Once more I find myself having to do an update post! Hopefully going forward I can do less of these updates and more actual posts about what I've been reading like I was originally planning to do.
So here is what has been going on with me over the past year:
For this course I decided to create a class focused on the history of El Paso, Texas. We only had to create a single unit for the course, so mine was focused on geography and prehistory of the area. I created a quiz and discussion questions for my assignments. I learned how to use new content management system websites like Weebly, and I also learned how to use LiveBinder. I found this course to be extremely helpful in discovering new, useful tools for education and organization, as well as ways of constructing learning objectives. Since my sister is homeschooled and I serve as a teacher's aide of sorts, I have found this to be a very useful course for advancing her studies and organizing a few lessons.
Graduate School
As most of you know, I spent the last two years in graduate school. My last post in September of last year (2018) was all about a new semester. That's when things got crazy.
Fall 2018:
I had the following 3 classes--
- INFO 5210 Resource Description and Access I
- INFO 5717 Dynamic WWW Structures (WWW being World Wide Web)
- INFO 5814 Website Development
INFO 5210
This was a class all about cataloging and that turned out to be incredibly tedious. I learned how to do it, but I can honestly say that I don't think I want to be a cataloger. I know how to do it, I understand how necessary it is, but it wouldn't be my ideal job in a library. I would only do it if it was the only opening available and I really needed an in.INFO 5814
This was a basic web design course that introduced concepts of HTML and CSS, which allow you to create websites and design the backgrounds and layouts. CSS is the design portion and HTML is what allows for your words to be set up the way they are with headings and page breaks. HTML also allows you to insert tables and other neat things. This class was really straight forward and I knew some of the basics from having started this blog! It was my easiest course that semester. Now that I'm more familiar with CSS, I feel like maybe this blog of mine can end up being a lot more efficient visually and like I can play around with some new techniques that I haven't before. I know a lot more about page organization, headings, links, and image use than I did previously.INFO 5717
This class was the bane of my existence last fall. This course revolved around creating dynamic websites using PHP and SQL. PHP is what allows you to complete queries on websites, and what allows you to pull up results from a database on a website. SQL is a database language. It lets you create databases and organize them. When you combine the two, you can get really cool results. Figuring out how to do either of them initially was the biggest thorn in my side. I came from an English background and I had not done any technological work outside of basic computer skills. The most I had done was use HTML and any computer programmer or web developer will tell you that HTML isn't really a coding language anyway. Most of the students I was around had computer science or other technological backgrounds, so I was in a very different dynamic. I ended up having to check out a lot of extra materials, do a lot of extra reading online, and I spent way more hours than I would have liked, staring at my computer screen and troubleshooting lines of code.
However, I am glad to say that I was basically the head of my final group project and was able to get things working more efficiently than some of my peers, and I had come from a way further step back than most of them. My professor, who I had informed from the beginning that I had no experience, was surprised with my progress at the end of the semester and didn't seem to remember that I came in with zero experience. I'm going to take that as a positive reflection on my hard work and personal efforts than as student neglect. By the end of the semester I had a website that could input queries with the click of a few web buttons and return results by connecting to a database that the site connected to via code, that was on a separate server altogether. It was highly technical, but I can say that I've done it and should it ever be needed, I can do it again provided I have a server to connect to.
Now, as if this wasn't enough on its own, I also had one other thing going on last fall and that was:
Practicum
Practicum is basically my graduate school's fancy way of saying internship. Every student in my program is required to complete a practicum at a library or other information organization pertaining to their specific studies (ex: an art museum), if they are not already working at one. I spent my practicum at a local archive within a library branch. While I was there I processed collections, created inventories, typed up finding aids, and coded EADs. These are all things that allow the archiving staff as well as users find what we have in the collection. I got to go through a lot of really neat materials, I learned a lot about the history of my area, and I also got to learn new methodologies and materials for long term preservation of materials like paper, books, and ephemera. I really loved getting to be in the archives and who knows? Maybe someday I'll find my way back there. I learned a lot and would love to engage in that kind of work again.
Naturally, after the fall semester came a break, but then I was thrown right back into intensive work because this past spring I entered my final semester of grad school.
Spring 2019
So in the spring I had three classes again.
- INFO 5303 Financial and Human Resource Management in Information-Agencies
- INFO 5637 Medical Informatics
- INFO 5845 Creating Online Content for Youth Services
INFO 5303
This class was a management course that focused predominantly on budgeting and human resource processes. During this course I did a lot of group work, which went really well. We reviewed budgets for different organization types and sizes and had to make cuts. We reviewed material budgets as well as employee salary budgets. There were assignments where we had to shift around employees based on what we knew, had to cut materials when things were tight, and generally figure out how to make ends meet financially without causing too many problems in the fictional scenarios. After the budgeting unit we learned about HR issues. We wrote out samples of anti-discrimination statements for hiring, we learned about how HR can be organized hierarchically, and how to manage HR situations that real organizations and management may face. Overall, this class was very informative and beneficial to me. I learned a lot I didn't know since I have not yet entered the workforce and that I think will be really helpful to review should I ever end up in a management position.
INFO 5637
This class was one of the biggest outliers over the course of my study. This one was all about information systems and tools as they pertain to the medical field. We did live chats with actual health professionals who did different kinds of work. We learned about how health informatics has changed over the years. We covered e-health, research needs, and basic medical organization functioning. We learned what kinds of major technologies are used to measure out and dispense medication or take measurements of bodily processes during a visit to the hospital. We also learned about the difficulties of organizing this information as well as privacy concerns. I'm not really medically inclined and never had a desire to go to medical school, but I think that this class helped me be more informed about how I personally approach health issues. I think it could prove very helpful even just at a regular library, should patrons ever be seeking health information in some regard. I know more about where to find information, how to access it, and what to be aware of when locating and retrieving it.
INFO 5845
This class sort of built upon the previous technology courses I'd taken on web design. Having taken 5814 (the basic web design course) and the PHP course, I already knew how websites functioned and were constructed. This made the first few weeks very boring, but the professor was aware of this and encouraged me to try to push my personal envelope on what I incorporated into my first assignments. The first half of the course was learning about basic web design and principles of education. The education component was what was most interesting. The basic idea of this course was to develop a course of our own to teach something to a group, particularly a youth audience of some kind. Each of us had to choose a topic and target audience, create a syllabus, create learning materials, and assignments.For this course I decided to create a class focused on the history of El Paso, Texas. We only had to create a single unit for the course, so mine was focused on geography and prehistory of the area. I created a quiz and discussion questions for my assignments. I learned how to use new content management system websites like Weebly, and I also learned how to use LiveBinder. I found this course to be extremely helpful in discovering new, useful tools for education and organization, as well as ways of constructing learning objectives. Since my sister is homeschooled and I serve as a teacher's aide of sorts, I have found this to be a very useful course for advancing her studies and organizing a few lessons.
Bonus Responsibilities
As this was my final semester in the program, I also had to complete final requirements. The final requirement for my program in particular is known as EOP (End of Program). The task is to write 3 essays of 10 pages length, in the span of a single week. You are given a list of questions you have never seen before, which are composed of information from all the different courses available, and you pick three to answer and base your essays on. While I write very quickly and I organize my notes very well, I don't think I need to emphasize just how stressful this kind of examination is. You ultimately write 30 pages of academic writing based on two full years worth of concepts from your coursework. The time limit itself is crazy to think about and while I found it largely exhilarating, it also just cuts into your ability to sleep peacefully, relax in general, and can really make your hands hurt from typing so much so rapidly. All in all though, I graduated, so clearly I did something right.
Additionally, I graduated! So I had to submit paperwork applying for graduation, get final approval to graduate, and I actually had to travel to Denton to walk across the stage...which I did. Having done my program long-distance over the computer, I was glad to be able to meet some of my classmates that I'd done group work with and that I was able to see what a graduation at another university, in another city, is like. I have to say that it was very different from the university that I graduated from in my hometown, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
What am I doing now?
So now that you're caught up on my final two semesters of graduate school, you might wonder what the heck I'm doing now, because it has been a solid five months since I graduated. Well, for starters, I officially have a Master's degree in Library Science now. I took a nice summer trip full of cultural enrichment, learning opportunities, and lots of family time. After that I spent some time going downtown, because I was impaneled for jury duty. So I served as a juror for the first time ever. That was an interesting experience for sure. Since then I have been undergoing the dreaded process of job hunting. Currently I've applied for three different positions, each of which is at a different library in the area. I'm waiting to hear back, hopefully with the news that I'm being offered one of the positions. I'm discovering that I'm not quite a fan of job hunting, because so far I haven't hit a pay off on it. I'm also still reading a lot, which is pretty typical of me. I have been catching up on family time that I missed out on during my last year of grad school, since things got so hectic. I've taken a couple quick out of town trips and learned about some of the history of New Mexico, which has been really cool. I also have been watching the World Series and catching up on some local football. I have done a tiny bit of writing (I definitely need to do more), and now I'm contemplating jumping back into writing here. Now might be the time to finally get into a real habit of blogging again since I have had such a long break.
Also, the last time I was here, I did a lot of visual changes, which I still really like. I think it adds to the accessibility and the readability of the blog overall. Since I learned so much about web design over the last two semesters and have liked what I've done so far with visual changes, I may make a few more to some of the side pages. If I change anything that prevents you from being able to access things or prevents readability for certain disabilities that my readers have, and you would really like it to be changed back to how it has been in general, don't hesitate to let me know! The whole point of these design changes is to give the site a cleaner and smoother look to it, but not at the risk of my wonderful readers.
Also, the last time I was here, I did a lot of visual changes, which I still really like. I think it adds to the accessibility and the readability of the blog overall. Since I learned so much about web design over the last two semesters and have liked what I've done so far with visual changes, I may make a few more to some of the side pages. If I change anything that prevents you from being able to access things or prevents readability for certain disabilities that my readers have, and you would really like it to be changed back to how it has been in general, don't hesitate to let me know! The whole point of these design changes is to give the site a cleaner and smoother look to it, but not at the risk of my wonderful readers.
That being said, thanks for coming back around to see this update. I know I post a lot of updates, but hopefully this is the last personal update for a while (maybe until I get good news about a position?). I'm hoping to have new updates in your e-mail, but those would be, and are planned to be, ACTUAL posts about the topics I originally intended this site to be for! I haven't worked out a schedule, or any kind of concrete plan yet. I'll see what I can come up with and maybe if anyone has any ideas of what they'd like to see, they would be kind enough to drop those in comments below. I read all the comments and love when there are some. Beyond that, I have nothing more to say at the moment.
See you next post!!
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