June 27, 2015

 Despite feeling tired it took me forever to fall asleep. And then I was wide awake at five o'clock in the morning. That made getting up at 7:00AM a lot harder. Sleeping in the giant bed was as comfortable as ever. I was also worried about all the people at the hotel keeping me up but the lady at the desk did a good job keeping me away from the wedding party and the baseball team and whatever the other large group was. I was impressed.

Class today was fun and educational, as it should be. We had two group activities, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, both with the same group. Last night we signed our names on the board under the category of library we were interested in. I went with academic and I was paired up with two people that also chose that. Or maybe not paired because there were three of us. Anyway, the first time we picked one library and did a SWOT analysis and a brief PEST analysis. This afternoon we picked a couple libraries and evaluated their marketing and branding. Neither were very good but we were assigned to look at libraries in Colorado and I think it would be cool to live there so it was interesting getting to see some of the options.

When we weren't doing group stuff there was a tiny bit of lecture and a lot of real life discussion. I really like that the professor speaks from his personal experience and tells it like it is out in the real world, not just giving up theories or case studies. He also threw out the idea that with my marketing background I could do a practicum at his library and develop a marketing plan. That is tempting. The marketing plan I did in college was huge, over sixty pages, but we were creating a product from the ground up, which is way more involved than a marketing plan for a library. So I might get back to him on that.

Oh, and for the group project I'll be working on my own. Eight people decided to work in pairs and the other twelve of us are going solo. I was kind of surprised by that. I figured there would have been far more people working in groups. I guess I'm not the only one who has been burned in the past. The professor elaborated a little bit more today on one of the bad group projects last semester that lead to this trial of giving students the option to work alone. I think it was the group in my class that consisted of the two loudest extroverts and the biggest introvert. Where they picked the topic and immediately hated her because she didn't immediately love it. If it was that group, they apparently not only got the professor involved but also the program director and other people outside of the program. I also had a bad experience but we managed to keep it between us, minus the evaluation. Either way, I will be working alone to write a grant proposal. Not sure what area I'm going to pick yet but I might look at it tomorrow. It isn't the kind of thing I can put off until the last minutes. Especially because I have to make a poster presentation, which will involve me buying a poster, at the very least.

We got out around 4:30PM because we finished everything and the professor had to catch his flight. I could have listened to his stories for a lot longer but I had no problem leaving early. The Spangles fries and orange juice slush were delicious as always. As far as driving, I had a large truck pull onto the road in front of me before reaching the halfway point, just before entering a small town. It didn't necessarily cut me off but the speed limit was 60mph and he never made it above 40mph, so I had to hit my brakes. On the second half of my journey I had to pass one slow moving vehicle, which ended up turning shortly after I passed them, so they were apparently telegraphing their turn for several miles. After that it was smooth sailing. I was all by myself until I made it back to town. I'm really glad that I'm not one of the guys that have a four hour trip, or the professor who had an hour and a half trip to the airport, a long wait, a two and a half hour flight, and I think an hour drive home. I'm jealous of the people who live in the same town as the university but I've definitely got it better than some.

When I got home I ate dinner, or half a dinner to go along with the fries I ate earlier, and watched YouTube videos, which included a few episodes of 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. This afternoon during a break I remembered that I wanted to make a print layout for my website using CSS. I had completely forgotten about that, so I'm glad I hadn't turned in my website yet. It shouldn't take very long so I'll work on that tomorrow.

Now, I'm going to continue watching a livestream for a little bit and then go to bed. And I'm going to sleep in, hopefully, because I feel like I deserve it. Then I can work on school stuff. Or put it off for awhile and get lost on the internet. I kind of want to just look at possible jobs out there. Get a better idea of what I might be doing in the near future.