daily derp

[greeneyedlady]

I am now less than two weeks away from my (hopefully triumphant) return to the world of academia. Of course I am freaking the shit out. It has been so long since I was in school and when I did my undergrad, there was barely any research involved. I feel like I am so unprepared. There is also the fact that I have never once worked in an actual

Comments

[harosketch]

I found that everyone isn't as good as I thought they would be. People didn't seem to do much work!

[greeneyedlady]

I tell myself not that they probably won't be as great as I assumed, but that I am likely just as good since I got into the same program. I am really nervous still, though. Grad school is serious business after all.

[harosketch]

I hope you'll be okay. Don't be paranoid! Good luck

[mirai_noah]

I went into library science without ever worked in a library as well. I've found that some professors take this into account, and others, well, don't. But there are at least a handful of students in each of my classes that are in the same boat as me, so you aren't alone!

[greeneyedlady]

That eases my mind quite a bit. I hope it will be the same at my school. Any tips on what I should expect from my classes (since I have no idea what they will be like)?

[mirai_noah]

My first quarter, I took a class on information users (which was basically an intro to working with patrons) and a class on databases. This quarter I had research statistics and a rather vague class on professionalism (I'm still not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be learning from it...) From my experience, it seems that some classes are very much library-centric, and others a little bit more broad.

[greeneyedlady]

I am taking 3 classes my first semester:

LBSC601 Users and Information Context- Nature and roles of information and information institutions; information behavior; studying information behavior; information policy; the information professions.

LBSC650 Information Access Services- Information needs, search mediation, search strategies, reference services, information access issues, collection development.

LBSC690 Information Technology- Human-centered design issues, implementation and technical issues, and application and sociotechnical issues of information technology; emerging information technologies.

The descriptions really don't give a clear picture...

[cottoni]

Whta's your ambition?/What are you studying? My partner has changed career types and gone to get a library information science ...certificate? (not a degree anyway). He's gotten a part time job as a library assistant and has recently concluded (after a month of working there) that librarians do not do much more than they do (except get paid more I guess ;) Anyway, he's pretty happy now, he's been studying and job hopping for the last decade.

[greeneyedlady]

I am just starting with general Library Science. I don't know what kind of specialization I might do. I like the idea of working in the Library of Congress, but I also think working in a medical library sounds very interesting. My goal is to be qualified for a wide range of library jobs.

[littledarkvoice]

MOCKINGJAAAAAAAYYYYY.

I know I've said it before, but if it makes you feel any better, I've got confidence in you and I think you'll do fine in the library science program. And you won't be the only person in your classes who's never worked in a library--I know plenty of folks who went into library science without having done so. It attracts a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds. What's more, Maryland's a pretty diverse school, so the "different backgrounds" thing is going to pop up even more. Even in the Classics department, which draws from a much smaller pool, we had students from big and small universities, people fresh out of school, people who had been working for years, retirees who wanted to enter the workforce again--you name it. So you probably won't be alone.

You can do it!

[greeneyedlady]

Thanks for the vote of confidence my dear. I have to keep telling myself that they wouldn't have let me into the program if they didn't think I was good enough. And Mockingjay is going to be epic!

[greeneyedlady]

I can barely contain my excitement!