David Gwynn

My left arm hurts like hell, the result of a tetanus shot I had to have today in order to continue with school. Seems UNCG shredded my last set of immunization records ten years after I graduated (they keep them forever now, for all the good that does me) so I had to reach back into my childhood (and my mom’s files) to piece together what I could. I would’ve needed the tetanus booster anyway, but it’s still annoying.

That said, I’m in a better frame of mind than I was three days ago. I was just a little overwhelmed that I had so much going on all of a sudden. I knew it was temporary, but that didn’t help much. When much of your income is derived working for TV stations, September is a rather hectic time to be starting anything labor-intensive. And underneath it all, I suspect I was really freaked out at the looming due date of my first paper as a graduate student.

As is the case with so many other scary processes, I really just needed to dive in and get started on the damned thing, which I finally did today once most of my paid workload had calmed down a bit. I found a good chunk of supporting research (damn, there’s a lot of information available online when you have access to a major university library), made up my outline, and finally realized late this afternoon that I would probably get through this paper with no problem and might even do a passably good job on it.

The topic, for the masochists among you, is the effect of commercial search engine technologies on the value of the information acquired through them, and related implications for information professionals. Do I know how to have a fun weekend or what?

Random snapshots from my first week as a graduate student:

• What could be more annoying than slogging your way through a dense, 20-page treatise that atempts to determine the difference between “knowledge” and “information”? Maybe its conclusion that, in the end, it doesn’t matter anyway and that the terms will be used interchangeably throughout the entire text? Aaargh…
• An urban college campus makes for a nice “feel” but also for lousy parking.
• It’s nice having access to a university library again, particularly with a good chunk of it being available from home as well. Right now I’m amused by being able to download a century’s worth of articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post for free, but my current obsession is subject to change without notice.
• I hate group projects.

After taking my first GRE practice test, I now realize that I am quite verbal, and need some quantitative review. Who didn’t see that coming?

Actually, I’m pretty math-minded as a general rule, but some of the more, ummm, obtuse concepts of geometry really tripped me up, mainly because I didn”t give a flying fuck about them in the ninth grade, and I pretty much still don’t. I find very few real life applications in my daily life. I’m surprisingly OK with much of the algebra, although I have a tendency to make stupid mistakes when I’m not paying enough attention.

Despite what Thomas Wolfe said, I guess you can go home again. Sort of. It’s just that everything looks much different.

I spent tonight in the same building where I spent much of 1982 through 1984, in the student union at UNCG. I was attending an information session for prospective graduate students, since I’m planning to get my MLIS. (And yes, that’s an announcement of sorts.) But there’s no resemblance whatsoever between the Elliott Center of my misspent youth and today’s version.

To start with, the building is about twice as big. It now has a food court and a Barnes & Noble, not to mention an entirely new auditorium. If that weren’t enough, though, they’ve also gutted the old part of the building. Nothing I remember is there anymore. No more radio station hallway where we used to play record frisbee with Survivor albums, no more Student Government office, no more lower level men’s room where I used to, ummm, never mind…

It’s disorienting as hell to be in a building where you’ve spent literally thousands of hours and not to be able to find your way around.

I can wake up in the bleakest, nastiest of moods and feel as happy as a clam after a few hours spent in the library and a few dollars spent on photocopies. In fact, I can only think of two other things that can make me that happy that fast. One of them is food and the other isn’t.

I had a realization today, one that I’ve had before and will probably have again. There’s probably no better career choice for me than to become a librarian. Whenever I think of it, I can’t come up with any compelling arguments against it aside from the potential of having to deal with the public. It’s something I really need to think more about.

But now I’m going to read about the grand opening of Charlotte’s first self-service A&P store in 1938.