I'm currently working on the most tedious, boring assignment ever. I decided to blog to take a break, but I have a sneaking hunch that I won't go back to the project tonight. Let me just describe the horrible thing, so you have a little bit of sympathy for the ridiculousness that is the task.
The assignment is officially called, "The Ready Reference Document", but that sounds totally innocuous compared to what it really entails. I have to visit websites and copy information into a document that would provide at hand info for a libarian. What "at hand" info is it? Government information. Yes, I have to visit the city's webpage, the county's webpage, the state's webpage, the federal government, and copy the pertinent information into a Word document. And we can't just cut and paste; the document has to look official and be suitable for use in an actual library. Just to give you some idea of how time-consuming this is, I've been working for two hours, have six pages of info, and just finished the city of my choice. Seems good, right? Wrong. I still have the library info, the chamber of commerce info, school district info and any other pertinent city info, and then the county, state and federal information. We're looking at what, 25-30 pages of info, all formatted and typed by me.
I understand the point of the exercise--we need practice working with these kinds of sources, and we need practice organizing information, since librarians do that a lot. Okay, but couldn't we have just done city info? We're still talking 10-15 pages, if we did that. But no, I'm condemned and doomed to a life of government info. Hey, if you need some info about the town I went to high school in, drop me a line, 'cause I got it all.
Also, I got a job this week. I won't say much, because I'm really not working very much (15 or so hours a week) and the job is going to be mundane. I'm a student aide to the library tech department at my community college. It's money, though, and I think I might reward myself with one book purchase a week. This might sound extreme, but if you consider what I was buying before, it's the very minimum for me. I'm depleting the supply of unread books already, and every couple weeks I have a crisis where nothing on my bookshelf looks good. Considering I'm reading furiously again, (about a book every two days, sometimes more), I need more books. I need to get some new books, just to mix it up sometimes. I'll just send S to work with a list, and then I can remember what it's like to smell new books. I can't wait for my first paycheck.
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