1) One Good Thing: We’re saying goodbye to our awesome prac student today (who I’ll call “D” for anonymity’s sake.) D has been great fun to work with – he’s worked hard, asked questions, brought in ideas. Moreover he’s been very nice on a social level too, he’s a good conversationalist with a good sense of humour and he’s been fun to hang out with. Probably the most fun prac student we’ve had here in a number of years (like, the last 3 years probably). I hope D keeps an eye out for opportunities here once he graduates (if they ever actually come up) since I can easily say I’d be more than happy to work with him again. (Please note: it’s not D leaving that’s a good thing. It’s having had him work with us. I swear.)
2) One Bad Thing: I’m currently drafting a collection retention policy for my subject area. It’s brain-churning hard work, because while I’ve done collection development based on textbooks and research areas for the last 4 years, when it comes to “keep or pulp” for my collection I have NO idea about long-term importance of works. I have NO idea of key theorists. Paranoia is setting in!!
3) One Thing I Learned: Shorter is not necessarily easier.
Drove to training for scouts a couple of weeks ago. Pulled up my trusty Google Map, and also a Whereis.com.au map for comparison (because I’m a good librarian and need to view a variety of sources to ensure accuracy of information 🙂 ). Worked out the quickest route there – 35 minutes, cutting through a couple of northern outer-city suburbs. Easy, right?
35 minutes turned into 90 minutes – of getting stuck on a highway I hadn’t known existed, of roundabouts that weren’t really roundabouts, of closures for roadworks, of streets that apparently changed names but didn’t in real life, of unexpected turn-offs, of “veer lefts” which weren’t veers at all leaving me wondering if I’d done the wrong thing. It was, in short, a nightmare, a torrent of tears and bad language. I’m not the most confident of drivers in unknown territory, to be fair, but this was truly an awful drive.
The old route. Note deviation off into the wilds of suburbia. Anguish not depicted above.
Anyway, I have to go again to roughly the same location tonight. Again, I got my Google Map and Whereis map. This time, I choose a slightly longer option. I studied it. I tweaked it a little in the beginning to take me along streets I know how to drive on. It goes into the city and then out again. It has 3 – count ’em, 3 – turn-offs only. And sure, it’s 50 minutes, not 35. But I’m not in a breathe-in-a-paper bag fit over it this time. As Effie used to say, “Happy Days”.
New Route - note exact same road 90% of the way. Hooray!
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