From Legos, to staff meetings, and back again

I think a lot about work-life balance. I have to, what with working full time and raising a son with no familial support system. And last week, I failed miserable at the balancing act. My library is currently conducting a search for a high level position, for which I am on the search committee. This work has proven itself to be both eye opening (academic libraries are doing some really cool things!) and eye crossing (reading dozens of cover letters and CV’s makes my head spin!) but one thing is consistent: it is time consuming. Last week, we had a […]

Changing of the Guard

I’m teaching a brand new class this term, and I was surprised by its popularity. It’s a first year seminar, in the brand new Digital Culture and Information minor. Lots of shiny new stuff. Including my students. It’s been a while since I exclusively taught first year students; I often deal with seniors writing honors theses or doing capstone projects, or students in higher level courses. I haven’t had a dedicated class for first years since my last position. So it strikes me, sometimes, how thoughtful first year college students are these days. Perhaps my students are self-selecting (in fact, […]

Social Media #librariangoals

I haven’t written in a while. My inspiration for writing today is a conference I attended yesterday at Radford University, The Innovative Library Classroom (TILC). I have attended this conference every year since it’s birth in 2013, and always find that it re-inspires my #librariangoals. This morning I’m working on updating my professional digital identity, which means creating separate social media accounts for my librarian identity. My reasoning is that my personal social media presence is part progressive politics, part feminism, part parental humor, a little bit of librarianship, and lots of silliness. I am very conscious of the fact that […]

BBC Dad and Professionalism

There has been a lot of talk about BBC Dad, good and bad. I’ll say up front that I found the video hilarious on first viewing, and it only got funnier with subsequent viewings. All of it just seemed, simultaneously, so very relatable as well as too good to be true. So, I want to focus on those who are saying that either the father wasn’t being a good dad, or that he was being unprofessional. Two sides of a crappy parenthood coin. When the video first came out, perhaps a little bit after the initial laughter died down but […]

Snow Day, But Don’t Tell Anyone

A decent bit of snow is predicted to start falling tonight and into tomorrow morning, most likely resulting in school closures in my city, including my son’s preschool. On days like this, or when kiddo is sick or otherwise on break, my husband and I have a typical shared setup: I take the morning off from work to stay home, and husband comes home a little after noon to take the afternoon off from work. It works well for us, and we each get at least a half day of work in. I had some meetings scheduled for tomorrow morning, […]