Hey everyone!
It has been a while since my last post. I was doing so well with weekly posts, but things kicked up big time. I had managed to keep up with all of March, but April slammed me around like Hulk did to Loki back in the first Avengers movie...and then to Thor in Ragnarok.
SIDENOTE: I haven't seen Infinity War yet, don't ask me about it, don't bring it up. I still have to see Black Panther as well. The reason? As mentioned above:
Grad School = Hulk
Smash = Me
For the past month I was working on 3 big projects:
1) IOP Draft [hockey collection digital system]
2) College Football Digital Library
3) 2018 MIRS Symposium
So for #1, I was finishing up the last draft needed for a semester long project. I wrote a 32 page paper that basically sets up rules for an information retrieval system. It was a technical writing kind of paper and our system was based around the idea that we were to have a collection of our choosing. We were required to put ten items into it. I chose to do a hockey book collection, so my information system included fields related to hockey to facilitate user search. I finally got that turned in last week.
Earlier last week I was also wrapping up a digital library project. For it I was in a 3-person group and our task was to create a digital library of some kind. The minimum requirements were 1 exhibit and 40 items in the collection, with guidelines for metadata input. My group chose College Football as our theme. I created and organized both exhibits, posted all Texas related materials (30), created the interactive timeline, and HTML coded all the NFL draft tables (cumulative & Texas specific).
On top of all that I also had to do a final for Indexing which I will be turning in next Monday. That will consist of three 500-800 word essays and four short answers with no more than 300 words each.
Weeks before the final, my professor suggested that the two groups in my class submit papers we wrote to the 2018 Multidisciplinary Information Research Symposium that UNT was hosting. I suggested combining the papers since they were very related, and my professor approved. I then ended up doing the majority of the preparatory and presentation work, which included: writing a short abstract, writing an extended abstract (1000 word max), creating presentation slides, and giving a presentation on the work at the Symposium. When I say I did the majority of the work, I mean I did all of it. Everyone was involved in writing the initial papers, but the symposium aspects were all me and the professor. I provided real time working links to do collaboration (thank you Google Doc and Google Slides), but no one had the time to help out apart from my professor I guess. The topic was the future of indexing and my presentation was called, Revisiting Indexing in the Digital Era, since the theme of the symposium was rediscovering knowledge. I presented remotely, after a PhD student and a former graduate. It was a TON of work to do in as short a time as I did it in, but it was the first ever research presentation I have ever delivered and the first professional presentation I have ever given. I prepared the abstracts in one evening and created the presentation over two additional evenings. When I need to, I can really hit some tough deadlines. It is tiring, but possible.
Most of my presentations have been in classes or for organizations that I was an officer of, but this one was way different. This was a presentation done in front of other information professionals, professors, and grad students. It was a great learning opportunity and it gave me the chance to see just how effectively we can use technology for communication and bridging distances. I am in the process of reworking the papers so they can be put in the UNT repository along with the presentation slides I put together.
Due to all of that, I have been unable to write a single blog post or Master's update, but I promise that it hasn't been for lack of wanting to. I have just had a really full slate.
On top of that, I have also lost track of my page count.....because I had to cover so much material so quickly that I was unable to do my weekly breakdowns or keep track of all the webpages I was digging through.
Some things I was able to keep better track of, but this definitely isn't everything I read.
KNOWN Page Count Week 1-End: 2,461 pages
I think it would be safe to say that I read around 2,500 pages this semester.
Since I read ~2,500 pages this semester and 1,076 last year, my total page count for my first full year of grad school is approximately:
3,576 pages
Once I'm through next Monday, I will officially have completed a full year of graduate school! That means no more Master's updates until the fall! Summer break is here at last!
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