Principle!"

I am wandering around the Undergraduate Library in circles. What are all of these fecking undergraduates doing here? Get out! Get out! And give me your computer!

End of group project.
At 3am, groupthinking
becomes nothinking.

I wore a skirt for my presentation today. I was considered quite SEXXXY* by all who encountered me. But not S-E-X-X-Y, because that would be something altogether different.

Wearing a skirt gave me magical powers, apparently. It was my maaagic skirt, to paraphrase Forrest Gump. I felt like I was dressed up and therefore must know what I was talking about. Either that or I was so sick of rehearsing that I wanted it to be over with. A little bit of both.

I was perfectly ready to go for the first hour and 45 minutes of class, then I froze up when it was time for me to go. My palms were sweaty and there was vomit on my sweater: Mom's spaghetti.

Wait, no, that's Eminem. Ignore that vomit part, then. Just the sopping-wet palms. I spent the previous group's question-and-answer part trying to mop them off with my skirt and scarf, then Mah 501 Group Mate and I took our place up front.

I stammered and sped through the presentation, my voice wavering. I fixed on one person in the back of the room and presented the whole thing to him, forgetting to look at the teachers. And yet somehow, no one seemed to notice this! People kept telling me what a good job I'd done. At first, I thought they were humouring me because they'd heard my trembly voice and were afraid I was going to cry. But so many people have complimented me now, I'm beginning to think I might have actually done a good job.

Three cheers for srah, Public Speaker Extraordinaire!

* All caps and three Xs, Young Matthew and Mr B------!

I am so proud of myself for not putting off starting this 13-page paper until tomorrow night, since it's due Friday. Seriously, starting tonight - while sounding completely bonkers-insane to everyone I've talked to - is a great leap in anti-procrastination for the srah. I am srah, hear me roar!

I think I have some kind of paper-writing hyperactivity or ADD, though. Not just because I am blogging right now when I should be writing a paper - that's just procrastination and being easily distracted. It's just that once I get motivated to write a paper, I want to write the whole thing. At the same time. So one part of my brain is typing the introduction while another is thinking about things that need to go into the references page. When one gets stronger than another, I have to hop off to that part of the document and type away there for a while and hope that I remember to come back to the first place.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could just sit down and write a paper from the first word of the cover page to the last citation in the references? Not gonna happen.

My body only went to discussion section today (instead of getting much-needed sleep) because we were doing course evaluations at the end. My brain, however, stayed in its hibernative state and tried in vain to follow the discussion while being distracted by the completely unrelated and unprovoked idea that SI Computing doesn't like the name of our computer lab, the DIAD (Digital Information Access and Dissemination lab). So while others discussed information professionalism, srah's little brain chugged away and produced these lovely replacements:

The remarkable thing about me is that I can survive anything. This is only because I overreact in the first place and think that lots of work is going to kill me. It's not going to kill me. It's just going to make me suffer a little. It's 5pm and I'm not dead yet. Time for a break, then more suffering when I get home.

Have you ever wanted to kill people on the street because they're so happy and you have so much work to do? Have you ever wanted to kill people on the bus because they have seats and you have so much work to do?

All of a sudden am stressed beyond my imagination. Am too stressed to cry, because tears would blur my vision and impede my productivity. Am too stressed to take the time out to make myself a tinfoil hat and go crazy in a proper tinfoil-hat fashion.

Am apparently not too stressed to blog. Am never too stressed to blog, because blog is outlet for stress.

Why am I so emotionally unstable this semester? I used to float along on a plateau and am now all manic-depressive ALL the time. Should I be seeking help?

Last semester I struggled over a borrowed laptop, trying desperately to find things that would fit into my schedule. This time I got into all of the sections I wanted on the first try. It feels like I haven't worked hard enough for it.

Stupid evening classes.

(listening to Neil Diamond as I get ready this morning)

srah: I always want to sing this "Sar... Saruman" instead of "Soo... Soolaimon".
(pause)
srah: I am such a nerd.
Mom: Well, from what I've heard, you're in good company at SI.
srah: This is very true. Hopefully Return of the King will come out after all of our exams are done. Otherwise we're in trouble!
Mom: Why's that?
srah: Because no one will show up for class the next day!
Mom: Oh. Well, that's okay. Your teachers probably won't either.

* thanks to Mr B------ for the nerd-assistance

Sometimes when I stay up late doing a long paper, like, say a 540 take-home midterm, I am easily distracted and prone to insanity and random obscenities for the rest of the day. Luckily that won't be the case today, because I got me a good four hours of sleep. And on a related note, September Morn is a really fucking good song.

My lovely assistant, Mr Dave, brought Twizzlers Bites to class today. I don't even like the damned things, but it's a three-hour class and I need chemical assistance to stay awake, so I had one. And it wasn't any good at all.

So I had another one. And that one wasn't any good either.

But I kind of had the taste of the last one lingering in my mouth, so I figured I would have another.

And another. And another. And another.

At one point, I decided to carefully nibble away at each damned tiny candy in order to make it last longer. There's a limited amount of nibbling you can do on a Twizzlers Bite, but at least it slowed down the incessant consumption a little bit.

I realized how nibbly I was being, looked around, and realized how many people in my User Interface Design class read this blog* and were probably thinking, Geez, I thought we could keep her from being nibbly if we didn't give her almonds. But there she goes again. I think they were probably just glad I wasn't sucking on them and spitting them back out.

By the time our break arrived, I was having some kind of sugar fit and couldn't sit still for the rest of class. Boing boing boing boing boing!

* I can think of 7 off the top of my head. Oh my god!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Putain de merde!

Sometimes one just needs to vent.

In my group meeting today, I got to sound smart by knowing things about blogs.

Who knew?

Two Northwood buses arrived at my bus stop at the same time today. I got on the one less full of travelers. And that has made all the difference.

I was lucky to have gotten on the bus at a point where it was relatively empty, because it turned out that I was riding with the original Busdriver from Hell*. When I got on, I was able to find a seat and sit right down. But by the next stop, seats were getting scarce and far from the entrance and people who were only riding for a short while decided to stand.

"I'm gonna need you to find a seat for me," suggested the busdriver, rather forcefully. So people sat down, and we moved on to the next stop, where more people piled on.

"I'm gonna need you to find a seat for me," suggested the busdriver. They looked around. There were no seats nearby.

"There's an empty seat right there, near the back," he said, looking at us in his rear-view mirror, "I'M GONNA NEED YOU TO FIND A SEAT FOR ME!!!!!!!!!" Someone sat in the seat, but there were still two people standing near the front of the bus.

"I'M GONNA NEED YOU TO FIND A SEAT FOR ME," he commanded. "THERE ARE TWO EMPTY SEATS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS."

At this point, I was most concerned by the fact that he was counting empty seats at the back of the bus while driving 40 miles an hour down Fuller and changing lanes. The standers couldn't see the two seats at the back.

"I don't see any--"

"I'M GONNA NEED YOU TO FIND A SEAT FOR ME. THERE ARE TWO EMPTY SEATS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS. SIT DOWN!" he roared. They made their way to the back, if only to distance themselves from him. I assume that eventually they found the seats that were visible only to him.

*What, Cerberus?

What I like most about my work group for User Interface Design is that, while we aren't terribly focused, this isn't always a bad thing. Our meetings may last five hours where everyone else's last one, but we manage to find a balance between working and having fun, so we get things done and don't notice the time going by. It's a lot less stressful than trying to bring everyone together for a quick, productive meeting and breaking up. Dinner, working, playing... 'sall good. C'est cool. C'est relaxe.

The paper that I've been editing this weekend is our 15-page Use of Information paper. In this class, we have practical experience doing whatever it is exactly that they're trying to teach us to do. We are divided into groups and sent to a University office, non-profit organization, or library site for the semester, to examine their work processes and tell them how they could improve their communication or workflow or things like that. It smells suspiciously of consulting.

Last week in our discussion section, our groups convened to discuss our cultural models, diagrams showing the interactions in the offices. Each group drew their own, then we had to share them with another group and get their input and critiques.

We started with tbone and Mr B------'s group's cultural model. They were a bit confused about how to draw their Venn diagrams to best represent the interactions between the different groups at their site, but we offered some input and suggestions and I think they may have felt better or had more ideas about where they were going.

Then we moved over to our drawings. Which had to be explained. And the whole culture of our site had to be described, because it is so complex and tied up in bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo and internal and external links that no one who hasn't been studying the group for weeks could understand. So here it is, summed up:

Us to them: "Hmmm, I think maybe you could be clearer in that label. And maybe you could have another arrow pointing over here."

Them to us: "Damn, your site is hard."

You better believe it, baby. After explaining it all to the other group, though, I think we came out with... oh wait, nothing. Nothing but more confusion. And a sense of failure. Thankfully, we seem to have formulated something over the course of the weekend. And also thankfully, I am only editing and was not given any responsibilities for drawing anything or understanding the point of making stupid cultural models.

As I walked across the bridge, I saw a man in a long black coat, a beard, and a yarmulke, holding a palm frond and trying rather unsuccessfully to hide behind a lamppost. He could have been waiting for a bus, but it was a pedestrian bridge. He could have been waiting for someone, but it seemed an odd place to wait. I stared at him for a while and wondered. As I passed, he called out to me.

"Are you Jewish?"

"What?"

"Are you Jewish?"

"No."

"Oh. Alright then. Have a nice day."

That's the second time that's happened to me. It makes me wonder what they're doing. I guess they're trying to round up Jewish students and make sure they're going to synagogue and not wandering away from the community. Or maybe they're inviting people to the Sukkot tent on the Diag. Sometimes I'm tempted to say yes, just to see what they're after. Sometimes I wonder if they would wish me a good day even if I said yes.

They're my favorite religious group on campus because they don't try to give me anything or tell me I'm going to Hell or convince me that their way is right. They're just checkin'.

U-M has organized a "Take Your Professor to Lunch Day" where on the 10th of each month, a group of up to three students can take a professor or GSI out to lunch in one of the campus restaurants and it's free for all involved. Although I think I would have ignored it if it were just me, now that I was convinced to do it, I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't go. You learn more about your professor, they learn more about you, and you all get a free lunch. Good deal.

The best part of it was that I voiced some of my concerns about the class to my professor and told him about things I felt I wasn't understanding in the class. He pointed out that it was a pretty superficial introductory class and that the concepts I wasn't understanding were deeper things that I needn't worry about. So it turns out I'm a genius after all. Hoo-rah.

Note: I don't particularly recommend the turkey and mozzarella baguette at the University Club, because it is rather flavorless. The lentil soup, however, gets a big thumbs up.

My User Interface Design group had a... uh... meeting last night (a meeting which consisted of drinks, dinner, Outburst, Taboo and poker) and got to talking about how nerdy everyone at SI is. They disagree.

They don't consider themselves nerds because they don't think they're smart enough or work hard enough. And yet, despite their love for the Lord of the Rings and younger propensities for Magic: The Gathering (you know who you are), they don't consider themselves geeks. Dorks didn't seem to appeal to them either.

How difficult are they? Just accept one name and embrace it, because you are it, folks, and only getting worse! You can't hide! SI will bring you down!

While ragging on a class for doing a crappy job on the first paper of the year, I think a few things should be taken into consideration. If no one has followed the directions correctly and no one has done the assignment correctly, is this a reflection on student performance, or perhaps something deeper? Is this a problem with student interpretation of the directions or, dare I say it, the directions themselves?

This is, you will understand, all completely hypothetical and did not happen this morning.

I finally got back my first number-graded paper as a graduate student today. Everything up to this point has been checks and check-plusses, which are just joke-grades and have been tossed at me left and right and willy-nilly.

The results were much better than expected, but I'm sure there will be plenty more to bring me back to my sad, pathetic reality soon. Either that or I am a crackerjack writer and will get a fantastic report card to show my parents. I'm not particularly concerned because I was prepared for failure by all of my professors, who have been shooting us down and trampling on our egos, telling us not to aim too high and to be satisfied with a B because we made it into grad school and employers aren't going to care about our grades as long as we pass.

Hypothetically, if you finally notice, a month into the semester, that someone is in your class, is it rude to loudly exclaim, "HEY! WHAT? YOU'RE IN THIS CLASS?" when you see them? Even if, hypothetically, you only technically met them in person this weekend? It seems terrible, like you're saying, "Hey there, Completely Unremarkable Person, it took me a month to notice you."

Not that I have done anything like that, or anything. Twice in the past week. But on a completely unrelated subject, can you suggest any nearby holes for me to crawl into?

Also, and I'm just asking here, seriously, how many friggin' commas can I use in this post?

I am such a nerd. No one else seems to like them at all, but I get really excited about my Social Systems and Collections readings and lectures.

On Friday, the professor was talking about the impact of artefacts on memory and the social character of "individual" memory (Radley, p. 48*). That is to say, different objects or words will mean different things to different people based on their own experiences, à la Proust's madeleine or in the way that everyone seems to come up with strange and different Unconscious Mutterings answers that never would have occurred to me.

One example that he gave for the second topic was that people in Ann Arbor, upon hearing the word "Victor" automatically have a different reaction than other people would. I had a moment of my own this morning, when I saw the message COLUMBUS = GENOCIDE chalked onto a wall near West Hall.

That's funny, I thought. Why would they get so excited about that now? That isn't until November 22.

* My fear of plagiarism has made me insane. APA! APA! APA! I will refrain from putting a "References" section in this footnote. I WILL REFRAIN! Refe-- REFRAIN!

Sometimes I am astounded by the sheer number of nerds that SI has attracted to one place. Other times I am astounded by the vast quantity of nerdiness that has been amassed here.

Depends on how you look at it, I guess. Either way, I seem to spend a lot of time being astounded. Do you think there's a way to harness this power and ensure that it is used for good rather than evil? I'm thinking maybe we could fashion it into some kind of ring...

This is my weekend:

Work, Bentley happy hour, work, party party party, sleep.
Look for a coat?, work, group meeting, hot date with the Pato, work, sleep.
Work, movie with Roommate, work, sleep.

I hope some of that work actually gets done...

We spend all of our time informing ourselves with information about the way people are informed or inform themselves about information. There are too many levels here. I get confused and can never remember which one I'm on.

Is the semester over yet?

I think I made two new friends this week. I am distributing Post-It®s left and right. I am socializing! I am networking! I am doing a bit of homework as well! I am sleeping!

I am still tired!

Mr B------ has beaten me to the punch with The Official HCI Webpage.

I'm not sure that any of the pictures are accurate representations of SI students, though - they really should be wearing t-shirts on their heads instead. Room for improvement!

"What Jerome is ignorant of, no man has ever known."
- St Augustine

Today is the saint's day of St Jerome, patron saint not only of translators, but also of librarians, archivists and libraries.

I am totally naming all of my children Jérôme.

[via languagehat]

I know that I am pathetic beyond belief to admit this to you, but I've been alive 23 years, 1 month and 4 days and only today have I discovered The Official Ninja Webpage: REAL Ultimate Power!!!!, which unlocks all the secrets of ninjadom, like:

1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

One of the best things about this is that, miraculously, some other webpages have appeared with the same design. It's like a natural phenomenon. Who would have thought that they'd all come up with the same idea like that?

My favorites:

The Official Librarian Homepage
The Official Pirate Homepage
The Official Box of Wine Homepage
The Official James Madisons Homepage

[via Mr B------, who doesn't have a weblog yet, but oughta]

And more importantly, this is not an effective use of my time.

Why do I never have things on hand so that I can prepare today for tomorrow's classes? This is why I'm always behind! This is why I'm losing my mind! This is why I just rhymed!

You should leave this site and go unwind. Ignoring me can be underlined. You could watch TV for deaf people (signed). Or listen to a talking book for the blind. Go check and see if your shoes are shined. Read the dictionary and see how things are defined. You can throw me away like an old orange rind. Or like rotten grapes too soon de-vined. You could do any of this if you were so inclined.

I have completely forgotten what I was talking about, but here's my new point: rhyming is fun!

Brrrrrrrrrr! *rubs hands together*

Paper after paper after paper! Ah, there's nothing like a brisk mental workout to get you-- zzzzzzzzzzzzz;jaofjaf;oiijc;oaJj.

*slowly raises head from the keyboard, emits a piteous wail*

This week is going to be monstrous. Kill me now.

For our first Social Systems & Collections paper, we have to examine the social systems and collections in the TV show The Restaurant. I have discovered, from watching the provided clips over and over again, that what reality TV shows us is that everyone on Earth except me is a friggin' moron.

I'm not sure I want to be a human being anymore. Do you think the bunnies will have me?

Where were you last Wednesday afternoon? I hear you ask. I don't know why you're so obsessed with my whereabouts, but I'll ignore that for now. For your information, we spent the last half hour of this week's User Interface Design class... at the arcade. I spent my class time shooting innocent bystanders, being sworn at by South Park pinball and getting hit in the head with air hockey pucks. Jealous much?

I've always had a favorite class for every semester or year of school. I usually have a least favorite class as well. What's really strange for me, three weeks into the semester, is that I love and hate each one of my classes.

Understanding Networked Computing used to be my favorite class, because there wasn't a lot of work and I got it. Well, I don't get it anymore. I need to re-read. I need more sleep. I need someone to take me up on my offer of cookies and teach me things. I might need to have a good cry about it while I'm at it.

The stupid thing is, by Tuesday, I'll probably love it again.

It be a great leap to Talk Like a Pirate with me shipmates. Be they land-lubbers or know they the Pirate Code? Will they engage in parlay or make me walk the metaphorical plank of ridicule?

Luckily, oi associates with a lot of nerrrds. Arrrrr.

I am so amused by most of my professors and GSIs. They seem like good people, and I'd kinda like to stick Post-It®s on their foreheads, too.

I think the whole Post-It® thing is actually pretty normal - it's just that most people don't think of it in terms of yellow sticky notes. The people I've labeled as my own are what Anne Shirley would have called "kindred spirits".

I suspect that I am quite fond of meeting new people. I am sad that I don't get more opportunities to meet my classmates and learn more about them, but I generally go into Serious Student Mode as soon as I enter the classroom and am only willing to discuss things directly related to the course at hand. I don't want to be that person. Or maybe I do.

I think I'm the worst Human-Computer Interaction specializationist* ever. Why am I always the one whining about how we don't get paper copies of anything, or how optical mice aren't as good as roller-ball ones, or how we seem to spend all of our time in Foundations classes talking about business and computers and never about libraries or archives? I should probably be, like, embracing technology or something, shouldn't I?

In other grad school news, Use of Information should probably be retitled How to be a Consultant. The entire purpose of the class seems to be to train consultants. I suspect, however, that the point of the class is really to teach us how to do group work and that consulting is only a red herring. It's all a façade, you fools!

* Because "specialist" sounds like I actually know what I'm doing. What is up with all of these footnotes? Damn you, Justin, and your seductive footnoting ways!

There are so many groups I have to join that, despite my professor's urgings, I was putting off joining an Understanding Networked Computing study group for as long as possible - at least until I had my actual work groups in other classes planned out.

But I think I'm going to have to give in sooner rather than later. Today in lecture, I felt like my brain was panting as it tried to keep up with the professor. I got a stabbing pain in my head at one point, which I think may have been a brain cramp. Poor unused brain. So unused to exercise*.

Kernel? Isn't that what's left at the bottom of the popcorn bowl? Linux? Isn't he Luxy's brother, who wanders around with his security blanxet? Who? What? Where am I?

I'll have to appeal for volunteers and look for someone to help me whip the ol' noggin into shape.

* How did I use the word "unused" twice in such close succession? It's actually pretty cool that they aren't even the same word or pronounced the same. Sometimes I write things by accident that are pretty cool.

Has been a tough week. Have not had much sleep. Visions of Zs are dancing in my heads and I would like to go to beds. That rhymes a lot. I think I'm on the other side now, though... at least until next week.

Probably will blog tomorrow all of the things I've been holding off on in my attempts to be productive. I said "off on". I'm getting distracted mid-sentence. Where was I?

;osa iejjf ao jmfiv;oesw <-- I seem to have fallen face-first onto the keyboard. Mind the drool.

I have to come up with 250 user interfaces. I am going insane.

Is a peanut a user interface?

It's gotten to the point where I have to make a separate list of Things That Are Not User Interfaces so that things like "a squirrel", "a lemon" and "a peanut" will stop repeating endlessly in my head.

Please send me a screenshot of your Mac desktop or whatever they call the desktop on a Mac.

Today someone I was working in a group with, whose name I didn't and still don't know, told me that she usually can't concentrate on a full bladder.

Good advice that will make me examine my own study techniques? Or overshare?

Both, I think.

In English, we only have one word: to know. In many other languages, however, there is a distinction made between what my professor called know-how (Spanish/French conocer, connaitre) and know-that (saber, savoir). I would tend to define them more along the lines of know-of (being familiar with something or someone - "I know Italy", "I know Johnny Depp") and know-that (facts, how to to things - "I know that I'm failing", "I know how to do long division").

I wonder how the fact that we only have one word affects the way that English speakers know things. How does it affect our view of the world?

No blogging today. Srah is very tired. Graduate school involves much work and srah needs to re-learn how to read.

Is it May 2005 yet?

The group projects have begun. When choosing a group in User Interface Design, we had to consider what skills each member brought to the group. C and D said that they both come from computer science backgrounds and know how to do things like program. And D can draw better than either of us. They looked at me.

"Um... Need anybody to speak some French? I can speak a whole mess of French!"

Hmmm. Apparently that is not a useful skill in this situation. Luckily it was decided that I have writing and expression skills that they lack. They must want me for some other reason, though, because that sounded like a lame skill.

Unfortunately, I think I am beginning to suspect why they really want me around. My contribution to my group seems to be as the Stupid User Example. We had to look at a common electronic device today and analyze it according to Jakob Nielsen's Usability Heuristics. We chose C's cell phone and passed it around to see how usable it was for a first-timer.

I would push a button then draw back in surprise and fear when it did something I didn't expect. I had to ask what everything did. I kept pushing the wrong buttons and screaming.

"You're not a cell phone user, are you?" C asked. I don't know where she got that impression.

"Actually, I have had one." Wait, that made me look even more pathetic. Backspace! Backspace! Oh wait, I'd already said it. Crap.

Mostly I just dug myself deeper, looking more and more like some kind of technology mutant and having no idea how them portable fellytones work because clearly I have been living in a cave. On Mars. With my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears.

When designing new products, it's good to know what mistakes the lowest common denominator is going to make... it's not quite as good to be the lowest common denominator yourself.

As you may or may not know, this past Saturday's halftime show at the Michigan-Houston football game was a tribute to the School of Engineering, which will be 150 years old in 2004. It was clear that there was some engineering influence on their music choices, as the songs they chose made engineering sound like a wild and dangerous discipline.

Although I have resigned myself to the fact that it ain't gonna happen in reality, I can still dream of the marching band's Salute to the School of Information. Unfortunately, I can only come up with one song that would be appropriate. Mummy has suggested that I appeal to you, the readers, for more. Any suggestions?

Someone in my Use of Information class was wearing a Blogger t-shirt. I felt a common bond... so I decided not to talk to her.

I suppose people from school will discover this site and my blog eventually, but I don't really want to advertise. I've been using this as my web page for all official SI stuff for the time being. It's not that I'm really trying to hide it... but I haven't decided yet where my boundaries are going to be.

Update: About an hour after posting this, I found an SI classmate's weblog and left a comment because I felt weird about reading it and not 'fessing up. So... so much for that plan.

Have you ever used an educational course management system called Course Tools? Apparently it was developed, in large part, at the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

I am so proud that I would like to put a brick through this computer screen.

Die, Course Tools, die!!!!!

The University of Michigan makes a killing, I'm sure, on merchandise. You see it everywhere. One of the more popular styles is the plain block-letter "Michigan" with the name of a specific sport or school within the university (in this case, figure skating). They have "Michigan Law" shirts. "Michigan Medicine". "Michigan Public Health". "Michigan Social Work". "Michigan Undecided" (really).

Do they have "Michigan Information"? No, because people would always be asking us for directions. The Archives & Records Management students have designed their own "Michigan Archives" t-shirts. I would suggest that we make our own "Michigan School of Information Human-Computer Interaction Specialization" shirts, except that the words would probably wrap all the way around my body and still not fit.

Sigh. Ho hum. "Michigan HCI"?

"Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize..."
- "Lobachevsky", Tom Lehrer

One thing that grad school is really good at is putting the fear of god into you. Or the fear of university, anyway. All I've heard during this week of introductions is warning after warning about plagiarization. And now Cheryl brought it up, too (no doubt herself inspired by countless warnings at Kent).

Now I'm afraid to write anything. Clearly I'm not going to go lifting chunks of text from places and passing them off as my own, but it's things like using ideas without citing them and making an effort but improperly citing things that scare me.

I was going to use JohnHannah.net as my example of a collection for Social Systems & Collections until I remembered that it's one big copyright no-no and I'd rather not draw attention to that...

I'm sure I didn't correctly cite the Tom Lehrer song, but a) I don't know what the Internet protocol for citations is, b) That site probably didn't have permission to republish the lyrics in the first place and c) Oh well.

Remind me not to go to any more lectures on the Ethics of the Information Professional.

I can't recommend listening to the Gandharva's "First Day of Spring" while accidentally stumbling onto the weblogs of millions and millions of librarians, some of whom went to SI. The combination of angsty music and visual/intellectual identification/love overload may fry your brain, as it did mine.

For my Social Systems & Collections foundation course, we have to post a self-introduction on the class website. Reading through the 63 that are up so far, it occurs to me that with a school full of 250 people interested in information, information retrieval, and information use, we could play some kick-ass Trivial Pursuit.

Enrolling at U-M has turned me into some kind of schizophrenic mutant. All of my other friends got this out of their system during the undergraduate years, I assume, so they aren't very sympathetic to my confusion and observations.

I've spent my whole life avoiding campus for fear of hitting pedestrian students with my car and now I am one of them. I'm a townie but I'm a student. I'm running myself over and telling myself to go back to where I came from, sneering at myself and blocking myself in traffic by crossing against the light.

I am constantly amazed by the side of Ann Arbor that I never knew. Since I went to a small college and never spent much time on U-M's campus, particularly during the school day, I didn't really know what it's like on a large university campus. At Albion, you can tell when the hour strikes because the empty campus fills with people going from one class to another, from class to their dorm, or vice versa. During the hour, there are only a few scattered people running errands or doing other things. Here at Michigan, there are hundreds of people everywhere you go at any time of the day.

I don't know if it's good or bad - I'm just struck by how different it is and by the fact that I never knew that all of this was going on in my own town.

I am about to corner the world market on table tents. This is what one of my Graduate Student Instructors has called the cardstock-folded-in-half nametags that we have to carry around with us and proudly display so that the teachers know who we are. I am thinking of consolidating my collection into une seule table tent so that I can put all of my efforts into that one. My name is clearly not sufficient. My table tent will have my life story on it! Be multicolored! Covered in stickers! Laminated!

I think my enthusiasm is misplaced. What did we do in class today? I was too busy coming up with table tent plans.

I had two of my forehead-sticky victims in my 9:00 class this morning. They WILL be mine!

After two days of orientation, I am completely discombobulated. Half of me is unbelievably stressed out by meeting people and making small talk. This half has had enough of hysterically funny conversations where you laugh and laugh and laugh but are constantly stressed that you're going to be the one who drops the ball and makes the other two people in the conversation stop and look at their watches. The other half has gotten used to the orientation lifestyle and doesn't know how she's going to last from Thursday to Tuesday without seeing all of the new people she's met.

The first half doesn't want to talk to another human being for as long as she lives, but the second half wants to go out and socialize socialize socialize. So far, the first half is winning. I came home last night looking forward to painting my toenails, eating pita chips and very garlicky hummous and watching The Royal Tenenbaums. Unfortunately, I was kidnapped and forced to leave the house, but I made myself useful by making cookies, speaking only when spoken to and trying not to make people laugh and start another of those stressful vicious cycles of hilarity. I was still so knocked out by the day's socializing that I came home, tried to finish the movie, and fell asleep in the middle of it. Shame on me.

Have you ever been friend-infatuated with anyone? Have you ever met someone and been so attracted to them upon first meeting them that you want to declare YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND and mark them with a Post-it® so that everyone knows that this is your potential friend-to-be and so that you won't lose them later?

No?

Uh... me neither.

On the way to the dentist's office this morning, I had a conversation in my head with fellow SI students about What To Do in Ann Arbor.

Well, I explained to them, if you're looking for a really good cheese selection, I'd try Zingerman's or Big Ten. But I guess you're probably not. I'm better to ask about practical things like that than, say, which clubs to go to. I'm not really into going out and wiggling around in a little tiny top, trying to drag all the mecs.

This seemed like a perfectly normal thing to say until I realized I'd said mecs instead of guys. And once I'd realized that, I realized that I'd said "drag". What? We don't use that word that way in English. What I'd meant was draguer. And now, several hours later, I can't think of a good word to translate draguer.

I think it's a really good word for the situation, though, because it sort of reminds me of trawling - the idea of a fishing boat dragging its nets and trapping everything in its path. That's sort of what I meant, in a figurative way.

Overheard:

Student 1: So how did you spend your summer?
Student 2: Two words: Tae-bo and crosswords.

I was happy because the dean of the School of Information actually got up and said he didn't know how to describe "Information" to people who ask, either. It brings together all of the groups of people in information professions and acquaints them with the issues related to information while training them for those careers. I am actually quite excited for my mandatory Foundations courses, which everyone in SI has to take. I'm interested in learning more about all of the other specializations (Library and Information Services/Archives and Records Management/Information Economics, Management and Policy) and the way they overlap. The dean says that one of the advantages of SI is that overlapping responsibilities and issues prepare you for ambiguity.

Alrightythen.

So I'm pretty excited about SI in general, even though I can't get into any of the classes I want at this point, but I shall triumph!

Tired. Too tired to blog. Orientation is much better than workshops, even if the class sessions I want are all full. Best of all, now I have friends and am super über charming and everyone loves me.

I am happy.

Seriously, do not click here (requires Flash).

What do you get when you fill a classroom with librarians, archival librarians and computer-interacting librarians?

Silence.

I'm not exactly Miss Chatty, but once someone takes the first step, I can talk an ear or two off. The problem is, no one talks. Or they whisper. The silence is accablante.

I don't want to make friends. I just want to have them already.

During the lunch break between sessions, I had no friends to eat with so I wandered around campus. I wandered into Ulrich's because when you're alone and friendless, there's no friend like shelves and shelves of stationery and school supplies.

Unfortunately, I had chosen the worst day possible to wander into Ulrich's, because the students are moving in. The store, as is normal for a campus book store, was packed with undergrads, most of whom I assumed were freshmen because I wanted to. Prissy little girls in miniskirts and tank tops picking out the notebook they have to have because all of their friends, who all came to U-M, and who were all shopping together at Ulrich's, had the same one. Big stupid-looking fraternity-meat being chased around the store by parents carrying armloads of books in the hope that they'll crack one.

I love U-M. I know I promised last year that I wouldn't do it again this year, but... must... mock... students. Undergrads, anyway. That way I'm less hypocritical.

Geoff Larcom wrote a very beautiful piece in the Ann Arbor News that shames me. We shouldn't hate the students. We should loooooove them, because they have personal dramas.

"All you see is a mini-van pulling up," he said. "What you don't see is the story that is going on inside the car. It looks all the same, but in fact, there are hundreds if not thousands of stories going on."

Our Intro to SI Computing workshop is having a ten-minute break. I should probably be human-interacting, but am instead computer-interacting. Would any humans like to interact with my computer?

I am not going to have any friends. Approach me... IF YOU DARE!

People kept asking me if I'm nervous or excited about starting grad school. I really wasn't. I just wanted to get orientation over with so I would finally be able to register for classes so I would finally have a class schedule so I could finally get a job.

But now I'm here. And I know squat. And I'm scared. If I were the kind of person who said things like "buggin'", I would tell you that I am buggin' right now. What kind of mutant am I that I've lived 21 years of my life in Ann Arbor and know less than nothing about the University of Michigan? That I got lost in the Undergraduate Library? I feel completely out of control. I don't know what I'm doing. What have I gotten myself into?

Mer - I think I am typing this about 50 feet away from you. I would come say hi but I'm scared and I might pee on you.

I don't know how I feel about the U-M admissions policy change. I've never gone to a public university, I've been out of the country, and I don't understand all of the arguments. What I do know is that the U-M is already having financial problems and now will have to hire new admissions staff to read their 25,000 yearly applications and make individual judgments and decisions.

And more annoying to me than any question of race or socio-economic background is the fact that scholarship athletes got 20 points on the old scale. If the point system gave a chance to disadvantaged kids who want to go to college and succeed, I'm all for it. If the point system gave the football or basketball team the chance to have some dumbass high school athlete they're recruiting actually be accepted at U-M, then I'm against it.

There are way too many kids just using the university to get noticed by pro teams, not because they have any academic interest. I think that's a shame. The argument is that U-M makes a lot of money from the football team so shut up little girl or your tuition will go up, but how much of that football (or basketball, or hockey) money actually makes it out of the athletic department? Maybe funds from the football team are doing something like keeping women's volleyball afloat, but I have a simple solution: let's just abolish college sports altogether.

I have a new project where I have to go to Central Campus every afternoon for the rest of the summer. Maybe you can't sense, in reading this, the great levels of joy this brings me. I understand completely, as it can sometimes be hard to pick up on negative joy.

As I crossed the Diag, I suddenly had flashbacks to every time I had jumped up and down on the block M. If you are not aware, there is a superstition that a U-M student who steps on the block M in the pavement on the Diag will fail his/her first exam. For six or seven years now, I've been stomping on the M when I pass it, triumphantly proclaiming my immunity because I was not a U-M student. For years before that, there was just the stomping, without the triumphant proclamations.

Now I am suddenly concerned... are those stomps cumulative?

Went on my visit to SI. I think I am the only person on Earth who prounounces it "sigh" instead of "ess-eye". I am some kind of mutant. Among the various other things I learned/reheard, I found out that the School of Information has their own career services person. I was told that she can "videotape a mock interview" and heard instead that she can "videotape and mock interviews", and I think my eyes bugged out in fear. After my visit, I came back to work and my mom pointed out that my sweater was mis-buttoned. Way to make an impression.

I never walk around the campus during the day, but then I try to avoid walking around the campus at all. It's weird to see all the activity and millions and millions of people studying and working there, even during the summer. What have I gotten myself into? What is this huge, monstrous machine? I am frightened.

Sometimes I feel like there is a war going on over my soul. Sometimes I feel like the Archives Fairies and the Human-Computer-Interaction Fairies are fighting over me. I really want to support my side and all, but the Archives Fairies seem so strong. Maybe they cheat. Or maybe it's the economy.

If the HCI fairies would throw a job in my direction, I would certainly help them, but the Archives Fairies have stability and a steady income on their side. I am weak and give in to their evil. Forgive me and help me, HCI Fairies, before the Archives Fairies break my will and I join them.

The evil institution that will have me in its clutches next year is making me jump through hoops to prove that they can't charge me out-of-state tuition. I have lived in Michigan all my life, folks, except for spending a few months in France twice. You can't charge me out-of-state tuition. I would qualify for in-city tuition if such a thing existed, you jerks. Now I have to fill out papers and tell the university everywhere I've studied, everywhere I've worked, and every single place my parents and I have lived since 1948.

When I tell people that I'm going to grad school at U-M, they have a tendancy to say "Oh, so you can live at home! Oh... so you'll have to live at home..." as if living at home will be miserable or upsetting. I lived at home during my undergrad summers and had no problem, and when people react in this way, I tend to say that my family's not bad to live with.

But now, 1.5 hours away from landing, it occurs to me that they may have been making those "Well... good luck..." faces not because it will be difficult for me to live with my family, but because it will be hard for them to live with me. After seven months as a lone wolf, I will have to be trained back into society. Please be patient with me.

I'm going to graduate school to learn how to make web sites based on the principles of information science. I hope that my sites will be simple yet attractive, practical and easily navigable. The point will be for information to be accessed in the most convenient way possible. In other words, they will be everything that this isn't.

No one told me the school had a website. And it's not the type of thing I could have found out for myself, since there's no text to come up in search engines. I am disappointed that I am not prominently featured - in fact, enseignement générale is pretty well overlooked. You may, however, gaze upon the visages of my students Aude, Haouess and Sylvain. I would link to their individual pages but, as previously mentioned, this site is a mutant and has no pages.

Note: I suggest that you choose the full-screen version (affichage plein écran), because otherwise you will keep hitting the Back key like an idiot and being transported back to the index page. Not that this happened to me personally about a thousand times or anything. To go up one level, click Sommaire. To close the full-screen version, hit Alt+F4.

As previously blogged, I have been accepted to the Master's program in the Human-Computer Interaction specialization of the University of Michigan's School of Information. It's a good thing, too, as I had put all of my eggs in one basket and couldn't be arsed to apply anywhere else.

SI manages to offer a program that interests me and also allows me the opportunity to live at home. So no more empty-nesting for Mommy and Daddy - the fledgling shall return to the roost. I imagine it will be a bit difficult living at home after living all alone for seven months, but I also miss them and miss a lot of things about being home. I think I will be ready to give up some independence in exchange for having a washing machine, dishwasher, and love. Not necessarily in that order, although...

Here I am, returning to Ann Arbor for at least another two years. It's my beloved home town, even if it does suck.

On behalf of the Dean and Faculty of the School of Information, I am pleased to offer you admission to the Master of Science in Information program at the School of Information, University of Michigan for Fall 2003...

Good thing I didn't. Classes begin September 3!

In my package (received today, with no customs charges, because Extand is on crack), there was a goodly amount of mail that had come for me since I've been out of the country. Much of this mail was from various universities, as I have apparently become College Search Fodder again. One begins:

Dear GRE Search Service Participant,
We understand that you may be interested in pursuing graduate education in public health...

Why thank you, University of Minnesota, for informing me of this. I may be interested in pursuing graduate education in public health, just as I may decide to move to Burma and train monkeys as pickpockets, living off their loot for the rest of my life. Both are equally likely and tempting.

Keck Graduate Institute is interested in "preparing me for the business of bioscience", based on my "undergraduate degree in biology, engineering, computer science, math, chemistry, physics, premed, or another technical field." I am tempted to apply.

Another of the letters I got was from the University of Michigan's School of Information. Fancy them trying to get me to attend! Fat chance! Anyway, here is my thought: If the U-M has a School of Information, what do they teach in the other schools?

Hmmmmm.

On a positive note, while waiting for dinner time to roll around, I finally got bored enough to sit down and sort out my graduate school applications. Half of it will be off to Rackham as soon as I get to La Poste, and all that's left to do is the essay.

Thankfully Mr Colas, the harried Technology Maestro at the school, says he'll be setting me up a user ID next week. Then I'll have access to the school's intranet diskspace, so I won't have to do the whole thing in one sitting.

My lycée sent me a packet with a big picture of the school on the front. It looks very lovely. It was only built in 1997. Inside, the packet has details about each of the fields of study (it's all Greek to me - I can't tell the difference between a BEP carrières sanitaires et sociales and a BAC sciences médico-sociales) and, more importantly, leads on accomodations. So I should be pretty set by the time I get there. Now all I have to worry about it how to lug my millions of pairs of shoes (that's what's going to weigh down the suitcase) all over France. Glorious.

The other day, one of the English teachers emailed me and mentioned that she'd visited my site and that they'd have to recruit me to use my web-skills, too. As Mr Burns would say, eeeeexcellennnnnnnt. I hope they would pay me extra. That would probably look good on, say, a graduate school application.

"At any given moment in Ann Arbor, it's impossible to walk down any street where there is undergraduate housing without hearing 'Get Up Stand Up' coming from five different porches."

The Onion is always good for a giggle.

Well, the GRE is over. I think my scores are okay, so I don't think I'll retake it. They were really anal at the testing center about what you could bring in the test room and what you could do. You couldn't even bring in a sweatshirt, although the practice test information said you should layer just in case it's hot or cold. I prefer written tests, where you can cross out answers you know are wrong.

Whatever. I'm just glad it's over with.

On the morrow, I shall be taking the GRE. We, being my secondary education associates and myself, have elected to participate in a perquisition into the enlightenment we have gleaned from our various alma maters in the spheres of engineering, both the mechanical and the chemical, and in the perscrutation of the phraseology of the langue française. BLARGH.

The students have returned. Already I hate them.

Ann Arbor has a delightful love-hate relationship with the U-M. Lots of us work for the university or are alumni, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that it would be a much better school if they didn't allow any students in it.

Yesterday was move-in day. Unfortunately, it was also the day we had to go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to exchange Becky's damaged lamp. As we pushed our way through the crowded store, full of dopey parents and their equally dopey offspring, I behaved as a true Annarborite, muttering curses at them under my breath. "Go home," I said to Annoying Woman Running Into People With Cart. "Go home," I said, to Father Blocking Aisle While Talking On Cell Phone. "Go home," I said to Ditzy Incoming Freshman In Capri Pants. "Go home," I said to Car In Parking Lot With Ohio Bicentennial License Plate.

If I go to graduate school at U-M, I will be sure to tell myself to go home, too.

I think I'm going to have to file a residency application to be considered a Michigan resident if I want to go to graduate school at U-M. They're so difficult. If you put your toe into Ohio, you're suddenly ineligible for Michigan residency.

This is really Alfie's story, but I'll rant about it for a while and she can blog her own thoughts on the subject if she wants (or if she has any):

My sister is a number.

She got her acceptance letter from the University of Michigan yesterday. She wants to go to a small school and the only reason I pushed her to apply to U-M in the first place was to avoid the looks that I got (or imagined I got) when I was choosing a college. People tended to look at me like 'Oh, you're going to Albion? You used to be so smart, but you must not have gotten in anywhere better.' They didn't understand that I hadn't applied in the first place because I had already rejected U-M myself (which is why I pushed Becky to apply and reject them officially).

Really, folks, the decision was mine. I didn't want to go to a big, big-name school. I didn't see Albion as a "back-up school" - it was my first choice. I didn't want to be a number - I wanted people to know me. I didn't want to sit with 100 other people in a lecture hall - I wanted to sit around a table with ten other students or have dinner at my professor's house. I wanted to be a French major, but also wanted to be free to take classes in Anthropology, Religion, Computer Science, History, English, Spanish, Chinese, Film, Art History, Psychology, Science, and Philosophy (as I have done over the past four years). I wanted to be free to study abroad. I wanted to be at a school that sends freshmen to France, Vietnam, Africa or Prague as class trips. I wanted to be taught by professors and not by TAs.

Becky has now been accepted to all of the schools she applied to. At Albion, Kalamazoo, and maybe even Mount Union, they treated her as an individual. Her acceptance letter made reference to things she had mentioned in her application essay and to her particular background as an athletic trainer. U-M, on the other hand, was quite predictable. The gist of the letter was

Dear [your name here].
Congratulations on being one of the Chosen Ones. We are great and you have been accorded the great honor of spending five or more years with us. Please send us your money by suchandsuchdate. If you want to communicate with us in the future, please include your student number, *******, as you are no longer human to us. Not that you were in the first place.
Sincerely,
The University of Michigan

It may be prestigious to go to Cornell or U-M, but what are you really going to get out of it? Wouldn't you rather be somewhere that cared about you, and not about Student 09849374? Support small colleges.