Random Thoughts about Advising

Met my six freshman from the class of 2016 yesterday.  After a week of orientation, I'm a bit brain dead, but here are some random thoughts before I lose them.

1. Love having a freshman fellow at the group meeting.  I know all kinds of things, but I still am not entirely sure about the mechanics of registering, having never done it myself.  This year's fellow, Felix, was terrific. I put him on the spot over and over and he came through.

2. I'm going to say it publicly. Orientation is too long.  It was only day TWO and these students were bored and complaining "there's nothing to do".  They're homesick. They're anxious about taking college courses.  They want to START, not hang around.  IMHO.

3. They always expect that I"m going to tell them what to take at our first one on one meeting.  The number of possibilities is overwhelming.  I know in a few months I"ll be able to look back at these first conversations and go "ah, I should have seen it coming".  Right now, I'm not sure I can predict who is going to struggle this
first semester and who is going to sail through.

4. This year's surprise question?  After telling one of my students that class started at 9 (or 10 or 11), their repeated question was "at night?".  Classes that start at 10  at night????  Oh dear, I don't think college is going to live up to their exotic expectations....

5. And the most surprising observation came during a conversation about living with a roommate.  The observation/question was "how do you take a shower?" Yikes. I can't remember. Walk down the hall in a towel?  When do you take your clothes off?  I'd forgotten all the little, daily anxieties that come with starting college. 

One student sobbed and sobbed with homesickness and anxiety.  Sometimes I don't feel like I'm qualified for this job.  But at least I was someone who could listen on the first full day of college.

Seventy Nine Books in 2011

Here's the list of the books I read in 2011 - seventy nine!  I met and surpassed my goal of reading a book a week.  Of course you will see a strong leaning towards children's literature and thus, shorter books.  I read the Harry Potter series in a big gulp.  I only read a few non fiction books, but they were some of the best I read all year -- Packing for Mars, The No Assholes Rule and Franklin and Eleanor.  I had never read Jane Eyre or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn??  Hans Brinker really isn't about Hans but is about his sister?  National Velvet is very funny and the horse wins.

I don't really know how I chose these books.  I read Lee Child because he was on a list of favorite authors of Bill Clinton.  There were advance copies I picked up at an ALA Conference.  Most of the books were sitting on my own bookshelf.  Friends gave me books.  Some (but not the majority) were from the library.  Some were books for our children's book club at work.   Have to decide what my goal is for 2012.

1. Hitty by Rachel Field
2. Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
3. Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern 
4. Bless This Mouse by Lois Lowry
5. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
6. The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus by Sonya Sones
7. When You Were Mine by Elizabeth Noble
8. Emily of Deep Valley by Maud Hart Lovelace
9. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
10. The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes
11. Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown by Maud Hart Lovelace
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13. Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
14. One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell
15. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum
16. Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman
17. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
18. Belles on Their Toes by Ernestine and Frank Gilbreth
19. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
20. Instead of a Letter: A Memoir by Diana Hill
21. Falling Out of Fashion by Karen Yampolsky
22. Bento Box in the Heartland by Linda Furiya
23. Rat by Fernanda Eberstadt
24. Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
25. A Few Green Leaves by Barbara Pym
26. Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
27. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
28. City of Light by Lauren Belfer
29. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen
30. Hans Brinker of the Silver Skates by Mary Naples Dodge
31. The River by Rumer Godden
32. Indian Captive by Lois Lenski
33. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
34. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
35. The Mango Season by Amulya Mauadi
36. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
37. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
38. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
39. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
40. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
41. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
42. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
43. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
44. Esio Trot by Roald Dahl
45. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
46. Family Under the Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson
47. The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman
48. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
49. Just Kids by Patti Smith
50. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan Rice
51. These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
52. Bossypants by Tina Fey
53. Smokin' Seventeen by Janet Evanovich
54. Dobry by Monica Shannon
55. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
56. Love the One You're With by Emily Griffen
57. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
58. Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
59. A Year at the Races by Jane Smiley
60. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale Basye
61. The No Assholes Rule by Robert Sutton
62. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
63. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg
64. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
65. Are you Somebody by O'Faolain
66. Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
67. My Antonia by Willa Cather
68. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
69. Franklin and Eleanor by Hazel Rowley
70. The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
71. The Affair by Lee Child
72. National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
73. Wendy and the Lost Boys by Julie Salamon
74. We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood by Emily Kimbrough
75. My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
76. Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspread
77. The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder
78. The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
79. All-Of-A-Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor

The Bare Essentials

This is my first post for Bathroom Blogfest 2011.  It's kind of weird to admit that I've been taking pictures of bathrooms all year with this in mind... 

Let's start at the beginning with toilet paper.  Is it really too much to ask to have a roll of toilet paper that actually rolls? A roll of toilet paper that doesn't force me to claw like a hamster to pull out a thin, square of paper? These two pictures were taken in a Wegman's (of course) restaurant.  Not only was there free rolling toilet paper, there were extra rolls!  Talk about customer service.

I would like to wash my hands with water. I don't want to wave my hands up and down and side to side in front of a faucet. I want water when I want water.  How many times have I had to simply GIVE UP and use the little bottle of  Purell I've learned to carry with me every where for just these situations. Sigh.

And last but not least, if and when I am successful at getting water, I want to be able to dry my hands on PAPER TOWELS.  I don't want to hot air blowing on my hands. Note I specifically didn't say  hot air *drying* my hands, because it never does.  And the automatic hand dryers have the same flaw as the automatic faucets do; I can never figure out how to wave my hands in such a way as to turn them on.

Next post will include photographs of public bathrooms that exceeded the bare essentials standard.

A Few Observations on Books

Another fall, another group of freshman.  Here are a few comments about books from the beginning of fall semester.

• Freshman are clueless as to how to buy their books. It makes sense. They never had to buy their books in high school.  Though you would think an RA or someone would tell them about buying books. (This observation comes from seeing dozens of hysterical comments in the freshman facebook page.)
  
• Freshman still buy a lot, maybe even most, of their textbooks from the bookstore. They pretty quickly figure out that it's less expensive to buy them online.  But initially they think they MUST have the textbook for the first day of class. Of course that's not true, and there are many classes where the textbook is rarely used.  By sophomore year, they mostly seem to buy them online.
  
• Anecdotally  we seemed to have lots more inquiries at the circulation desk from students asking if we have their textbooks.  Is it because of the downturn in the economy?  Are tour guides telling them we have textbooks?  WE have some, especially in the Carlson Science and Engineering Library, but certainly not all of them.  I wonder if we should pursue them more aggressively?
  
• I have one freshman who is renting an online textbook. Who knew???

First Day of School

Yesterday was the first day of school for the Class of 2015.  I took a minute to jot down my impressions of my six freshman advisees and I guess advising in general.  And yes, some of them are contradictory.

1. This is the first group I've ever had who weren't afraid to email a professor or go ask questions at the Advising Fair.  What a huge advantage to already know they need help and can ask for it.

2. And yet, they are overwhelmed by the amount of new information they have to absorb.  What is "R"? Answer: Thursday in the online schedule.

3. Like all my previous classes, they are already thinking about majors (double), minors (lots) and of course, jobs when they graduate.

4.  I periodically read through the 2015 Facebook page.  Where are my classes? How do I know what textbooks to buy?  I forget that in high school, i.e. 2 months ago, all their classes were in one building.  They were given their textbooks.  They worry if they'll have enough time to eat lunch.   Oh yeah, there was a lunch period in high school.

5. They're very excited to be choose classes that let them sleep in past 9 a.m.

 I love their unedited enthusiasm.   Advising definitely keeps me humble.  Every semester I learn some huge thing that I should have known.  I also have a view of the university I never had before.  I'm certainly not the best advisor there is, but I also know I'm not the worst.  As long as they'll have me, I'm going to keep doing it.

Undergraduates Have Never Used a Phonebook

My goodness. It's been a long time since I posted anything. This is sort of a cheat because it's really Trina's story not mine.

"We got new phonebooks delivered today. As I was switching the new ones for the old ones I asked the 4 student employees who happened to be around if they had ever used one before. ALL shook their heads, mystified as to why anyone would have a need to. Plus one of them (super smart, going to the Simon School right now) shook her head and admitted she had no idea even how to use one.

A little while later, I was coming upstairs with a 2nd set for me, and a student who is applying for a job saw that my hands were full and offered to help me. When I gave him the white and yellow pages, he asked: “what are these”? He found my answer amusing I think!"

We could start our own "Beloit" list. They probably don't know what a "dial tone" is either...

Video with an iphone app

I took pictures with my iphone as I went through my day last Tuesday of Rush Rhees and Carlson Libraries. Using a free app, animoto, I created this fun "video".

Library Day In the Life

I had every intention of writing at least one blog post for the Library Day In The Life Project but ran out of time. I even had a fantasy at the beginning of the week that I could keep track of what I did all day. Ha Ha! It also turned out that a significant percentage of what I do is confidential and I can’t share the details. So how about some broad comments about what an AD does over a the course of a “typical” week?

• I go to meetings, a lot of meetings. I have on average four hours of meetings every day, sometimes more. I eat my lunch at my desk almost every day. Most days someone still comes in and talks to me. I don’t know exactly what that says about ME that people are content to watch me shovel food into my mouth….
  
  
• In addition to attending a lot of meeting, I schedule and reschedule meetings. It seems that one of my roles is nothing more than bringing the right people together into a room with a problem to solve.
  
  
• Over a week, I have staff vent anger at me. I have staff cry. I encourage. I cajole. I give candid feedback. I am a cheerleader. I am a problem solver. I organize parties. I write and edit emails, job descriptions, and announcements.
  
  
• I accomplish very little on my own. Almost everything I do involves working with other people. So I never feel I should really take credit for much of anything because I didn’t really do it myself.

And that’s all I can write in a few minutes of unscheduled time!

Books Read in 2010

I read more books than last year and averaged more than one a week! Of course the majority of them are children's fiction; five Newbery Award winners. My favorites were "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever", "Still Life", "The Lonely Polygamist", and "The Help". My favorite REreads were "A Little Princess", "Winnie the Pooh" (surely I had read this) and "Straight Man". I read books in print, on my kindle, on my itouch, my iphone, and my ipad. I have a long plan trip next week and I am determined to read "Watership Down" and "The House of the Spirits". There, I've made a public commitment.

1. Pollyanna
2. A Little Princess
3. Stuart Little
4. The Doll's House
5. The Chisselers
6. Henry and Beezus
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
8. The Summer of the Swans
9. The Big Steal
10. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
11. Freaky Friday
12. Winnie the Pooh
13. Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
14. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
15. Straight Man
16. The Corrections
17. The Hills of Home: A Vermont idyll
18. Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy
19. Digging to America
20. Adam of the Road
21. Little House on the Prairie
22. Plainsong
23. A Candle for St. Jude
24. The Botany of Desire
25. The Railway Children
26. Bergdorf Blonds
27. The trumpet of the Swan
28. Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
29. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
30. The Devil Wears Prada
31. Winter Solstice
32. The Lightning Thief
33. It's Like This, Cat
34. Breakfast at Tiffany's
35. My Side of the Mountain
36. The Urban Hermit
37. Pretties
38. The Wanderer
39. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
40. Sizzling Sixteen
41. Tangled
42. Every Last One
43. Uglies
44. The Graveyard Book
45. Too Much Money
46. The Lonely Polygamist
47. Mostly Good Girls
48. Savvy
49. Brave Girl Eating
50. Dark Song
51. One More Theory About Happiness
52. Listening Is an Act of Love
53. Charlotte's Web
54. Wicked
55. The Professional
56. The Ballad of West Tenth Street
57. Howl's Moving Castle
58. Siam
59. Mrs. Mike
60. George's Marvelous Medicine
61. The Help
62. Ginger Pye
63. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
64. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes
65. Blue Willow
66. Looking for Alibrandi
67. Still Life
68. Warriors #1
69. A Year in the Merde

Tweets by Undergraduates on the library

I've collected (in an extremely unscientific sample) comments on the library and books by the undergraduates I follow on twitter. Lots of procrastinting especially in Gleason and lots of comments about food!

should change her permanent address to somewhere on the academic quad... class/lib-ing it up is really taking a toll on my drunk bitch time.

Lazy day in Gleason with Camille, the Brownie, and the Bear. I love my life. Oh and James brought me steak...beeeyatchesss!!

Too tired to function at the moment. My shift ends at 6 and I still have to lib it up today. Can someone please shoot me?

Once again in the lib...so this makes it over 2 weeks of my life. Anyone up for a euthanasia?

@ Let me know when you want to do that quick walk through Rush Rhees

@ thanks katie haha I'm just sleep deprived from the late nights at the lib...it's awful.

Cracking up at the fact that our library is on the cover of the Princeton's Review top college book. Our lib must be so baller

Me + Garrett + Lib+ Late Nights = why the hell am in the library on a Friday night? What the hell has happened to me?

In the lib trying really really really heard to do this French workbook. It's not really working for me...shiiiit.

yeah sitting in gleason and I really need to find a table. PRONTO.

After waking up at 3, I'm finally in the library. Wooo!

It's so quiet in the Art and Music Library that I can actually hear the silence... maybe I should just stick to Gleason.

Is doing anything but studying. Thanks, Gleason.

doing nothing at Gleason like a TRUE U of R student.

In Quieter Study Area of Gleason with Julia and Christina :D... @UR_FASA study session!


The library is so full on a Saturday night, it's hard to find seats #onlyatuofr


Added "Gleason Library" to my places on twitter because it's basically my home and deserves to be repped.

girl with obnoxiously loud ringtone at a quiet study area got stares from everyone #learnyourlesson

I get to make a pyramid out of books and take a picture of it for 15 points extra credit. #awesome

Is it weird that I love using books but hate using online sources when I write research papers? Stuck in the 20th century, heh.

super quiet library. super loud stomach growls. match made in hell.

Restless in Gleason. Methinks I need Chinese food to concentrate on my readings for "Politics of Insurgency and Terrorism."

Why yes, I am that crazy girl who brings a bag to library to hold the 30+ books that I need to check out.

To all the engineers that go to UofR, please stop thinking that since you have a "hard" major you can play Blink 182 loudly in library.

The library is incredibly peaceful right now.

Procrastinating in the Wells-Brown Room. Typical finals week.

Curled up in the Wells Brown room, editing a book review on "Lying Awake," and drinking a fantastic cup of coffee. Life is good.

sitting in the library. no noise other than someone quietly hacking up phelgm and someone else cutting their nails. awful awful awful.

I've rekindled my love with Carlson...yes, Carlson Library <3

apitlyk I think that the only thing that I'm going to miss about the U of R is Rush Rhees (the library, not the tombstone of the man).

Not happy that the PRR and Great Hall will be closed for #meliora. Three midterms in the next two weeks AHH.

Waiting for the Mail is Old School

When I was a college student our mail boxes were inside the front door of our dorm. We checked them several times a day -- when we left for classes, when we came back from classes, walking by on the way to the television (no, we didn't our own televisions in our room...) etc. Fast forward. University of Rochester students each have a CPU box in the university building that houses the post office, but not in their dorms. They rarely get print mail. Their parents call them and text them. They facebook and text their friends. They almost never GET mail so they almost never go and check their CPU boxes. As one student told me, they're mostly filled with chinese take-out menus...

So why does the University still send *important* notifications in print to CPU boxes?? As an adviser, I get copied in on these official letters. I immediately scan the letter and resend it by email with a follow-up on facebook. On more than one occasion, my email is the first time that the student has learned that they are in danger of failing, being expelled, etc. etc. Yikes!

Why on earth do we insist on communicating with students the way we did when we were undergraduates?

We need stack locations

I sat next to Stephen a few weeks ago in a Stackmap demo. He pointed out something to me that I had never registered in TEN YEARS. Sigh. Our catalog records don't include a floor location for Rush Rhees library. This isn't a problem for art books with the notation "Art Stacks - Art/Music Library". However this is a HUGE problem when you're looking for a book on one of the thirteen floors of stacks in Rush Rhees. Users have to take the call number, go to a little map on the wall which translates to the floor and then go to the floor. Not only are our stacks scary (lights on timers...), we make it really hard to find things. I over heard a campus tour guide the other day announce to her group "books are really hard to find". I'm afraid I would have to agree.

I'm sure there was a good reason for not include floor locations originally, but I think it's time to revisit that decision. Yes, we do shift books from floor to floor. But we don't shift them every day. While the current arrangement makes OUR life easier, it makes finding the books really really difficult for users.

Checking out Print Journals

I've been following a conversation on the PAMnet list serve about policies for checking out bound journals from an annex. I feel out of sync with the general sentiment which is to limit circulation anywhere from no circulation at all to just a few days. Last semester under my direction (pressure?) we standardized our circulation policy for bound journals; we now circulate all bound journals for two weeks. This is a huge change for us. Our circulation policies differed from library to library and even from journal to journal. The loan period ranged from two hours up to two weeks. Obviously the policy was confusing to users. But the more compelling argument was looking at the circulation statistics and noting that they were very low. With a commitment from our fantastic Inter Library Loan department to get, without question, articles from any volumes that may be checked out, we took the leap and all our bound journals now have a two week circulation period. To *my* knowledge, there hasn't been a single problem or complaint. (I hope I'm not cursing myself with that statement.) I predict than in a year or two, we'll have the same circulation period for journals that we do for books.

More textbook prices

I pulled up one of my advisee's course listing for this semester and looked up the cost of textbooks. It turns out that the bookstore has an online site, of course. The only question I have is why does anyone buy any books from the bookstore???

Biology 113
Biological Science by Freeman - package
Bookstore New $76 Amazon New $70
Bookstore Used $57 Amazon Used $20

Chemistry 132
Chemical Principles - package (used for fall and spring)
Bookstore New $335 Amazon New $237
Bookstore Used $ 251 Amazon Used $119

German 102
English Grammar for Students of German
Bookstore New $19 Amazon New $17
Bookstore Used $14 AmazonUsed $13

Na Klar
Bookstore New $222 Amazon New $109
Bookstore Used $167 Amazon Used $30

Math 165
Linear Algebra
Bookstore New $148 Amazon New $99
Bookstore Used $111 Amazon Used $15

TOTALS
Bookstore New $800 Amazon New $532
Bookstore Used $600 Amazon Used $197

The Cost of Textbooks

The use of reserves is on the rise this semester. There are more books being put on reserve and they are being used more often. Why? So during a fire alarm I went over to the bookstore to see how much textbooks actually cost. Unfortunately the textbook area was roped off, but the student behind the desk was bored and happy to look up prices for me.



Introductory Biology - $76
Introductory Chemistry - $300 (used for both semesters)
Calculus - $228 (used for the whole calculus series)
Physics 114 - $200 (they actually use two text books)
Mechanical Engineering 120 - $163



Yikes! A freshman science major could spend more than $500 their first semester on books? Of course, it would be much less the second semester, but that's a lot of money even to me. I need to go back with a real course schedule and see how much the textbooks would cost.



By sophomore year they know to buy their books on Amazon. I'll have to check that out with a list of real books to see how much money they save.

Sophomores

What a difference there is between freshman year and sophomore year. I met with one of my sophomore advisees this week.

1. She has learned she can save a lot of money by buying her textbooks used from Amazon rather than full price from the campus bookstore.
2. She is choosing a subject matter she loves as her major even though the classes are hard and her grades aren't the hardest.
3. When she has papers and exams in the same week - she gets the paper done a week ahead of time.
4. She's in a sorority but knows she often has to say "no" to parties because she needs to study.

Yes, I take some of this with a grain of salt, but in general I don't think they have much to gain by impressing *me*...

Advising

Advising goes in spurts. Weeks go by and I do nothing and feel guilty that I'm being paid (yes, that is correct) for doing it. Then I have a week where I think I'm not being paid enough.  Letters of academic probation??  Another steep and fast learning curve about that topic.  I've decided I need to go to some sessions on getting into medical school.  I have so many advisees who are "premed" and I don't think I'm giving them good or honest or realistic advice. And that's all I'm going to say on that topic.

More Reading on the Kindle

Now that I have my *own* kindle, I have more to say about the reading experience. At my nieces recommendation, i bought the first book in the series, "The Warriors". The book is about cats, with very similar names - firepaw, moonpaw, starpaw, etc. etc. If I had read the book in print, I would have occasionally flipped back to the beginning to review the list of characters. I think you can do it on the kindle, but I don't know how and it's not intuitive. The barrier is too high for me to bother to figure it out. There is also a map in the front of the book, that my niece went out of her way to point out to me. I never even thought to look at it on the kindle. The resolution was poor and again I was flummoxed by how to flip to the front of the book.

I also find it difficult to *find* books on the kindle. It's not made for browsing, which is surprising, because the Amazon site is all about browsing.

On the plus side, I *love* being about to download a sample chapter for FREE. I downloaded at least a dozen sample chapters over the weekend. I will try them and if I like them, I can just buy them while I'm travelling. O.K. That's the best thing about the kindle - I can buy a book almost anywhere, anytime!

Nine Screens in My Daily Life

I just heard a commentary on "Morning Edition" about the number of screens people use in their daily life.  I have eight, wait nine.  Is that average??  Frankly I wish I could consolidate some. It's a pain when I travel and take my itouch, kindle, camera, cell phone, and laptop.

1. itouch
   
2. kindle
   
3. t.v. 
   
4. t.v.
   
5. MacbBook at home
   
6. laptop at work
   
7. cell phone
   
8. portable DVD player
   
9. camera
   

Abbreviations

When I first became a reference librarian, I spent a lot of time deciphering journal abbreviations. Once you had the title you could search the online catalog, which initially didn't have keyword searching! I just saw that CAS has come out with an abbreviation tool for free on the web. Helen and I have been arguing about whether anyone but librarians really use these kinds of things anymore. Certainly the number of questions coming to us has decreased dramatically. I've seen lots of students use google to figure out abbreviation.s You type in as much of the citation as you have and maybe a more complete citation will come up or even the full text of the article. Cool tool but that horse may have already left the stall.....