I did more than make friends during my Library Management course. I decided how to focus my attention. Because ivory towers are not real.
Our first big assignment was to develop an enhancement to a library with a budget of $400,000, write a paper about it, and make a presentation. My group chose to add an accessibility center to an academic library with Braille printers, desks that suited people who used wheelchairs, a recording booth where volunteers could record material for fellow blind students, etc.
My group met repeatedly, commuting from different cities for face time. We put a lot of effort into it and we were uniformly determined to have a solid end result. There was an awesome geek in the group who insisted that all of the fictional names in the project (the library director, reference librarians involved in the project, etc.) be named after famous Michigan librarians. I did not know a single one of them at that time.
I had a veritable tidal wave of frustration trying to figure out the cost for the technical specifications of a recording booth using an unnecessarily sophisticated architectural/construction specs book.
Hubby good and true walked me through it: “So, the studio will need a sound proof door, right? Pick a middle-of-the-line door and put it into your Excel file. Now pick a middle-of-the-line ventilation system for the booth and put it in your spreadsheet. The total is going up, right? See! You’ve got this. Now you’re going to need a sound system. I recommend a good one…” and it went on like that until we were done.
As I finished up the cost estimate for the recording booth, I thought: THIS IS GRADUATE SCHOOL. THIS IS THE BIG TIME. Me, English and Women’s Studies undergrad, deciphering construction specs for a group project. Every semester shall be like this, a grand learning adventure where I am exposed to new things at every turn.
The Big Day arrived. The paper was due. It was presentation time.
Another group went first. They were… unprepared. They had no visual aid (a requirement). They hadn’t practiced and didn’t know what information each person was due to share. They kept passing around their paper, looking through it trying to figure out what to say next. It was obvious they were going to fail.
Another group went next. They at least had a visual aid: the ubiquitous PowerPoint.
They included flying gifs, jumping frogs on slides that had nothing to do with jumping frogs, and sound effects that likewise had nothing to do with the content.
The professor was charmed.
I began to doubt.
Out group went next. The presentation was solid. The PowerPoint had no frogs or sound effects. Public speaking made me very nervous but I was proud of our project. Our efforts had paid off.
Grades came back the next week. The prof told us that every group had received a four point, but that he had taken one tenth of a point off of one group’s project for lack of organization.
EVERY GROUP HAD RECEIVED A FOUR POINT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
That’s the day I learned that graduate school was like everything else in life. Some things would be enjoyable, some things would be a struggle. Some things would be irritating. And library school wasn’t necessarily going to be fair.
I reminded myself that, just like what people think of me? Their grades are not my business either.
I decided to apply myself to learning the skills I needed to reach my secret goal of being a UX librarian.
Because that’s what the hokey pokey is really all about. You make of school, and your jobs, what you can. There were many wonderful courses and professors at WSU. I was officially engaged in learning. I could sit for hours in coffee shops with friends reading Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld on Information Architecture, or digging into databases for UX studies comparing different types of libraries and the response of their patrons to library lingo and database searching, and catalog use. It was all, officially, my work.
Hubby had advised me before I started at Wayne State to decide what I wanted to focus on in my research methods (thesis development) course and spend the entire three years building toward it. I was on the yellow brick road to publishing the results of that completed research project in Library Journal.
And that is objectively cooler than acing a book report on a Harvard Business School textbook.
Plum Librarian LLC 
Oh, no! Was that the era (maybe we are still in it) when students evaluated their profs? And grading could result in harsh ratings that could lead to reprimand or even job loss? This seems so unfair to me. I’m glad you are able to write about it now with equanimity and your hair intact.
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