Not All Ponies and Roses

So, I set out to chronicle my experiences in library school, with an eye to my background in engineering, because, you know, there aren’t a million blogs about that out there already. (Maybe not the engineering part!) Having that goal, I feel like I should make some effort to write things up as they occur, good or bad.

The good: our reading list for LIS 2000, Understanding Information (which is a class with 120+ people in person and at least as many online, taught by more than half of the faculty), is still full of awesome books. Seriously, I’d like to read everything on it, at some point.

The bad: I’ve gone through and figured out the due dates for the largest assignments in all of my classes. Most of my classes are pretty reasonable, with a few small things due throughout the semester and a large project right near the end–nothing unexpected. As I mentioned, I only have one midterm. It’s all… you know, busy, but reasonable.

And then there’s 2000. This week, we have a 400-word review of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I have managed to convince myself that it is, at least on the surface, relevant to Library and Information Science, and I will be able to write my essay saying as much, with my tongue only slightly in cheek. (I may “treat” my blog readers to what I really think after I’ve written up my formal review, perhaps in point/counterpoint format.) Next week, we have a short essay to answer some discussion questions, based on some articles we’re supposed to read, and the following week we have a 400-word review of two or three books. (What one can say that is meaningful about three books in 400 words, I’m not sure. I suppose I’ll find out.) This seems like a bit much to me, honestly. However, as the semester progresses, we will find that there are two two-week periods when we are expected to read and review six books.

I never thought I’d complain about having to read for classes. I would have loved to have reading and a book review as an assignment in engineering school, just to break up the monotony of problem sets. I loved reading in high school, even the lame stuff. But I’m no prodigy. I’m not even much of a skimmer. Two books one week, followed by four the next, is not something I can do, at least not while working part time in addition to school. I was pretty freaked out after I examined my schedule in this light.

Today, though, I’ve talked to large numbers of my classmates, both people who are taking the class with me and people who have taken it in the past. Maybe this isn’t the sort of thing one should say in a blog post that her professors might see, but every student I’ve talked to is in agreement that our professors are not actually expecting us to do all of this reading. At best, they must expect skimming. (This is not a skill I’ve acquired, but I should work on remedying that.) Most likely, they’re aware that we’ll read perhaps one of these books out of each bunch and look at reviews and summaries of the others. In fact, since we are expected to cite others’ reviews, I tend to agree with my classmates that this must be the plan, and my general level of freaked outness has decreased significantly.

I still wish–and will express as much on my course evaluation–that the faculty had showed greater selectivity and restraint in choosing our reading list. I am sincerely interested in reading these books, but I wonder if skimming most of them over the course of this semester is going to prevent me from working up the motivation to read them fully later. I wonder if I am the only one who feels that throwing such a large pile of books at us is actually doing us all a disservice.