Seeing The Possibility Of Eventually Seeing The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I took some time yesterday afternoon and plotted out a proposed program for my MLIS, using the semi-conservative belief that I could handle 2 courses per semester, 3 semesters per year (thank god for summer school, eh?). If I manage this, I will actually be graduating in December 2010, which sounds actually feasible. Even if I had to shift out another year, that's *still* better than I had initially thought; I had been sort of convinced it would take me 4 or 5 years to get this done. Will I actually manage this? Remains to be seen, certainly, but just seeing the Excel spreadsheet in front of me (yep, used Excel, gotta represent the whole proto-database librarianiness) made it all a lot more realistic, if perhaps a bit gulp-inducing. There are some awfully interesting sounding courses out there though, and I think it's a sensible program for someone who wants to head the archival stream but still have a solid foundation in Lib/Info Sci. I will hopefully even have a working knowledge of your complement of things like SQL and Oracle and all that happy fun stuff.

My favorite semester if it works is next fall, which will be Preservation Management and Archives & Manuscripts. Heather's Happy Places. I even plugged in an internship semester, along with Records Management. Is this Martian to everyone else? Probably, but trust, it's a pleasing thing to ponder.

My friend Xat had a wonderful idea for motivation, which is buy myself an amusing tshirt touting some virtue, real or imagined, of librarians or bookish geekiness for each semester that I successfully complete. One way or another, I'll end up with an useful professional degree and a closet of droll clothing. Cafepress and One Horse Shy have good collections; my favorites thus far are (in Google script) "Librarian: The Original Search Engine" and "I'm A Librarian. Don't Make Me Shush Your Ass!".

Indeed.

I'm really excited for you! I so enjoyed my Masters in Info Mgt that I know you will enjoy your course and however alien it feels at first, you won't mind having your brain stretched. I still found SQL and Oracle almost a stretch too far though! Got the theory of database relationships but that coding language is just so abstract! For me anyway. Can't wait to hear how it goes. What day d'ya start?