Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (Part 2)

Well Monday morning was the first "real" day of this whole thing. I walked down to campus (a fun and brisk walk since it's all downhill on Bigelow; I can't say the same for the walks back uphill, but at least it's good exercise), got great coffee from Crazy Mocha and an OK breakfast sandwich from Bruegger's Bagels and schlepped up to Allen. After Sunday, me and Jenny had both decided that it would be ludicrous to drive there given how close each of our hotels were to campus. And besides, we both like walking. Anyway, after getting our pictures taken and after the LIS 2600 presentation by Dr. Tomer, we got to have lunch on our own. I am thankful to Dr. Alman for many reasons, but one of them is listing Food for Thought in her "places to eat in Oakland" guide. This place makes a seriously great corned beef sandwich. "Really good" is an understatement. Do not miss this place if you're in Pittsburgh and into that sort of thing. Afterwards, I dragged Ian B. (who also accompanied me for lunch) to Wicked Discs, one of the record stores on S. Craig St.(one of the shopping strips in Oakland), where in the limited amount of time we had to browse there, I got a vinyl copy of Government Issue's You Lp. Overall, the store was small and cool, though a bit pricey.



After hustling back to Allen and getting in a few minutes late (sorry), we got to attend the "Introduction to the Profession" seminar. I must say that I really enjoyed this part of the learning experience and I think I learned quite a lot from the librarians in various fields. I think I've decided that I'd like to at least take the Introduction to Archives class as an elective, though I don't think I can commit to the entire track. I don't wanna place all of my eggs in one basket, especially not before I try out of the classes. I also think that school librarianship is probably not for me, though Joe Prince had what was by far the most memorable presentation due to Hamburgheruesa (I hope I'm spelling that correctly), a toy llama that he uses in his library at North Allegheny Middle School that even has its own e-mail address (I distinctly remember hamburgheruesarules@gmail.com). Although it's not my field of interest, Joe seems tailor-made for it (as a former English teacher) and he knows how to market his library and the profession itself quite effectively. Amy Watson's presentation interested me as well and later, I found out that we have a mutual friend who works for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. As she said, the world of libraries is quite small! And I don't think anyone in Cohort 9 will forget Barbara Epstein's presentation. I don't wanna mention it because it's so grizzly, but it's certainly memorable! Of the different tracks, I can see myself in academic, public, special libraries and maybe archiving as well and all for different reasons. It's tough to decide so early on, especially with only a little bit of experience (all volunteer) in my chosen field.

After our walk to SIS, we got to meet Elizabeth Mahoney and another member of the SIS faculty along with several library employees. I wasn't sure where to go for dinner afterwards and eventually settled on Ali Baba's on S. Craig St. It was pretty good, but not great. It was an absolutely gorgeous evening (slightly cool with virtually no humidity and mostly clear), so I found a bench somewhere on 5th Avenue and read Viral Spiral (an excellent book which may be my favorite of everything we've had to read for LIS 2000, but again more on that later). After that, I hoofed it back to the hotel, where I worked on my bullet points for the book discussion for Viral Spiral and Everything is Miscellaneous while somehow managing to watch the season premiere of No Reservations. I also worked on some stuff for our group presentation as well. Fortunately, we managed to finish most of the work for our group presentation before we arrived on campus, but there was still work to be done (annotated bibiliographies, et al.) along with, as ever, more reading before submitting my thoughts on our readings into Course Documents.

Fast Track Weekend/On Campus Learning Experience (Part 1)

Well I just back from Pittsburgh. OK that sounds like the start of an old song or something, but it's true. We (myself and Jenny Pilling, a student in my cohort who was kind enough to give me a ride there and back; thanks again!) drove out to Pittsburgh on Saturday from where she lives (Ardmore, which is right outside of Philadelphia) and got there in under 5 hours. It definitely helps to go on a Saturday, so we avoided all the traffic that way. We were also lucky enough to avoid the traffic on the way back on Wednesday, but more on that below. Now for the sake of not having this post be the equivalent of a lengthy Russian novel (are there short ones?), I'm separating them into different parts. The first segment will cover Saturday and Sunday.



After checking in to my hotel a little after 9 (after a great dinner at this place), I was too exhausted to really accomplish much of anything other than checking e-mail and watching Valley Girl on one of the movie channels before dozing off.

It was fortunate that we didn't have to be on campus until 1 since I had a chance to sleep in a little (though I did get up and 8 and managed to work out at my hotel's gym; it was the last time I was able to do that, but more on that later). What was unfortunate, though, was the hotel's complimentary breakfast. In this case, there was a reason it was complimentary and that's because (for the most part), it was awful! For the rest of my stay, I happily paid a few dollars extra for coffee and breakfast elsewhere. So anyway Jenny (who stayed at the Quality Inn; she told me later that it was half the price, so I think I know where I'm staying in October) came to get me at 11:30 so that we could go to campus to get our IDs. There was no line and we got our IDs within minutes and then we met up with Nicole, another student in our Cohort who came all the way from Qatar! We all went to the Primanti Brothers on Forbes Ave. in Oakland (a neighborhood I'd explore and get to know really well for having been there only 4-5 days), right next to the University, and I'm happy to say that it was great and way, way better than the one I went to 3 years ago in some suburb (the only time I'd been to the Pittsburgh area prior to my trip). So anyway we went to Allen Hall and met some of the other students. Eventually, just about everyone in our cohort arrived and we met Dr. Alman and Dr. Tomer as well. I think we just did some introductions and team-building exercises before having dinner at Lulu's Noodles (a place with seriously GREAT bubble tea and pretty good Chinese food, too), but then again I'm still so wired from the experience that sometimes it's hard to keep what happened on which particular day straight. After dinner, I went back to the hotel to work on my project for LIS 2600. Yes, I did put it off until the last minute, but fortunately it didn't take me long to get through it. That'll be a separate blog post, so stay tuned for that.