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.
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”.
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