So This Grad School Thing...

I have had my first week of classes! My reviews are thus far (in order of the class): interesting but a lot of work, oh no what is going on here, why is this guy reading off of the powerpoint slides to a 300 person lecture and talking about the moment he decided to watch soccer?, maybe interesting but a lot of work, oh man you are so self-important professor but good thing your class might actually be easy for me. I have four classes for 12 credit hours total. To graduate with what I want and on time I will need to take 12 credit hours for all four semesters + 6 summer internship (full time is 9). No electives for ala...Or rest, apparently.


I had work last week as well, and it was still boring. On a whim I applied for another job that seemed to align experience/career-wise (and pays more). I got a message from the HR person asking me to send my resume and interview for another position that would look awesomesauce on my resume and pays $4.55 more/hour than my current one (which means I can work less hours for more money. At my current rate I will not get my full work study award).  I think the interview went well, although she still has to interview some others. I did realize today as I was in Lansing inventorying the collection I've been working on that when she asked if I had inventory experience and I said "not really" (thinking she was referring to my former admin job) I was a total liarface and could have trotted out my AMAZING RELEVANT EXPERIENCE. Oh well. I'm still super conflicted about quitting my current job if I get the other one. I've never quit a job before. Seriously. In the 6 years I have been gainfully employed I've had four jobs, two years, two years, one year, one year. I feel like a horrible person to quit two weeks in. Of course, this is all academic, as I haven't actually been offered any other jobs, and most likely won't get it (my life expects disappointment. It's unhealthy, I know, but I'm working on it). MOVING ON.

A cool thing that happened last Friday was that after scoping out a "library open-house" at the school (and eating the amazing-catered food) I meandered down to another open house that was, coincidentally, also serving catered food (this time a lovely assortment of cheese, the memory of which is reminding me I still need to eat dinner). It was for http://open.umich.edu/ (which has a LOT of med school stuff on there cough) and since Creative Commons is very nifty I decided to head down there.

I was there for about 15 minutes, about to leave (there were like four people there tops) when a man sat down next to me. He introduced himself as being from the Exhibit Museum. Upon hearing the magic word "museum" I literally perked up. We got on the topic of digitizing the various collections around campus and I blabbered a lot about how that was why I was at SI (it's true, I wrote my admissions essay on it, all five pages) and that I thought there was so much potential for museums to create new audiences and enhance their exhibits through digitized collections and exhibits, etc etc. He gave me his card and said to e-mail him and that he'd put me in touch with the people doing the digitization around campus. I e-mailed him and he said he'd forwarded on my e-mail.

Baby's first networking!

I have a lot to read for tomorrow and I told myself I wouldn't go grocery shopping until I finished my first assignment but I'm hungry and have no food for tomorrow and boohoo. So I might eat and then head out, but, in the spirit of actually referencing things I have mentioned before and also taking my achievements where I can get them I CLEANED MY ROOM.

Remember how I said I need an organized environment to help organize my mind? Well two weeksish after move-in, I still hadn't fully unpacked/organized my room, and so by Sunday it looked like this:

If my mother saw it she would have a FIT. In my sort-of defense, the mess mostly consists of Things That Need to Be Put in Their Homes, empty boxes, and the general garbage that accumulates when one moves into a new place.

It took about four hours (I got distracted a lot), but I made the serious effort to get everything put away or thrown out or what have you, and now my room looks like this:

The red boxes are empty and will be sent home with my mum this weekend, and yes it's not 100% tidy (ignore the wastebin I forgot to empty) but it's a HUGE improvement. Having kitties that get into EVERYTHING is a huge incentive to keep things tidier, so hopefully I'll keep it up! And speaking of kitties, here is Loki and Lola "helping" me tidy:

Such hard workers.