first term report card

I was waiting to post this until I got my first term grades, not realizing that wouldn't happen until the first week of January. So I'll post it now and fill in the grades later. After all, the grades are the least important part of this whole enterprise.

I am now one-eighth of the way to being a Master of Information. Here's my first term report card.

Courses completed: 2 of 16

Number of papers written: 5

Number of presentations made: 2

Orders of french fries consumed: 1

Friends and acquaintances made: several

Chances of staying in touch with any of them (all full-time students): almost zero

Interesting material learned: much more than I expected

Boring material suffered through: plenty

Grades by frequency (two grades still outstanding):

A+   1
A    0
A-   3
B+   3
B    1
B-   0
FZ   0

Expected grades in both classes: B+

Actual grades for both classes: A-, and either A or A-

I originally thought I'd take courses every summer, in order to finish the program sooner. But now I see that most summer courses are given at night - and giving up my summer evenings is too great a sacrifice. I'd actually rather stay in school another year than do that. There's also reason to believe the current job crunch in the Mississauga Library System will improve during that time.

Right now the best thing about school is that I'm not dreading the next term. I'm having a great winter break - both relaxing and very productive, my favourite combination - and I expected to be sad and anxious about school starting next week. But I'm not. I'm fine. This is a very good sign.

My improved attitude is largely because I've changed my courses for next term. I had been enrolled in two required library courses, thinking I'd get them out of the way. But the topics sounded so dry, and it's not necessary to front-load all the requirements. Why not inject a little interest?

To keep my motivation up and make my schedule easier, I scrapped the requireds and enrolled in two electives (out of seven available to me). Both sound really interesting: Intellectual Freedom and Libraries, and the History of Books and Printing. Hopefully this will make my winter easier.

My other electives will likely focus on my library areas of interest: youth and disability/accessibility. But both of these electives are meaningful to me, and intellectual freedom is particularly relevant to librarians.

One more week of my own intellectual freedom before my brain wears the bit again.