May 13, 2016

 Most of my workday was spent working on my spreadsheets. I finished adding in all the scores, minus the few kids who finished today, and got a start on going through and noting the changes in scores from the Winter testing.

I sat with one second grader while a para sat with another one as they finished their Reading tests for a second time. They both went way too fast through it the first time so this time around they had someone else controlling the mouse. I took over the mouse for the girl when the teacher left, only clicking on what she told me, not giving any hints away with the mouse position, and it was rough. Her score went up a significant amount, so it was worth the retake, but some of the questions she missed were hard for me to click on because they seemed so obvious. To be fair, I have had a few more years of education than her, so I'm not the best judge of what is hard for second graders.

My last class of the day was fifth grade and they broke out into the happy birthday song when I said it was recently my birthday. I managed to get out that it was actually last week so some of the kids switched it to a belated birthday song. I think their main motivation was avoiding typing practice but I'll take it.

I got out of the building a little later than I would have liked but it worked out. I went home and changed into my suit and green Chucks and then headed out of town with my mom for the induction ceremony. I am glad I decided to go because I had a good time. We ended up sitting at a table with a couple, the wife was being inducted into the society, and we ended up talking throughout the night. The husband was the talkative extrovert type able to keep conversations going which is nice when you are not the talkative extrovert type.

The venue was a large banquet hall in the student union and not too long after getting there they had all of the inductees come up and sit off to the side of the stage. We had to find out name on the chair, which felt like the first challenge because the order wasn't immediately apparent. I ended up getting called over by the one person I knew there, because she is in my cohort, and we were sitting next to each other. At first this made us think we were divided up by schools, not alphabettically. Later on we realized we were actually divided up by undergraduate, graduate, and faculty, and then alphabetically within that.

After we found our seats, a few people spoke about the society and then they started reading off our names. As they were read, the person got up, walked across the stage, posed for a picture with the certificate, then walked off the stage and shook hands with the other faculty people and got a pin and honor cords. No one was clapping as the names were being read out so the extroverted guy at my table tried to get it started by clapping for a random girl but no one joined in. Everyone else just sat there. It was awkward. I've never seen that happen before. People always join in. But apparently no one was interested in clapping for their friends or loved ones as they walked across the stage. It was kind of funny though and had to be really weird for the girl and whoever she came with, having some random stranger clapping.

After that we had dinner, which was good but not very filling. Then there was a presentation from one of the library school professors about the educational trips the library school takes, usually abroad (although this summer mine is domestic). You could tell that the president of the society this year is a library school professor because there was a strong library theme, especially with the presentation. I found it really interesting but I'm not sure if everyone did.

At the end of the night when it was all over things got a little weird with the couple at our table because the husband got real deep with religion and was trying to convince me to read the Bible every day. Telling me the God was the one truth, and as a librarian interested in finding the truth, I should look in the Bible. So it was a little odd but I'm fascinated by religion, even if I'm not religious, and have been known to talk to door-to-door Mormons and participate in Bible studies, so I'm willing to listen to what someone has to say. And they were a really nice couple. They brought a big fancy camera and the husband actually took pictures of me walking across the stage so I exchanged information with the wife who said she would email me the pictures. That's pretty cool.

The drive home was uneventful, as all good drives should be, and when we got home I made a fake chicken sandwich to compensate for the light food at the banquet. It was delicious. I then ended up talking to my friend for over an hour on the phone. He called to congratulate me on graduation because he isn't able to make it tomorrow, and then we ended up talking about all the random things. It was a good talk.

It is now midnight and I am going to go to bed because I'm about to fall asleep. The goal is to leave around eleven o'clock tomorrow so I'll get to sleep in a little bit, which will be nice. I feel like tomorrow is going to be a long and tiring day. But then it will be over with and I won't have to worry about it anymore. Something to look forward to.