May 2, 2015

 On some websites when you are creating a password, there is a colored circle or bar that is red when you start typing a password, changes to yellow when you've just barely fulfilled the requirements, and then green when you have exceeded the requirements and created what they deem to be a strong password. This technology needs to be integrated into schoolwork. Each letter grade should have a color and when you're working on a project or a paper the color should adjust based on your progress. This way you know when you've reached the grade you want and can stop working.

In grad school I obviously want to get an 'A' in every class, but I never really know how much I need to do to get that 'A'. It would be nice to know when I reached it though, so I could just stop and move onto the next thing. I feel like there are some assignments that I put way too much effort into, just to be safe. Hooray to me for making a decent product, but it's not very efficient if I put in several more hours than is necessary. There is also the stress involved in the uncertainty, not knowing if what I'm doing is going to be worth a decent grade or if I'm not even in the ballpark. So the colored light for grades needs to be a thing.

Today could have been a lot more productive. Things happened, but I probably should have just played video games. I would be feeling a greater sense of accomplishment had I taken that route. But I also would have felt guilty the entire time I was playing and wouldn't have enjoyed myself. Too much, anyway.

I searched for resources on linked data for my research paper and came up with around eighteen. Not bad. The professor said we should try for at least ten or twelve. I always like to have extra just to create some wiggle room and give myself options in case some don't work out. I wasted a bit of time figuring out Zotero again. I figured it was worth the time spent now when I get around to making my reference list. In theory, Zotero will collect all the relevant information and can make by bibliography for me. I don't know that I will fully trust it and will probably double-check everything, but even if I have to do it manually, based on the information Zotero has, it will be quicker than having to pull the information individually from every article. So I am kind of looking forward to trying that out. If I could just fast forward to that point and skip the actual paper writing process, that would be great.

One of my group members added an entry to my page for studying abroad, which didn't really fit into any of the clever headings I came up with yesterday so I had to come up with another one. It took awhile. At first I was going to go with “Become Enlightened in Foreign Lands”, but that is kind of long and didn't quite feel right. And then an idea struck, with two variations. Right now I'm going with “Accentuate Your Education”. The other version is “Accent Your Education” but I think that might be a little too obvious.

I also added links at the bottom of all the pages that navigate to the previous page, to the next page, and back to the main page. The idea came to me because I was tired of having to go back to the main page every time I wanted to look through the pages. It might have been even better just to put small links for all the pages at the bottom of each page but I'm not going to mess with that now.

Tonight I added a couple introductory paragraphs to my summary journal for the group project, name dropping Dervin's Sense-Making Model and Khulthau's Information Search Process. We only very briefly talked about those during our first weekend. I think the discussion was actually cut short because the professor wasn't feeling well. Despite that, she constantly made references to them throughout the semester and I really only had the vaguest idea of what she was talking about. And she mentioned them again in talking about our journal, so I read up on both of them and threw them into my journal. Better safe than sorry.

Tomorrow I really want to start writing my research paper. My desire could not be stronger. My motivation on the other hand, I'm guess could not possibly be weaker. That is true for life in general, but even more so when it comes to schoolwork. There is a name for the lack of motivation that I think I have. I can't think of the name but it is in one of my past entries I think. I'm not going to go look for it. Probably because of the whole motivation thing. Anyway, getting a start on the paper would be great. I need to just start getting stuff on paper. The electronic paper that is. Getting started is always the hardest part. I think I want to start by talking about linked data and explaining what it is, the history, and the current state of it. Then go into the pros and cons with regard to its use in libraries. I think I'll need some other stuff in there as well because right now that doesn't seem like that will meet the seven to eight page requirement. But I just need to start writing. Get out of my head and start writing. We'll see.