a hundred visions and revisions

Holy crap, I haven't posted in half of forever!

So far this semester has really gotten away with me. I can't believe it's already half over. I LOVE my classes this semester, though. Let me tell my faithful readers (all three of them) all about them!

First, I've got Information Architecture for the Web, which is a fancy way to say that it's a class teaching basic XHTML and CSS for web design, as well as a bit of PHP and Javascript. It's been a lot of fun, although it's frustrating to want to be able to implement a lot of techniques that I'm just not capable of yet. Our final project involves creating a site from scratch for a client of our choice. I'm designing a new site for my dad's insurance company, Cates and Associates. On the whole, this class involves a lot of work and a lot of coding that has to be written just right. I think it's definitely worth it, though, and hopefully I'm learning skills that will be useful to a future employer somewhere down the line!

Next, I'm taking a reader's advisory course, which is focused on the work of facilitating readers in a public library. Basically, we're discussing and reading from all the various genres and subgenres of fiction, as well as some nonfiction, putting together mock book club sessions and readalike suggestions, doing reviews, making signage and bookmarks - all kinds of fun stuff. What other graduate level course requires you to read a romance novel as an assignment? It's not all fun and games, though, because we do a lot of somewhat heavier reading on the differences between genres and how they're treated in a library setting, as well as writing up reviews and recommendations and practicing our skills as readers' advisors. But still, another class that is overall lots of fun.

And finally, my last class: children's and young adult literature. This is basically reader's advisory for the younger crowd. Again, lots of work, but it's fun work, so I don't mind it. Over the course of the semester, we have to keep a reading log of at least forty picture books and at least thirty children's and young adult novels that we've read and reviewed. We're also doing projects on the history and development of children's lit, children's illustrators, various awards, giving booktalks, folktales and fairytales, and how librarians deal with censorship and book challenges in the context of children's and YA lit. The teacher is an adjunct who's worked for years as a children's librarian, and she's very passionate about what she does - thus, a lot of fun to learn from. I look forward to this class every week, even though it requires a lot of reading and projects.

So that's what I'm doing this semester. After my first semester in grad school, which concentrated on a lot of the required core subjects (and thus was a lot more boring), I declared this my fun semester, and so it has been, so far. The children's lit class especially has made me consider the possibility of being a children's or YA librarian. Oh! I've got exciting news on that front, by the way. I've gotten an internship for this summer! I'll be working in the brand new, incredible main library building of the Allen County Public Library system in Fort Wayne. And I'll be in the young adult department. It's a great opportunity to work in a large, well-respected library system, plus I'll get to really get my hands dirty with programming and events and all kinds of stuff aimed at teenagers. Hopefully it'll help me decide that I either love YA librarianship, or I never want to be around snotty teens again. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, plus my parents live in Fort Wayne so I've got a place to stay for free. I'm trying to decide right now whether I should sublet my apartment, or whether it's worth it for just two months. I may want to come back down here to Bloomington on weekends, anyway, since most of my friends will be here taking classes. Anyway, that's my big news right now, and I'm really excited about it - I didn't want to end up just doing my internship at the library here (even though it's a really great library), since that's what everyone seems to end up doing.

Well, I think that's about it for my big update. Oh yeah, and I finally got rid of that faulty template, too. It never did show up right for me in Firefox, even though I kept tweaking it. So now I'm back to one of the basic blogger templates. Maybe I'll pick up enough stuff from my web design class to build my own template, who knows.