It’s that time of year again… time for…. Library Day in the Life!
6:30 a.m. “Jessica!”
“What are you doing here? How is it possible for you to have ANOTHER snow day?”
“I’m sick! I’m taking a sick day!”
“—-”
“What! I get 20 sick days a year.”
“I hate you.”
7:00-9:00 a.m. A little alarm clock snooze, followed by an egg sandwich, shower and blowdry, and generally readying myself for the day. Boyfriend wakes up too and insists upon driving me to Starbucks before work. Well, I mean, if you REALLY WANT to, I guess we can go… Am very excited to avoid taking the damn 39 bus. Every day, I leave earlier and earlier and the bus gets later and later, and – of course – the temperature outside gets colder and colder. The day before, I shivered for so long – knees locked – at the zero-degree bus stop that once I boarded, I had to ask a lady to let me sit down before I passed the heck out. And the bus died. I hate the 39.
9:00-10:00 a.m. Boyfriend texted his friend saying, “Hey, I’m home today if you want to hang out later,” and he of questionable sleep habits replied, “Do you want to hang out right now?” Swing by his apartment on our way, debating whether he actually went to sleep the night before or not. Park in front of the Starbucks – have to shimmy over to the driver’s seat to get out of the car because of severe snowbankage. Order my usual – double tall two pump mocha with skim, and sip while we talk about circular time.
10:00-noon Job #1. Sent about 50 emails, made a few phone calls, and listened to two undergraduates debate where you should and should not study abroad and what majors you should or should not attempt. Briefly discussed Eyes on the Prize and how once you’ve seen the whole series and read the reader, it’s pretty much impossible to speak about race to anyone who hasn’t done the same.
noon-2:00 p.m. Job #2: Reference Desk! The desk is double-staffed at this time of day, so while the library foot traffic is heavy (never fewer than 5 girls huddled around a Laser Printer for two straight hours), I have few questions. I help a student from the Massachusetts School of Pharmacy get set up to search for and borrow books and help a GSLIS student find our secret gratis databases over chat. My boss then puts me to work looking up Choice‘s Outstanding Books of 2010 in the library catalog, and making a list of what we don’t own in Books In Print. Which is exactly the kind of busy work that soothes my soul. Ahhhh. And a friend came to visit me at the Ref desk, too, and we exchanged strategies for pub trivia that evening.
2:00-2:30 p.m. Wait in the interminable Laser Printer Line for some articles to spit out, then headed over to my First Library Class of the Semester! Chat with a few friends before class started, mostly about how much work we will have this semester, how little time, how little money, and how little health insurance.
2:30-5:00 p.m. Programming for Young Adults. The second class of the semester that opened with the question “So what exactly IS a young adult?” Uhhhhhhh. Went over the syllabus – booktalks and observing teens in their natural habitat and critiquing teen library spaces – then went over a brief history of adolescence and library services for teens. Feeling like a bit of a seasoned pro when I can identify the name drops – G. Stanley Hall, anyone? – and random Printz and Newbery winners.
5:00-5:30 p.m. The godforsaken 39 bus…. a;sij;ansdjfkljngksdfa. Call my best friend who I haven’t spoke to since she had a baby last week, and try not to speak too inappropriately while she recaps labor and other gross baby things. Have to squeeze myself out of the bus like a sausage at my stop.
5:30-7:15 p.m. Help my Delinquent Boyfriend make the chipotle corn chowder from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters cookbook, although he took his friend and our roommate to an Indian buffet for lunch and isn’t even hungry enough to eat. Chill out on the couch for a bit before bundling back up and out into the cold for a little pub trivia.
7:15-10:00 p.m. The Brendan Behan is packed. We can’t get a table – just a few bar stools – but with a seven-person entourage, we put up a damn good fight, and answered some seriously obscure questions about weird Coen Brothers films, European explorers and Sailor Jerry’s rum. We were in third place at the final round, and we decided to just bet 10 on both questions… and if we’d got both right, we would have tied for first! However, we got one wrong: apparently The Color Purple was the Steven Spielberg flick that earned the most Oscar nominations without any wins… not E.T. Ugh. We are annoyingly Gen X (or are we Millenials? I’ll report back after a few more classes)
10:00-10:30 p.m. Frosty cold walk home, sleep in a nice warm bed, dreaming of… the 10 to 12 inches of snow on their way to Boston.
Oh, wait. Those are nightmares.
Maybe a few Library Day in the Life’s from now, I’ll be posting from somewhere a little more temperate.
