Last Journal Entry

And so it comes, the time of finals and endings. And of the beginning of spring or summer (I've never ended a semester so early before). It's a good time, I would like to see more leaves, but I'll take what I can get with the weather. This semester has been really rough. I've been diagnosed with the most pointless and useless disease on the planet. One with no explanation or cure. It's called interstitial cystitis I've survived my first surgery and fortunately it was a noninvasive one. Although I call shoving various objects up your urethra pretty invasive.

Now on the mend to recovery, I can reflect on this class. Though I have to fully admit it took me a few days to realize that last project was canceled. I'm sorry it didn't work out, because I downloaded Dreamweaver 8 and now I have to teach myself how to use it. Hopefully it will go better than learning Flash did. I'm sure the only reason I couldn't learn Flash was because the project was due the next day. Procrastination: it's a killer. But, I think most people can't help it. Pressure is a motivator. So is fear.

I learned a lot in digital applications. I'm glad I have this journal, I hope that it will be a good reference this summer as I am doing a lot of work with digitizing and writing captions. It'll be a lot of learning and feeling my way around, but we'll see what I can do. I am glad I plunged head-first into my first ever cataloging project. It wasn't as bad as I thought. I don't know how well I did on it, but by the end, things made more sense. Sometimes indicators weren't defined very well, but that is my only complaint for MARC handbooks in the future.

It was my first taste with catalogs, so I hope that I get better in the future. It was also my first time using SQL and it was a good review of digital imaging. I learned more than what I'd already known and felt like I understood standards better. It's like math, I sort of get it the first time around, but the second time fills in the crucial gaps that I've missed.

In the future, I think that MARC should be the first project. We should jump headfirst into it. The sooner we start it, the more time we have to learn it. Then we can learn about digital imaging and write the proposal simlutaneously. And then finish off the last couple weeks with the SQL/website project. I just think then the semester would flow smoother and maybe everything would fit in. I feel bad because I missed most of the last few weeks being squeezed in at the urologist and the hospital. It's been one crazy semester. But I truly feel I still got something out of the class. That leaves me with some satisfaction.

Now, I will leave you and get ready to spend my last few weeks in Toronto. I have a to-do list of all the things I want to enjoy before I head home to Rochester before my internship. Then it's off, the next adventure. And I'll bring what I learned with me. Thank you.