June 17, 2016

 At the moment my mind is a little full, so we'll see how this goes.

Today I added books to a display for the first time. It is a timely topics display and yesterday I came up with the idea to add books about the second amendment. As librarians we have to be unbiased in promoting information so I did my best to find an equal number of books that were for gun control and ones for the second amendment, along with some that weren't necessarily for or against either side.

I thought a bunch of books about guns might be a bit of a downer so I also came up with the idea to add recipe books centered around farmer's markets. When I had my book lists I went and grabbed the gun books and had one of the librarians show me again how to change them so that if someone looked them up in the catalog they would show up as being in a display. I then went down and added them to the display. After that I got the recipe books, did all the catalog changes myself, and added those books to the display. The location of the display is kind of out of the way, so who knows how many people will actually see it, but hopefully someone checks out at least one books.

I had a meeting with my boss and the tech training lady to talk about Fall tech classes. We came up with the schedule for September and it is up to me to come up with the schedule for October and November. I'm not too stressed out about that stuff yet because I have too many other things to be stressed out about at the moment. When September gets closer I'll start to feel that stress. A decent part of my job is going to be creating tech classes and teaching them. I'm not sure how good I'll be at that. I'm alright at giving presentations, although I tend to blackout during them and don't know what I'm saying. I'm also alright at teaching individuals how to do things with technology. The class sizes shouldn't be too big so it shouldn't be that much different from what I'm used to. Hopefully.

This afternoon there was a retirement party for one of the librarians. The girl hired with me was this librarians replacement and it kind of sucks she's leaving because she knows so much and we know so little. She is a really nice lady and it is unfortunate that we are losing her expertise. The party was in the boardroom, which was super hot, so I stood out in the hall where there was some airflow and talked with the receptionist. I also briefly spoke with the former head of adult services because she had lunch with her sister yesterday, who is the new sixth grade teacher at the school I used to work at. I also briefly spoke with the lady who I think does all of the cataloging. She told me that she really liked reading my introduction, so that was pretty cool.

That was pretty much my day at work. At least what I can remember. I also helped a lady with a PDF and printing. Exciting stuff.

After work I went to put my incorrect name tag in my center console (it says 'Assistant' on it) and discovered a bill I never mailed. I can't remember when I put it there and I'm too worried to check when it was supposed to be mailed. On the plus side I tend to send out my bills shortly after getting them and I haven't received anything from the bank yet saying my payment is overdue. So maybe I'm in the clear.

Tonight I should have written my paper but I didn't. I did laundry. I filled out forms for my ALA trip, printed them, signed them, scanned them, and then turned them back into PDFs. Tomorrow I need to email them to my professor.

My plan tomorrow is to take my lunch with me to work. It is only me and the older librarian tomorrow and Sunday. I figure by taking my lunch I can eat in the cubicle upstairs, not having to worry about sharing the space, and work on my paper. When I go home for lunch I only have about a half an hour to eat and do whatever because of the drive time and walking to and from wherever I park. If I stay at the library I can eat fairly quickly and then have a decent amount of time to write. Hopefully if nothing else I can get an outline done of what I want to write about. That would make it easier for me to finish it up after work. It is due Sunday night so it would be nice to get it done by tomorrow so I have time to read through it again.

I also need to put in some time for my practicum, finish my schedule for the sections I want to see at the conference, figure out what I need to take on the trip, and pack. I don't really want to save the packing for the last minute because that will almost guarantee forgetting something.

Needless to say, I'm super stressed out at the moment. I basically have three jobs right now, and as I described to my sister, it is like I skipped the scarves and went right to juggling flaming chainsaws. This is different than the stress usually felt at the end of the semester because I'm messing with a lot of real life stuff at the moment, not just class assignments. I'm kind of over it. I just need August to get here. Preferably September so I can be far enough away from the experience to not still be completely traumatized by it. Then I'll just be stressed out about teaching classes.