Category Archives: Graduate School

Cats Dogs Plants Animals, Graduate School, Pandemic

It’s been a while…

I had this grand plan that once I finished my graduate school work I’d post regularly on this blog again. I finished my school work on December 16, 2022…and then I realized how very tired I was, and, of course, didn’t end writing many posts. So I decided that I’d post regularly again once I walked through my graduation ceremony in mid May. But guess what: the day after graduation I crashed – I was ridiculously tired. I even stayed home from work that day (a Saturday) and spent the whole day in bed – which is totally NOT like me.

And so it’s gone. I think that the craziness of my life since March of 2020 really took a toll on me, and these last few months have been about processing all that happened and also catching up on downtime. Think about it: I was going to graduate school while working at least 60 hours a week (paid for 40, no worries about overtime, people! 🙂 ), and my work was all about pivoting and constantly reinventing processes and procedures while being concerned about not catching Covid because I work in a public service job and Jim works in healthcare. Plus we were trying to have a happy homelife, so I would try to shuffle off my school and work stuff to times when Jim wasn’t home; not a moment of my days were unscheduled. And, because I’m a perfectionist, it wasn’t enough for me to do the coursework and earn my MLIS – I needed to graduate with a 4.0 GPA and honors.

So, yeah, I’m tired. And while life seems to be “normal” again, it really isn’t, is it? Covid is still lurking in the background, reminding us that our lives won’t ever quite be the same as they were before March of 2020. My brother has written a couple of posts for his blog that resonant with me on Covid burnout and lingering effects of stress from the pandemic: this one from June 2023 and a second post from September 2023.

In addition to the post-graduation exhaustion I’ve been feeling, we’ve also been dealing with a very sick little kitty cat and an elderly dog who won’t let himself heal from a surgery in August. Tuffy will, hopefully, be fine, but he has persistently been worrying at the surgical site on his tush from which a benign lump was removed in August. We have to dress him in a shirt every day to keep him from licking it, but he still insists on rolling around on his back and working at the spot. Last week I took him to the vet to have the site checked, and sure enough it was infected. Time for more antibiotics, and then we went back on Tuesday so the vet could put in a couple of stitches and three staples. This is the second time the vet has had to re-close the site, so all my fingers and toes are crossed that this time it heals.

And then there’s sweet Millie. On July 2 she had a tremendous nosebleed, which began multiple trips to the animal hospital. She got a CT scan and a rhinoscopy, and was diagnosed with Feline Herpes Virus, which causes flares of sneezing and terrible congestion and rhinitis. By August she was doing pretty well and it looked like we could get by with daily Zyrtec and L-lysine and probiotics, but then a few weeks ago she was really struggling to breathe again. We’ve been to the vet (or the vet has come to us) four or five times in the last couple of weeks, and our awesome house call vet has kept in constant contact by text (until this week, when the poor woman got Covid and has been laid up herself). Millie won’t eat or drink water at this point – when cats can’t smell they won’t eat – so the days are consumed by dosing her with antibiotics and a prescription nose drop, then two visits each day to a steamy bathroom, plus keeping a humidifier going in her favorite room, plus I’m feeding her by syringe, and Jim and I are giving her subcutaneous fluids each day. Plus our vet has given us a transdermal appetite stimulant to put on her ear as needed – I’m not sure it works, but maybe it does? Plus today I decided to dose her with catnip to see if that would help (not really, alas).

It’s deeply sad to see our little girl wasting away because her nasal passage is blocked so she doesn’t want to eat. I’m very concerned about her, but hoping that all of our ministrations will help her round the bend and get her appetite back. Please keep our sweet Millie in your thoughts.

Long story short, I’m pooped, and this blog probably isn’t going to see another post for a while…

Graduate School, Librarianship

Honors

To be honest, I’m not really very comfortable tooting my own horn [this is where Jim would insert a giggle-ridden joke about “tooting”], but since I’ve just finished the last formal education that I plan to pursue, I figure I might as well do a little tooting [insert more giggling].

I got an email this week telling me that the faculty of SLIS have voted to invite me “to join Beta Phi Mu, the International Honor Society for Library and Information Science.” The email goes on to state that “only 35% of students with a grade point average of 3.75 or higher, and who showed promise in leadership and service, were considered for membership.”

Woo-hoo! Even at the ripe old age of whatever I am, I still show promise! I’m not being flippant here – I’m seriously delighted to be thought of as promising, as having a future and having future impact on the world. And I definitely feel energized now that I’m done with school, and I’m excited about all the projects I’m cooking up for my professional role.

And I’m seriously delighted to receive the honor of being invited to join Beta Phi Mu. A huge thank you to the faculty of SLIS for the invitation!

Graduate School, Librarianship, Life

Finished, at last, and some good press

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I turned in my final paper for my final class for my MLIS on Friday, December 16 at exactly 3:00 PM. It was a fantastic feeling to hit the “send” button on that email and to know that I was DONE. No more school ever for this girl! Two Master’s degrees is sufficient for my purposes, and I’m really happy to have my free time back. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy being in school and learning all kinds of new things, because I absolutely did, but being in school was a heck of a lot more fun before the pandemic hit. I wish I’d had more time available to really dig in and really love school this time around, but as of March 2020 it became tough to portion out my time in a satisfying way. I’m deeply grateful to my awesome professors and classmates who made learning enjoyable in the midst of pandemic pivoting at my workplace.

As of January 31, Simmons University has completed their degree audit on my classes and officially decreed that I am graduated from the MLIS program with a concentration in Libraries and Librarianship. And I’m incredibly proud to report that I graduated with a 4.0 GPA – all that hard work and sacrifice since September 2018 paid off in terms of getting a 4.0 in every single one of my twelve classes. Yay me.

And in other good news, the Trustees of the HPL asked if they could submit an announcement about the very generous scholarship that I was awarded at the end of August. The announcement was printed in yesterday’s Harvard Press, and can be seen here. The link will only work for one week (unless you have a subscription to the Press), so I’ve also taken a screen shot:

I was deeply honored to have been awarded this scholarship from the Patricia Thomas-Jeanig Fund of the Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts. As I said in my thank-you note to the Foundation, “words truly cannot express the depth of my gratitude at this honor…it is an enormous validation of my career and life’s work as a children’s librarian.” And I added “I hope to go on to support and mentor the next generation of children’s librarians (while, of course, continuing to be a children’s librarian myself).”

I’m giving myself a little bit of grace for a month or two (or perhaps three), though, in order to catch my breath and remember what it’s like to have unscheduled time that I can use to do anything I like at all. It’s amazing to not have a voice in the back of my head reminding me of all the “have-to-dos”, and instead be thinking of the “want-to-dos”! But I’m also contemplating the ways that I can follow through on my promise to mentor the next generation of children’s librarians. It would be amazing to teach a graduate class on children’s services (not sure if that is possible without a PhD, though), but it would be equally amazing to set up an internship program at the HPL where each semester I could host a student intern and give them some real hands-on experience being a children’s librarian. We’ll see what I can cook up!

Meanwhile, it’s time to go back to my lazy Saturday morning reading a book (a book of my choosing!) by the woodstove with the four awesome varmints. No better way to spend a freezing cold February day!

Cats Dogs Plants Animals, Graduate School

5 weeks and 2 days…and a dog

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My final paper for my final grad school class is due in 5 weeks and 2 days. On December 16, I will officially be finished with my MLIS degree, after four and a half long years of work. (Huge thanks to Jim for his patience with the never-ending homework!) And I’m so thrilled that my final class for this degree ended up being an independent study with my favorite professor – I’m studying Management Theory for Leading and Working Effectively in Libraries. Best class ever!

Since I have a LOT of studying to do today (I’m on study-cation this week), this post will be brief – but one quick fun announcement: we got a dog! (Because, of course, when you’re trying to finish up a Master’s degree program the best thing to do is get a dog…)

Meet Tuffy. He’s a 12-year-old Shih Tzu mix (though we think he must have a lot of terrier in him – his face is all terrier to our eyes) who came from Pensacola, Florida where he was found as a stray and never claimed. He has dry eye and wonky arthritic legs and very few teeth, but he’s an absolute sweetheart and so much fun. And I’m not too allergic to him – nothing I can’t handle with a little Claritin – and so far things are going ok with the cats. We’ve seen some positive interactions between the felines and the canine, which isn’t bad for a week and a half of living together, and have high hopes that in time everyone will be getting along fine.

We got Tuffy from the best pet rescue ever – I can’t say enough good things about them: Vintage Pet Rescue in Rhode Island.

Here are a few photos of our new friend:

Tuffy loves hanging out in our yard
Moxie and Bud in my lap checking out the sleeping doggo
Sleepy Tuffy
Tuffy!
Graduate School

Frontline Documentary on AI

Below is another forum post from this semester’s class, from the beginning of this month:

On Tuesday night [November 5] I viewed most of an incredibly well-done documentary on AI (I missed the first half hour, since I only stumbled on the show and hadn’t planned on watching it).

The documentary, titled “In the Age of AI,” aired on Frontline on PBS and runs for just under two hours. Though it’s a big time commitment to view the entire documentary, it is a comprehensive look at AI and has great relevance to this class. Here is the official Frontline description of the program:

FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of artificial intelligence, from fears about work and privacy to rivalry between the U.S. and China. The documentary traces a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our lives, our jobs and our world, and allow the emergence of the surveillance society. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/in-the-age-of-ai/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/in-the-age-of-ai/

The documentary covers all aspects of AI, from the prospect of self-driving tractor trailers, to robots on factory floors assembling cars, to the sophistication of facial recognition. Most fascinating to me was the discussion of ethics in AI (including a look at how Google changed its initial “do no harm” business model in the wake of the dot com crash of 2000), and also the discussion of what is essentially shaping up to be a new Cold War, but this time a technology Cold War, between China and the United States. Linked in to this ethical discussion was the profound effect that AI has on human beings, from United Auto Workers members (UAW) who have lost their jobs to robots to the persecution of the Chinese Muslim minority, the Uyghur, by the Chinese government via sophisticated AI surveillance. By the end of the documentary, my husband and I were chilled by the impact that AI already has on society, and terrified by how the future of AI could profoundly change our lives, and not necessarily for the better.

As I was watching the documentary, I kept thinking to myself “how does all of this relate to what I do as a librarian?” I knew that I wanted to share this program with the class, but I also wanted to find a way to link it to our chosen career. Ultimately, I feel that as librarians we are the gatekeepers to knowledge, and the professionals that many people seek out to help them navigate the ever-changing world of technology. In that role, we have the ability to educate our patrons about the full spectrum of AI: its positives and also its negatives. If we are well-educated about the potential perils of privacy concerns like facial recognition that can be misused as surveillance, then we can help our patrons understand the implications of using advanced technology. And, as a children’s librarian, I have an additional responsibility to teach the kids I work with about AI in a way that makes them aware of dangers while not frightening them away from technology; these kids have never lived without technology, and they are also the future of technological advances.

I can’t recommend this documentary highly enough – it is well worth the time investment to watch it, and my mind is still processing what I’ve learned from it to the extent that I plan on watching the documentary again this weekend.

The documentary can be accessed here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/in-the-age-of-ai/

Graduate School

TikTok, Memes, and A.I.: Losing Ourselves in Technology

Well, obviously I haven’t had the time to write blog posts this semester, so I thought I’d share here a couple of posts that I wrote for my class. The class is “Technology for Information Professionals,” and over the course of the semester each student must post on the semester-long forum on “Applying Technology.” Our posts are either supposed to be about a recent technology article, or they are supposed to be about “tech in the wild” – using technology in real life. Our posts are supposed to be no longer than 500 words, which has been a challenge for me to abide by… 🙂

Here is the first post that I wrote for the forum, in early October:

I just finished reading a fascinating article “The Meme Factory: How TikTok holds our attention” by Jia Tolentino in the current issue of The New Yorker. The article begins by discussing the app TikTok, but then expands in an ever-growing circle to discuss current app technology and how it uses A.I. to influence what we see and experience, and, finally and most disturbingly, the article discusses the parent company for TikTok, ByteDance, which is based in China but has influence worldwide. According to Tolentino, there are questions about the information that ByteDance accumulates as it uses A.I. to tailor its apps (TikTok worldwide, Douyin in China) to provide its users with content that they respond to. Tolentino states: “Although TikTok’s algorithm likely relies in part, as other systems do, on user history and video-engagement patterns, the app seems remarkably attuned to a person’s unarticulated interests. Some social algorithms are like bossy waiters: they solicit your preferences and then recommend a menu. TikTok orders you dinner by watching you look at food.” (Tolentino, p. 36)

Though the content on TikTok tends towards mindless, fun, short fifteen second videos created by and enjoyed by mostly teenagers, the fact is that there is a huge amount of money and power lurking behind the fun, and that the A.I. used to tailor the app could potentially be used for nefarious political means. Tolentino questioned a ByteDance representative about the possibility of the Chinese government making use of “the massive trove of facial closeups accumulated on its various platforms,” or “what if a third party got hold of the company’s data?” In other words, a seemingly innocuous app is able to collect facial recognition files as well as “pose estimation” that helps A.I. to learn human body language.

This is an extremely interesting article about a complex topic, and I can’t even begin to touch the surface here of what Tolentino addresses in her piece. Simply put, though, it put chills down my spine as I thought long and hard about the role that technology plays in our daily lives, and how we are gradually becoming immune to privacy worries. In Week One of this class we read the article “Library Tech Trends for 2019” by Jim Lynch which discusses assisting patrons with privacy concerns on social media, and also discusses the ALA’s worry about ethical concerns with facial recognition. As Lynch states, “[facial recognition] technology is already raising ethical concerns that might go against the core values of libraries, including intellectual freedom, privacy, equitable access, and diversity.” As more forms of technology accumulate data on our unique facial characteristics, there is more possibility of such information being misused as it has in China to find and imprison Uighurs (a Muslim minority). Frankly, I’m now a bit terrified about our future, but I’m very grateful to Tolentino for writing this excellent article.

Lynch, J. (2019, January 14). Library Tech Trends for 2019 [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://www.techsoupforlibraries.org/blog/library-tech-trends-for-2019

Tolentino, J. (2019). The meme factory: How TikTok holds our attention. The New Yorker, XCV(29), 34-41. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-holds-our-attention

Also worth checking out: Christoph Niemann’s cover for this issue of The New Yorker (the technology issue): https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2019-09-30

Children, Graduate School, Librarianship

Resources for Parents and Caregivers

I realized last evening that I had never shared the link on this blog for the class project that I created last year (fall semester 2018) for the class I took that term, Information Sources and Services. The assignment was to create a LibGuide on a topic of our choosing, so of course I chose a topic that would be of use to me in my daily tasks at the library in which I work: Resources for Parents & Caregivers of Preschoolers.

Here is the link to my LibGuide. Please let me know if it is of use or interest to you!

Graduate School, Librarianship

Thoughts on being an adult learner

Just a quick post today, since I’ve got a lot of homework to do…

Earlier this week I was talking to a friend of mine who’s not too happy in her job, and she mentioned that she is thinking of going back to school.   I told her that going back to school is the best thing that I’ve done for myself in recent years – that being in school has been amazingly fun and validating.  I actually surprised myself with the enthusiasm of my response to her, and it got me thinking a bit about what it means to be an adult learner.

The first thing that I’ve had to come to terms with is that the majority of my fellow students are far younger than I am.  This is both a negative and a positive for me: the younger students are extremely enthusiastic, and most of what we are learning is new and exciting to them.  They also have more flexibility in the way they approach new topics in class; let’s face it, they are more open to change than an older student (even a fairly progressive one like me).

But then there is the positive side to being an older student, which for me greatly outweighs any negatives.  I’ve got several years of work experience in my favor, so that as I learn new topics I can immediately apply it to my career – a younger student who has never worked as a librarian cannot do that, for obvious reasons.  I love that the breadth of my experience allows me to consider our assignments from a higher starting point than if I had never worked in the field.  And for the technology class that I am taking this semester, I have the distinct advantage of having grown up alongside personal computers, so I have direct experience with some of the things that we’re learning right now.  For instance, this week’s video lectures are on the command prompt, and as I’ve been viewing them, I’ve realized that my classmates grew up using computers with a mouse, whereas I grew up using commands in DOS (ah, the good old days of the C prompt!) with VAX machines for email in college (I learned all kinds of cool tricks for using the VAX machines!).

And then there is the most lovely part of being in school after years of being in the working world: the immediate and definitive gratification of being graded on your assignments.  In the real world, I get formal feedback once a year at my job, in the form of my annual review.  Obviously, there’s also less formal verbal feedback over the course of the year, but it’s not written and precise in the way the annual review is.  So it’s been really cool doing assignments over the course of each semester and getting written feedback from my professors on those assignments.  And it’s even lovelier to get grades on classwork, something that just doesn’t happen in the real world.

Last but certainly not least, I love learning new things.  I love working my brain in ways that it hasn’t been worked since I got my last master’s degree.  Admittedly, this mental fitness program hasn’t left much time for my physical fitness program, but I’m working on adding physical fitness back into my daily routine (there just aren’t enough hours in a day, are there?).

Long story short, it’s pretty fantastic being in graduate school as an adult learner who is already established in the profession.  I’m learning so much, and loving the experience more than I can ever say.  My only regret is that I can’t take any classes in person, but rather am pursuing the degree online, since it would be fabulous to be in a classroom with all of these smart classmates of mine.  But that’s a small regret, and perhaps I’ll be able to squeeze in a face-to-face class at some point.

Yay to education!!!

Blog administration, Graduate School, Librarianship

Year Two, and Year Fourteen

It has been quite a while since I’ve posted here, but there is a good reason: in September 2018 I started graduate school in pursuit of my second master’s degree, and since then I have been trying to master the balance of full-time job, part-time graduate school, and living my life to its fullest.

Happily, I survived my first year of school, and on Tuesday I will be beginning my second year of graduate school. As these things tend to go, I’m hopeful that my second year will be less stressful and more manageable (one can hope, right?), the theory being that after surviving one full year’s cycle, then I’ll have the skills to better anticipate challenges and scheduling conflicts.  Stay tuned to see if that theory proves correct…  🙂

It’s been interesting going back to school as a middle-aged, mid-career adult, especially since most of my classmates are in their 20’s and 30’s and are new to the field.  I’m attending Simmons University as an online-only student, and I am working towards a Master’s in Library and Information Science.  As the title of this post suggests, I am about to reach the fourteenth anniversary at my job as the head children’s librarian in a public library, so some of what I am learning in school is not new to me.  The Simmons program is quite challenging, though, and I am being exposed to many new ideas, theories, and practical concepts, which is making this degree more than worth the time and energy (and money) that I’m spending on it.

For the fall semester, I am taking my last required core class, Technology for Information Professionals, which is a little daunting but also very exciting.  I’ve heard rumors that the final project for the class is to build a personal website from scratch, which definitely intrigues me.  And given that this class focuses on technology of all kinds, this seemed like a particularly good moment for me to resurrect my blog.  I’m going to try to post at least once a week, perhaps more frequently, and to include posts about what I’m doing/learning in school and also posts about what is going on at the wonderful library where I work.  And, of course, there will be posts about cats…  😉