October 7, 2015

 The metadata crosswalk assignment is frying my brain. More on that later.

Today at work I continued to do things. I emailed student pictures to someone at the central kitchen so they can be added into their system. We usually send over the CD that we get but this year we didn't get a CD so I talked to the cook at school to see what information the central kitchen actually needed. She wasn't sure so she gave me the name of the lady at the central kitchen so I sent her an email to see if she needed the pictures named with the student number or with the students' names or something else entirely. And just in case I attached all of the pictures named with the student number, which is apparently what she needed because she just emailed back a thank you.

I came close to finishing my spreadsheets for this round of testing. And I probably would have but I had classes in the lab almost all day, and it was an early release day. The day flew by really. And my brain is currently fried so I am having trouble coming up with things to write.

One funny moment that I can remember is when a second grader came down to get help with is laptop. We were standing near the doors of the lab, which were open, and the art teacher walked by to go to her small art closet across the hall. Out of nowhere the kid says “You changed your hair.” The art teacher replied that she had and the kid responded with “It's nice.” And the art teacher after a short pause, thanked him. Written out it sounds like nothing worth mentioning but it was just so odd. The kid is kind of a pain in the butt, so there's that, but he also sounded like a mobster in a movie giving a compliment. It's hard to convey. It was just odd.

After work I went and got gas and cleaned my windshield while I waited. Then I went over and finally got the book cross stitch I made last year framed. I meant to give it to the school librarian last year, but never got around to it and then didn't want to spend the money so late in the year with summer approaching. I finally took notice of it in my closet last week and I knew the librarian's birthday was sometime this month so I decided to get it framed today when I would have a little extra time. I'm interested to see how it turns out. Also, when I got home later I had an email that said the librarian's birthday is next Thursday. And I will be picking up the framed cross stitch next Wednesday. Perfect timing.

Next I stopped by the gas station to get my Powerball ticket before going to Target. I ended up running into my mom there, which was unexpected, so I ended up walking around with her while she finished her shopping. I also forgot to buy baby carrots.

I went home for awhile before going back out to pick up Chipotle. It ended up being an alright burrito. Hopefully the second half will be better. After dinner I showed some good videos, including several educational ones that involved vision and perception.

The rest of my night was spent fighting my lack of motivation and trying to figure out my metadata crosswalk. It is mildly overwhelming. Not because of the amount of work but because I feeling woefully unprepared for the activity. I have never worked in a library and haven't taken a cataloging class. This assignment is my first time actually looking at a MARC record, a very confusing one that isn't formatted very well in the Word document. So rather than this being an assignment about converting MARC to Dublin Core, it is more like trying to translate one language I don't speak into another language I don't speak. I'm having to learn all the minute details about MARC in order to figure out if it will map over to Dublin Core. And that involves a whole other level of interpretation. And all of the frustration that comes from being completely out of my depth and lost and everything else has dropped my already low motivation to practically negative levels. It's a struggle right now.

Regarding my other struggle, the group work for this week, apparently my group wasn't the only one that got completely boned by a eager early posters. I know this because the professor took the time to record a short video explaining what the other group members could do if all the information from the case study had been done. And that is to basically to a lot of freaking extra work that wouldn't have been necessary if the early posters weren't unintentionally selfish assholes. Not to be rude.

Now I'm going to go to bed. My goal every day has been to finish my metadata crosswalk and that hasn't happened yet so I'm bumping it to tomorrow. I need to just suck it up and finish it. Stop over thinking it (or more accurately over thinking about my lack of knowledge) and just do it. So that's on the agenda for tomorrow. When I will once again be tired, because it is late now, and unmotivated. Sounds like a winning combo.