Had our first 506 - Management course this morning and it was actually pretty good. I had this fear that some Ivey-esque (that's the name of the business school here - some rich dude "bought" the naming right on it. I wonder who'd buy the naming rights to FIMS? The JK Rowling School of Library Science? The Stephen King School of Information?) business professor would show up in a suit & tie expecting us to wear similar outfits and speak in nothing but business buzzwords. But only one classmate wore a tie (and that's his style of dress anyhow - I'm no fashion critic but if I remember it was a dark black blazer wtih a deep red tie. Well, it wasn't a dark blue IBM suit - that's for sure!) so it's all good.
The prof actually seemed to take pleasure in pointing out the buzzwords he'd used in his lecture notes so that's a good sign as well. The workload isn't horrible but we have weekly reading reports which means no slacking off on the reading at all (like you could get away with a bit more in first semester.) One of the books I got from Chris Dixon is the text for the class (I didn't even realise it was - just sounded interested when I claimed it) so that's going to help a lot. The less photocopying I have to do in this program, the better.
Yeah, so anyhow: "Compression Depression"...
The prof is new to UWO and had to finish teaching some courses in the States so we didn't start until two weeks late. So to make up for the lost weeks, the rest of our classes will be half an hour longer (which means they start at the even more ungodly time of 8:30am instead of our usual morning start of 9am.) Which is fine and makes sense. Except that there are two Stat holidays that fall on Mondays over the summer and if you have a class on Monday, as far as I've heard from people, you won't be asked to make those up. (And worse, I don't have any classes on Monday so I don't get these "extra" days.) And there's one Stat on a Friday and same thing - no make-up classes. And some profs end up cancelling the odd class or not holding a class during the last week or whatever. So I'm not sure why we have to have a "compressed" schedule for 506? I guess some people feel they're paying for 14 weeks and they better get 14 weeks, dammit! But for me, I think we're in a professional program and I'm happy to have fewer classes (in any course) if it means more time to work on my other projects, my reading assignments or my extracurricular activities (I'm a bit behind on trying to get a May "Lunch Bucket" speaker as the two people I've contacted both have seemingly fallen through. Well, I'm still waiting for a reply from one but not holding out much hope.) I guess nobody's going to riot if they don't have a Lunch Bucket in May. But personally, I was really excited about the possibility of organizing an event every month while I was here. Oh well. More time for required readings.
Speaking of which, I got 95% (!) on my first assignment of the semester. Trust me - I can't believe it either. I've been feeling a bit burnt out and undermotivated the last couple weeks (especially compared to how gung ho I was last semester) realising that this semester is going to be a lot busier than the last one and my workload is pretty top heavy as well until the end of June. So getting that mark back gave me a bit of a boost and made me feel that my first semester wasn't a fluke (of course, there are many, many marks to come that could drop that ball right out from under me.)
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Tuesday, May 23
Saturday, May 13
Five Easy Ways To Improve Library School
by
Jason
on Sat 13 May 2006 06:20 PM EDT
Spending the
afternoon at the Grad Club yesterday with a bunch of first-term
students got me thinking about what my first week here was like, what
my
first semester was like and ways that both could've been better.
1. Have a "Destressor" at the end of the first week of classes This way, each semester's new students can get to know people in other terms immediately. (The lack of connection between different terms was a major issue for a lot of people in my cohort.) A first-week Destressor would also nicely bookend with the one Student Council holds at the end of semester. Student Council does have a pizza party for new students early in term but this only introduces new students to members of student council, who, although they are all nice people, don't represent even 10% of the students in the department. It also is a bit of a contrived situation (or it was last semester) with the Student Council lined up in front of the room but not really interacting with the first-termers and instead, although I'm sure this wasn't their intention, it was like a line was symbolically drawn right off the bat. 2. Have a students-only message board This would mean that information can be exchanged easily and past topics of conversation are accessible to all. I know the Student Council is working to set-up a Sharepoint site but unfortunately, it will be under the umbrella of the Department and housed on their intranet site therefore making it inaccessible to incoming students (until they get their user name and password) and graduating students six months after they leave the program. To my mind, a much better solution would be a more public forum (although still limited to potential students or alumni) where anyone interested in the program can join and find out about the current events, issues and people who are here. 3. Have a Repository For Student Writing A few of us are working to start a journal for student writing but we want it to have a focus on the "best of the best" student writing. But there's also a lot of work being done just below this level that would be of benefit for others to see. It seems like a shame that once an assignment is graded and handed back, these papers go in a drawer having been seen by only two sets of eyes - the student's and the professor's. 4. Run Relevant Student Programs A lot of the things I've done or been involved in - the Lunch Bucket Speaker Series, the Freedom to Read Event, the Student Journal, Quinn's Movie Series, etc. - are the types of things I expected the Student Council to be doing when I got here. Not to be too disparaing but things like bake sales, candy-grams and semi-formals seem more like the work of a high school student council then the work that should be done by the student council in a Graduate Program. 5. Make Better Use of Technology That was basically my entire last post so I won't rehash but it covers everything from the types of technology we have (or don't have) access to to having all lecture notes online to teaching students about cutting-edge technology in their first term and not letting them avoid it by not taking technology courses after 505. 6. Release Class Lists Two Semesters In Advance Okay, that last suggestion was pretty basic so here's an extra one. As far as I know, the Department knows what courses they're tentatively offering up to a year in advance. So why do they only release the courses for the upcoming semester and at that, only late in term? For myself, it would've been very helpful to know what was being offered in Fall 2006 as I was selected my Summer 2006 courses as I could've been a lot more strategic in which courses I picked. I know the Department is worried that students will get their hopes set on a class than it will be cancelled or whatever but isn't that what the words "tentative course list" mean? . To be fair, here are five things that are really good about this program: 1. The Peer Mentorship program was awesome for me (although this really depends - some people had horrible or literally no experiences out of it. Trying to match people based on background, area of interest or even geographic location rather than random assignment would improve things) 2. The Professional Mentorship program is also very useful. 3. Someone told me that Western offers a lot more electives than most other LIS programs. I haven't done the comparison so don't know for sure but if true, that's very helpful. (Maybe I'll do an independent study next semester comparing different aspects of the various LIS programs across Canada. I think that would be really interesting!) 4. Some people don't like the fact that FIMS has three intakes of students per year (again, does anywhere else do this or are they all September starts?) but I really like how it keeps things moving and fresh. 5. Although I'm not planning to take advantage of it myself, the Co-op program can be really useful, especially for anyone who doesn't have previous library experience. |
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