Grad School Retrospective

I might be jumping the gun writing this, but I had some fun thoughts, and I'm trying to get my creative juices flowing before I write my final paper of grad school, and the air in the SLIS lab is making me wax nostalgic.

Things I learned during my time at SLIS:

• Which web addresses require "iu" and which require "iub" (for Indiana University and Indiana University Bloomington, respectively). 
• On the job experience is (shockingly) far more educational than three hours of class once a week about 90% of the time. 
• It's easier to teach yourself CSS from a book and with the help of lovely coding friends (I'm looking at you, Matt. Also Kristi, Wesley, and my fellow sufferers in IA who were helpful and offered advice) than it is to sit through a class where the teacher thinks everyone know what they're doing and just breezes through silly concepts like page organization (in a class about information architecture) so he can talk about spiffy things like the history of our coding heroes. 
• For Jill: "Digitize, digitize, digitize, digiTIZE it!" 
• I'm still terrible at focusing while I write papers (which is why I'm blogging in the SLIS lab instead of writing a paper. So much for my master plan of being more productive on campus. But I WILL be. Soon.) 
• How to make this website. 
• Sometimes, when people say " come give a presentation," they mean "let's chat." 
• Public librarians are the coolest people ever. Especially the ones over here.
• A library is not a porn parlor or a place to micturate. (Trust me. Just read the third paragraph. Thanks, Dean Cronin.) (Is it evil if I want to link that article to as many of those ridiculous words as possible so that it comes up in google?) 
• The meaning of the word micturate and its unnecessary nature.
• Them newfangled computer-thingies might be here to stay - and more people than you think don't know how to use them. 
• When someone offers you a job out of nowhere, just because someone recommended you, take it - even if you don't think you have time because you already have two jobs. (Okay, maybe that only applies when the person who recommended you and the person who hired you are two of the nicest people you've ever met. But it was a lovely three hours of my week all semester.)
• Sometimes, the library doesn't run the air conditioner for hours at a time during the summer. When this time is during your class every week and your west-facing evening class becomes a sauna of death and teaching, classroom hopping is totally acceptable, even if no one wants you in those empty, air-conditioned rooms. Stick it to the man. 
• Movie clips and origami may not be appropriate for every presentation, but they can make your presentation rock. 
• Free food from Farm + Dean Blaise Cronin in all of his Irish glory = Yes, I will come to the SLIS fancy dress reception and eat your goat cheese. Thanks for asking.
• Cataloging is an art, not a science. Unless your teacher has a power trip and wants you to catalog "as we discussed in class," by which she means, "as I mentioned once for two seconds while you were nodding off." 
• Sometimes, doing a crossword puzzle in class actually means you get more out of class. 
• Books about vampires should fall into the "intellect" category, and Sir Walter Scott belongs in the lecture about romance novels. 
• Library school is not like real grad school - or at least it isn't in Indiana. (Greg, I think your school sounds like real grad school. And I'm envious of your Nancy Pearl connections.) And yet . . . in a week I will still have a Master's degree without writing a thesis. Take that!  

One paper to finish and present and then I am out. I love you, SLIS. Thanks for the last year and a half. Also for the paperweight.