nirak.net - Musings of an LIS Student

Last week was a crazy one for me- the last (I hope) bit of bad winter weather and serious time constrains made me a bit crazy. I think every once in a while I need a little breakdown to straighten myself out. Better weather means brighter spirits for me, and I started this week with renewed optimism.

As I have hinted at in previous posts, I have been having a good deal of trouble settling on a career trajectory. It’s not that I want the perfect first job, but I want a good first job. I still have my “OMG, did I do the right thing?!?!” moments about withdrawing my name from the position I applied for. I have come to the conclusion that job hunting is a little like gambling- sometimes you have to go with your gut and hope for the best. It doesn’t help that I hate gambling.

I have a few ideas about what I might want to do re: job possibilities.

1. Find a local job, save up money and continue networking like crazy

photo credit: Photocapy

The advantage of finding a local job is that I would not have to waste much time with planning a move, deciding where to live, etc. Lincoln affords a good deal of leisure time, and Omaha is not bad either. If I stay in state, I can put away a lot of money and would have a good amount of free time I can devote to professional development (read: more school, but not the crazy pace I have been maintaining.)

Of course, this option is dependent on a job opening up in the right place at the right time. I have heard of a few possible opportunities opening up, but there’s a LOT of talented new library professionals out there that I would be up against. Staying in state would probably mean settling for less than a dream job, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find something that makes me happy.

2. Try to get as many fellowships/internships as possible

The wanderlust part of me loves this idea. Basically, I would try to find some kind of flexible employment that would allow me to leave for a few months at a time to do internships here and there. Better yet would be to get some fellowships to pay my way. I was kind of hoping I might be able to use the new NEH Digital Humanities Fellowship as a springboard (that would, of course, be contingent on finding a center to sponsor me), but unfortunately, I won’t meet the eligibility requirements because I’ll still be in school. I have not started to search in earnest for other fellowship possibilities- the library field isn’t known for tons of fellowships, but there are a few.

I like this idea because it would allow me to try out some different locations and jobs and hopefully find something that fits. The downside, of course, is that it would be less stable and would probably mean being away from my husband for extended periods of time. It would also mean not saving as much.

3. Be patient, wait for the perfect job

Instead of taking something less than ideal because it is close, I could just wait and apply to the dream jobs I’m sure will pop up after I graduate. I like my job and wouldn’t mind staying on for a bit, but the pay isn’t great.

The problem with this plan is I have no idea where I want to live. Lincoln is OK, and I’d love to live in California again but I can’t imagine being able to afford it. (I have a few other dream locals, like Portland Oregon.) I started a google map where I plotted places I might like to live and recommendations based on a quick Twitter poll. I would love to live somewhere I could walk to work or take public transportation, somewhere with a moderate climate, and somewhere with lots of natural beauty. Of course a low cost of living is helpful too. I’m not too picky. Suggestions are welcome.

The problem with the above approach is I don’t really know yet what the perfect job is.

Of course, I am oversimplifying my options - as William Turkel pointed out recently, career trajectories are never a linear or predictable as we would like.  For now, I’m taking a step back and keep watching, listening, and waiting. I’m looking at what others in my position are doing - a big crop of enormously talented Library school students are graduating this May. I’m keeping tabs on job descriptions and trying to figure out what would be right for me.

A big part of this is trying to figure out what kind of person I am- I have become quite the homebody in the last few years (that may just be a result of marriage, or maybe just a lack of money) but I’m starting to come out of that a bit. How adventurous do I want to be? How much risk am I willing to take? These are questions I ask over and over but I can only answer myself.

karin :: Apr.15.2008 :: House and Home, School Stuff :: 3 Comments »

4 days left in the blogging scholarship competition, and it looks like I don’t have a prayer. It doesn’t really bother me- as they say, it’s an honor just to be chosen, and hey, I’m in the top half. Make that #10- vote if you haven’t ‘cuz I’d like to finish in the top half. Thanks to Jenny at the Shifted Librarian, John at johnmiedema.com (now at slowreading.net), Lynn at Hypothetically Speaking, and Diane at Library Cloud for mentioning me in their blogs. Sorry if I missed anyone!

My subscription rates are up because of this competition (hi new readers! Sorry I’ve been slow lately) and lots of people have emailed to congratulate me, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I’ve been incredibly busy. And it’s not that I’m just busy in one area- that would be OK. No, work, school, and home life have all gotten busy at the same time. At work, I’ve been asked to work on a few new projects- I’ve been helping get the National Digital Newspaper Program started, I’ve been asked to design a couple of sites (which I can’t link to yet), I’ve been helping with some grant stuff, and of course, there’s still the meeting setting and note taking.

I somehow expected that taking three classes would be just as easy as taking two classes. Nope. Three classes is enough to qualify me as a full time grad student (I just wanna get DONE) so I’m busy. Most evenings are spent doing homework or fixing the house or one of my computers.

It seems like every time we fix something in the house something else breaks. I guess that’s the way it is with a 100 year old house. As for the computer, that’s my fault. I just HAD to upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon the day it came out, and I fell in love with the desktop effects. Then I realized I needed more memory. So I found a great deal, and now have 3 gigs of RAM. Unfortunately, my mysterious black window problem wasn’t caused by a lack of RAM but a lack of video memory- or a faulty nVidia driver, depending on who you ask. I’ll have to make sure I have the latest driver. I can still do lots of pretty video effect, and I’m loving the desktop wall feature. I’ll stop making fun of Vista for all the memory hogging video effects now.

The weather has been beautiful lately. My house, despite the problems, is wonderful. Life is good.

karin :: Oct.24.2007 :: House and Home, Site Updates, Sites and Stories :: 1 Comment »

I made yummy almond cookies tonight. And then ate too many- now I have a tummyache.

I never was much of a cook. One of my coworkers, Stephen Ramsay, posted a bit ago about the art of cooking: he recommended some nice beginning level books. I realized that a lot of what I am missing in cooking is this beginning stuff- how to make the basic sauces, what cooking terms mean, what temperatures things normally cook at. I have been blindly following recipes for years, wihout really learning anything from them.

I realized that a lot of my education has been the same way. I’ve followed a lot of instructions through the years without making the connections they were supposed to add up to. Part of this is because I never could stay at one school for long- 3 elementary, 2 middle, 3 high schools and 3 colleges for me- many in different states. I read The Old Man and the Sea in three different English classes, and missed a lot of books too. I think part of the problem was that teachers didn’t make the conections, though. It wasn’t entirely their fault- even before no child left behind, there was an emphasis on state test scores. Teachers had to teach what we would be tested on.

College was better, but I still felt like I was stumbling around blind much of the time. I somehow made it to the end and even learned stuff.

I really like getting older. I am starting to feel like I can make sense of the world, at least a little.

karin :: Aug.23.2007 :: House and Home :: 4 Comments »

3 day weekend coming up- and I have NOTHING PLANNED. Well, nothing until now. Here’s what I hope to get done:

• Pay bills.
• Start open access article.
• Think of three poster ideas (I wanna be ready in case I need to make one quick).
• Work on automating my computer backup (thanks Mark).
• Clean up MP3’s so they’re actually usable (add IDE tags, get the files names correctly, reorganize folders, add album art). I have exhausted every PC program I can find, I think I’ll need to try to get Amarok to run again.
• Clean Kitchen.
• Sign up for Netflix again.
• Email adviser study plan.
• Watch lost before anyone else tells me something about it!
• Mow lawn.

A few bonus list items (because everyone loves a list).

Stuff to do this summer:

• Learn regular expressions
• Finish (ha) website (that is, migrate over to WordPress completely and archive old content)
• Get Ubuntu installed on the laptop. I ran into problems last time. I have a feeling getting the touch screen to work will be an all day project.
• Get something growing that does not die.

karin :: May.25.2007 :: House and Home :: 1 Comment »

Ah, the vacation has ended. It was a nice vacation, I got a heck of a lot done:

• Got WordPress up and running (and old entries transferred)
• Replanted front yard
• Fixed plumbing (ok, this was mostly Geoff)
• Gave presentation
• Went to Worlds of Fun
• Celebrated my Birthday
• Had Party
• Cleaned up before and after party
• Visited Geoffs grandma ( showed her how to use Flickr, too)

I didn’t rest much, but I guess that’s OK. This week, I’ll return to fixing my website. I need to learn the magic of Wordpress Template tags.

I got some good news last Friday- I have received 2 more scholarships- the Nebraska Library Association Louise A. Nixon Scholarship, and the LITA / Christian Larew Memorial Scholarship. It’s a big relief for me to know that I won’t be in debt when I graduate, and also means that I will be able to take a job I like, rather than one I need to pay the bills.

I have about three weeks before my next class starts, and in that time I’m going to write up my portable application and open access presentations as articles and submit them to (where else?) open access publications. I also hope to produce a narrated demonstration of portable application using free screen capture software. I need to buy a microphone first.

My vacation really threw off my sleep schedule, which was, frankly, not that good to begin with. I really have been wishing for a place to take a nap during lunch this week- because often after lunch I am so tired. This article recommends driving to a remote spot and catching some shut eye- a nice idea, but I don’t drive to work. I have considered biking to work (the quickest way) and then going home for a brief nap.

Geoff and I got everything planted nice and pretty last week:

But this week, the bushes are dying. I suspect they’re getting too much water, maybe? We watered them yesterday, then it rained. I can’t seem to keep plants alive.

In other news, monkey has been gone for 3 days now. I hope he’s found a good home.

karin :: May.24.2007 :: House and Home :: No Comments »

I have a bunch of blogs I want to read all the way through- but when it’s been going for 2 years, that’s a *lot* of posts. And I’m sitting close to my computer all day at work, I don’t want more of the same at home.

So I wondered if there was a way to read and navigate a blog across the room?

The first step is to get a remote. I got the Keyspan wireless remote, which, at the time of this writing is about $20 at Amazon. In absence of a remote, a mouse with programmable buttons and a long cord would probably work. Oh, and it helps to have a large monitor.

The second step is to make a page visible across a room- there are a few plugins for Firefox that let you zoom in on a page (like the new version of Opera, I suppose) but I used the Web Developer Toolbar, which I already had. This made it easy to add a new user stylesheet:

I then increased the text size so I could see it from 7ish feet away.

Next, I had to figure out the behaviors. The remote is programmable, so I set different buttons to do things like scroll up and down, page up and down, increase and decrease text size, and add a bookmark (so I can mark things for later reference). The only thing I couldn’t figure out is how to get it to advance to the next page? Luckily, some nice programmer wrote a handy  firefox extension called “Next, Please” that will automatically find the “Next” Link in a page and advance. From there is was a simple matter to program the keyboard shortcut into the remote.

Voila! Web surfing from across the room. This will be handy for reading ebooks too, I’m sure. I’m hoping it will be easier on my eyes than reading text close up.

karin :: Sep.09.2006 :: House and Home :: Comments Off