This year started out really awfully, to be honest, right down to a nasty stomach flu on New Year’s Eve. There was all kinds of badness. I think the extra hole punched in my ear was the high point of my January. Anyway, here’s a fairly complete rundown of the failures and successes of the year, with some added commentary at the end.
Tried and failed (in roughly chronological order):
- Getting a graduate assistantship at Pitt – their website lies; there is no such thing for Master’s students
- Keeping my wisdom teeth
- Studying for (and eventually taking) the CCNA – I got through maybe half of the book before quitting Booz Allen and thus the study group I’d set up.
- Taking an American Sign Language class – work got in the way, and I had to drop out
- Talking sense into a group of more than five people who were doing something damaging
- Not hurting my knee severely enough that I couldn’t use it all summer
- Having a nice beach vacation
- Getting people to come play in my parlor larps
- Making a blanket in time to give it to people for late-Christmas
- Unpacking
Tried and succeeded:
- Getting into library school
- Getting a Pitt Partners placement doing what I [thought I] would want to do after graduating
- Playing with a penguin at the Aviary
- Buying a Mac and an iPod
- Getting a summer job as a library assistant before library school started
- Building a website on my very own domain, for the first time ever (I’ve Tripoded and my-school-paged it up in the past, which just isn’t the same)
- Rescuing four baby ducks from a drain
- Attending first ALA conference and making some library friends
- Getting good grades in my first semester of library school
- Finding an excellent field placement
- Getting a volunteer position at the Aviary
- Getting a scholarship to attend a conference
On the whole, I think it’s been a reasonably successful year, despite the poor start.
Looking ahead, I know I am changing careers at a bad time, economically speaking, but I’ve got high hopes that I’ll get a reasonable job before this time next year. (I also have not-entirely-plausible hopes about what that job might be. :)) More immediately, spring semester is going to be rough, but I think I’m ready for it.
I am still working on my resolutions and goals. So far, the only one I’ve really set is that I am going to stop eating factory farmed meat, except for 1) what’s already in my freezer right now and 2) when I’m at someone’s house and they’ve cooked. I’ll still eat grass-fed beef and free-range chicken, though obviously less often since they cost more. I’ll also eat fish, though I need to find the little card I have that lists “ethical” fish to eat. (Some are really environmentally unsound, right now, it turns out.) This is part of a larger goal of living more sustainably. Also, I think a goal of straight A’s through the rest of library school is obvious, even if it’s a tad unreasonable, given my schedule.
Since the bulk of my year is taken up with school, and I can’t know whether I’ll be in Pittsburgh or elsewhere afterwards, goal-making is a little tricky.
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