Hell week redux

What is it about school that every week has the opportunity to become hell week? Okay, this one I'm just coming out of...this one was no surprise. 4 exams, a major paper, a meeting for my contract work and oral surgery, all within the space of 7 days. No, this one I had warning about...and sure enough it came through. The exam I wrote this morning should have been okay. I go to class. I understand what's said, I write my notes. I study, I study again. But it was like my brain was simply full. No more room at the inn it said to me...which is what some of my answers reflected oh so sadly. Way too much white space, way too little substance. C'est lavie. Good thing I'm already accepted at library school - all 4 of the schools I applied to even...nice to have the choice. And nice to have chosen the one that I did. I keep hearing good things about the program and the university and conflicted things about the city. That's okay...program's most important, city least important. Meanwhile in this city, 4 more weeks of classes which is a relief...until that is, I realize just how much I have left to accomplish in that teeny bit of time. So onwards and upwards. Just remember if it's not hell, it can't be a week....as they say.

My kingdom for a kleenex

It's flu season. I know this not because I myself have succumbed but because every class this past week has had me sitting in front of, or beside, someone sniffing to save their lives. For over an hour, I am subjected to people sneezing and coughing and like the chinese water torture, sniffing at regular intervals. Meanwhile I hunch over my desk facing away from them, obstensibly to better write down my notes, while almost losing the battle to shout out at them, "for god's sake use a kleenex - contrary to what your professors have been telling you, wiping your nose is not a bourgeois act. You are not delaying the revolution one second by refusing to exercise proper nasal hygeiene". But alas, all that happens is I get a sore neck from my contorted note-taking and repressed prissiness, and worse, I feel a sore throat coming on. I think I'd better go lie down.

Bubbles "with a hanky stuffed in every possible pocket" Mandalay

The good, the bad and the ugly

Figures that I would think to write here only when I've had a hell on wheels kind of day. It didn't start out great when the contract work I'm supposed to have ready for March 1st is not going to happen because according to the people who have had responsibility for it since September, their part is not going to be done until mid-April. Oh really. What about that Christmas time line we've been talking about for 6 months? Why after finally starting to harrass people, is the sum of my achievement being that I have a new time line 6 weeks past the point of being any use to me? Can it get any better? You bet it can. Try going to your oral surgeon for a checkup on the work done months ago to find out you have to have it done again. And for all who know the pleasures of oral surgery, yes, I do get to lie there while someone scrapes away at the tender flesh of my gums, yet again...twice in six months. What a lucky girl am I.

And yet, and yet, the news I have not managed to convey yet, buried as it is under all the victim material, I also got into library school! Both number 1 and 2 choices have given me a hearty yea...which of course sets the decision making twister in action yet again. Still...99.5% decided on where to go and when not pondering my tender gums and tenuous contractual agreements...I'm actually pretty happy about finally getting to go after this thing. "I'm ready for my reference question Mr. Demille."

You want me to do what?

I'm not sure if it's old age, stupidity or just plain bad handwriting that's got me into this predicament. All I know is that among the items on my list for today is the ever cryptic "bats?" At least that's what it looks like to me. I've squinted, I've looked at it from different angles, I've snuck up on it quickly and the only other options appear to be dats, bots or eels, none of which exactly clarifies the matter. And I don’t even know if it’s something I’m supposed to be doing, buying, finding or maybe it’s someone I’m supposed to call or meet. Whichever it is, it ain’t gonna happen, not unless I suddenly experience the visual version of tip-of-the-tongue syndrome and find it all coming clear, as if I were a miraculously healed sinner of the blogging set. I think the thing that intrigues me the most about it is that while the hesitancy with which I wrote the word seems to have contributed to its illegibility, the question mark is sure and strong as if I knew where it was all headed and punctuated accordingly. If only other parts of our lives worked that way - preparing ourselves unconsciously for our inevitable failure. Wait a minute, that is how my life works. Just call me Bubbles “I may not know what I’m trying to say but I always know how it’s going to be received” Mandalay.

Fingernail chewing time

Into second semester now of my lovely undergrad upgrade year - all aimed at the coveted Master's Degree in Library and Information Science. The apps are out and we should start hearing in a couple of weeks if I'm accepted. Meanwhile we still have no idea where we should go. We have endless conversations with multiple permutations of possibilities and always end in the same damn place, with a tentative plan...so tentative it's like one of those wispy gossamer dress type things that Stevie Nicks used to whirl around in except somehow it's got the name of a library school on it but no, then it swirls around like a white winged dove and it's the name of a different library school and so on and so on. It's just like when I was on the edge of seventeen with dreams, me and rhiannon, that is...enough with the bad seventies perm shag flit down memory lane. Not a place I should be visiting again in this lifetime...so think I'll just get back to my fingernail biting and looking one more time at the budget that no matter how many times I look at it, still shows way more money going out than coming in...I say ooh, baby, ooh, say ooh.

You call this a test?

I knew I was in trouble when after seeing the first two questions, it occurred to me that I must have studied the wrong chapters or I was in the wrong class or my mind had been snatched and replaced with somebody else's, somebody who had not been in class writing every word down so as to be sure that she wouldn't be caught off guard at the next test when faced with questions that seemed to have nothing in common with the course subject matter. But no, a few questions on and the laughably simplistic ones roll in like mist onto a beach as back and forth we go between obscure, trivial sidenotes that only the photographic memory idiot genius freaks would remember and the questions that you'd know the answers to if you simply read the course description in the calendar.

He seems to think that everyone is either a bone brain-dead moron or someone who can recite the entire textbook at will. No in-between regular reasonably intelligent human beings who try to understand the basic concepts of the lectures and readings - oh no, we don't take kindly to that sort round here. Saddle up to multiplechoiceville or skedaddle on back to those wussy courses where you actually have an idea what kinds of things might be asked on a test - like something learned in a lecture or a concept explained in one of them there, what you call, textbook deals.

This is almost getting to be a fun game, in a warped, twisted sister way. I'm actually kind of looking forward to the next test so I can catch a glimpse of what it is he thinks he's been trying to teach us. The fact that it doesn't in the slightest resemble anything I recall from the experience only keeps it interesting. But never mind, in the immortal words of those saucy cheerleader types, I say bring it on. This time, I'm ready for you big guy.

Save me auntie Em

Loving school. It's a cool thing to stretch your mind in new directions - it's so easy to get stuck in your own viewpoint, your own world, your own insular crap. I am, however, on occasion, forced to remember why it is I like to be on my own most of the time. This may not be a newsflash but people are odd, unpredictable creatures whom I will never, ever understand. And there are times I am happy to be well removed from them.

And what prompted this, you may ask. I recently had the fascinating experience of trying to participate in a debate with 8 other people for one of my classes. It was one weird experience. Now I'm the first to admit I'm an organization freak, that I have little patience for wasting my time but dealing with a bunch of people you don't know, half of whom you've never even seen, to try to do a "group" project together that is ill-formed and chaotic right from the get-go, is a challenging experience at the best of times. These "debates" have absolutely no structure except that there's a topic, two sides and a specific night on which you have to perform. I'm sure you can imagine the hijinks that ensue. The "content" can become mind-numbingly boring as people who have no idea about the issues under discussion are not inconvenienced enough by this fact to actually prevent them from espousing at great length about the "solution" to a problem about which they admit to being ignorant of many of the most basic points.

But before this dyanamite evening of scintillating discussion we 9 first had to have the disjointed, head-butting scrum that passed for planning for this event. Just like the real world we had the power struggles, the backroom maneurevings and the disappearances. Ah, yes, the disappearances. You know the kind - the ones who say, I don't think we should do it like that and then disappear never to be heard from again, till presentation day of course. In the meantime some in the group, who also happen to be on the vague side, never actually producing anything themselves, keep referring to the disappeared's excellent work that sadly, never seems to actually make it to the main event because they've been busy with other stuff. Naturally, none of the rest of us have anything else we have to do.

In the meantime hippie rant girl who has too many ideas to keep track of, some of which actually pertain to the subject at hand, has taken it upon herself to herd the kitties into something resembling an activist posse out to save the world. Me, I just can't wait to get the hell out of it all. I tried to provide structure - that didn't work. I tried to stand back - but couldn't completely manage that either given the directionless chaos towards which it all appeared to be careening wildly.

Then if that wasn't bad enough, the other team, I use the term loosely, apparently never even met before the showdown. They read out some lame-ass vague position that lasted approximately 6 seconds before we began our video clip followed by the cast of thousands presentation, which had to be cut short so as not to completely overwhelm them. Which promptly thrust us into the totally nonsensical and downright useless freeforall that in an actual debate would be called the rebuttal stage, or as one of my teammates charmingly referred to it, the retaliation, but in our chaotic version of reality resembled a stage production of It's a mad, mad world starring the cast of Hollywood Squares.

Please spare me the people who would not recognize critical thinking if it was the only thing standing between them and a luxury cruise liner filled with buff bodies of their own particular persuasion and inclination. And especially spare me those non-critical thinking types who are also of the "I simply can't get enough of listening to myself talk" bent, which almost invariably also includes the extra "and don't expect me to hear a damn thing you have to say" service upgrade package.

Do I sound bitter? Damned straight. Am I grateful to be getting back to my own work, double damned straight. Which is way too much straight talk for this girl.

School-girl at last

Well, I'm here, I'm schooling and is it ever fun. Theoretically this is just a nothing year - an upgrade time for trying to get into Library school and yet I am digging the whole thing. Lots of stim' for the brain, lots of 'cise for the bod and just a new, groovy world.

No time for blogging but then life does that sometimes, it gets in the way of documenting it. Still, the urge to say, yeah, she's good, this path I'm on, this trick I'm tricking for now. See where it goes, how long it holds and what's beyond that big curve up ahead.

Miss the girl but she's on her way for a visit. The rest though, she's all dandy and such. Later.

Anti-boomer boomer?

In our youth we are horrified by our inheritance, the world bestowed upon us by those who have flagrantly exploited it, then passing onto us, their heirs, the toxic runoff from their vicious destruction of all that matters. Then in our late youth, we are so busy surviving the life that most of us have accidentally fallen into, careers, families, homes etc to have energy for anything as minor as the state of the world.

Next stop, middleage – that cranky time when we decry the world that is clearly going to hell in a handbasket, no fault of our own, mind. It’s those reckless progress seekers who are destroying every institution that mattered, ie every nostalgic memory we have that bears only a passing resemblance to reality. What’s particularly horrifying at this juncture is that we boomers get to take centre stage due not to the wisdom of our outlook but by our sheer numbers and economic clout. Yes we are in charge of most major news outlets - newspapers, TV shows, publishing and as a result we are paid a good wage to cry foul about where all this is headed - okay I'm not, which may explain my bitterness.

Could this boomer-crusted media empire be why we are subjected endlessly to the ongoing kerfuffle about a grammar-stickler's punctuation book, an insult laden judge of perky young divas and divos (the male equivalent?) and an apparently mediocre novelist taking a strip off his more successful peers? While bloggers obsess over hangovers and Paris Hilton, we boomers who are not in charge, sit in our easy chairs and say, you tell ‘em Lynn Truss, Simon Cowell and Dale Peck. And then as a just reward for your cranky dismissal of all those who do not match your exquisite expectations, we shall turn our magnifying glasses on you and burn gaping holes in your work.

How many times has Lynn Truss been accused of bad grammar? How many words have been spent on Dale Peck’s failings as a critic and novelist? Just desserts or holding them up to their own criteria? Or is it just one more opportunity for the self-aggrandizing among us to poke fingers at those who have achieved success even though we're way smarter, and despite, or because of, the fact that they are achieving this success by ruining all that really matters (to us). Maybe it's simpler than that though. Maybe it's yet another example of self-righteous nastiness disguised as fun - lots of that going around too, always has been. Hey, wait a minute, that sounds just like this blog. Or as Emily Litella would say, never mind.

Plan 24B

We have so many plans, we need flow charts to follow them all. If I get into Library school X, but not Library school Y and it’s a Friday with a slight breeze and a chance of showers during a month that contains an R, then we will do A, unless of course, the peach pit séance suggests that’s a bad idea. Then we fall back on plan 24B, part iii that is only slightly less complicated than getting myself declared empress for life of a small green planet in the next galaxy.

People with children do not have the time for so much navel-gazing and permutation wielding. People who are living through a civil war don’t have the energy or inclination to run through one more time, every possible scenario of our lives over the next two years. Hell even I don’t have the time or inclination but unfortunately that doesn’t prevent my continuing to examine the endless possibilities.

Maybe if I…unless of course S wants to…and then we could always…. but maybe it would be better to…