Summer counts as “a semester” at Pitt, so that we can make it in and out in a year. If I’d known everything I know now when I applied, I might have done this whole thing very differently, since, for instance, there was no option for continuing into a PhD (I didn’t know enough to pick an adviser or a project in time for the application deadlines*) or for summer internships. It’s just too squashed.<\/p>\n
That said, I am where I am, and I’ll be out with a degree all the faster (and more cheaply). So, perhaps it balances out well.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the summer classes being offered this year are fantastic. There’s been a bit of an outcry, because Humanities Resources isn’t being offered until fall–too late for our cohort. I’d be mad, too, if I came from a humanities background. But I didn’t, and Sci-Tech Resources is going to be offered**. As are Collection Development (which should really be a core course–also, here’s hoping it gives plenty of time to books and<\/em> digital collections!), Intellectual Property in the Digital Age, and Instruction. So is GIS, which I’d love to take; maybe I’ll catch it in some sort of continuing education offering. That’s my plan for the other course I wanted (through IS, not LIS), some kind of web engineering thing that covers some combination of PHP, SQL, and Javascript–three things sitting right at the top of my “to learn” queue. I figure I can learn new programming languages on my own, or through a cheap class, rather than taking up one of my designated library-specific (and very expensive) course slots. If anyone reading this finds themselves disagreeing, you know, tell me; there’s time to make changes. (And having those skills would open up a couple of sweet metadata librarian jobs as possibilities, where they aren’t so much now.) <\/p>\n Summer’s going to be rough–what semester isn’t?–because I’ve got four courses, I’m going to two conferences, and, hopefully, I will have some interviewing to do, on top of my job and volunteering. Also, I imagine we’ll step up our practicing for Book Kart Drill Team. But summer’s also short, and the 40 hour a week job I hope to start in August will seem like such a relief, after such a busy schedule! (Oddly, I’m also freaking out about moving logistics and transitioning power from summer to fall for the executive boards of SCALA and SLAPSG. It’s weird to be worrying about that, even as I worry about the relative scarcity of entry-level librarian positions, isn’t it?)<\/p>\n *As far as that goes, my current thinking is that I’d want to do a computer science-heavy IS degree, or an IS-heavy computer science degree–or more likely just take some courses, here and there, in programming, while I work–but I do know that I want to be involved in building the information tools of the future. Among other things, the Open Source ILS talk at ER&L really made me excited about it.<\/p>\n **Yeah, I will have been working Sci-Tech reference for a year by the time I graduate, but there’s a pretty big difference between the structure of a course and the ad hoc lessons one gets at the reference desk. I think it will be valuable, assuming I end up working in reference, collection development, or anything else even remotely related to science or engineering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summer counts as “a semester” at Pitt, so that we can make it in and out in a year. If I’d known everything I know now when I applied, I might have done this whole thing very differently, since, for instance, there was no option for continuing into a PhD…<\/p>\n