If you think you're over-educated, clap your hands

Monday, November 27, 2006
For the love of god...
does anyone who might read this know, or know someone who might know, or know someone who might know someone...who might know where a foreign, English speaking woman with naturally curly hair can get a haircut in Shenyang?

'Cause I'm getting desperate!

posted by Renee at 7:47 PM 0 Comments
If you think you're over-educated, clap your hands
I've been away from school for almost four full months now (huh! is that it? It feels like forever)

There've been many moments over this period where my library training has served me well. I've MARC coded, I'm working on acquiring a new ILS and several classes have helped me with that, I've liaised to the best of my ability (thanks to Denise for clarifying the meaning of this), and I've put in ridiculously long hours, the factory having been a year long training session. But, none of my experience at school has paid off so greatly as it did this week.

As a brand new British Columbia offshore school, we are not actually certified. A team of inspectors is coming to check things out and say yay or nay to our official status. Not really a big deal to me, I get the experience I get regardless of status, the teachers are extremely concerned that they might not be teaching in an actual school, and of course it affects the students ability to move ahead with their studies. They can't move on to grade 11 if they've never officially made it through grade 10.

Consequently, there's been a big flurry of activity in the last few weeks. The teachers have all been prepped on how to behave when the inspectors come into their classrooms, they've all prepared their year plans, month plans, day plans, they've thought about questions they might be asked and prepared answers. And, truth be told, they'll do fine. If the school doesn't pass inspection, it'll be down to the facilities themselves which are still in the process of development. The gym has very few amenities and is still under construction; the library, well, the library has just under 1000 books and no indication of when more might arrive.

I'd been told that I would likely need to write up 'something' about what the plans for the library are, but they'd be 'nothing big'. On Monday, I was told that I would need to hand this in to the principal by Tuesday. And here's where my academic training both bit me in the ass, and then bailed me out.

My first thought was to request the Dalian copy of the same accreditation write-up. Surely I could use that as a guide. Well, no. I have no idea what happened in the process of having this handed down to me, but what I got were three basic questions posed and three garbled, gibberish sentences in reply. Next, I surfed the internet looking for examples of accreditation justifications for high school libraries. What I found were 30 page treaties. Urm, no. So, I went and talked to the principal.

The principal laid it on the line. Briefly discuss where the library is now, what resources are available, how we provide those resources, how we obtain them, and what we expect to have by the end of the year. So, turns out I was completely over-thinking it. Thank you very much, over-education.

Still, by this time, it was later in the day and I still had to formulate something that would make it seem like our sad little library was in fact a vibrant, resourceful and accreditation-worthy part of the school. That's a lot of pressure.

Now, in school, I always wrote my papers single-spaced, and if required, would double the spaces upon completion. And, the factory being the factory, I started out sweating each word and a paper could take hours and hours and hours, until I would was a caffeine soaked jittery mess at 3am. By the end though, I knew that I could knock out one page per hour, no matter the topic. And, I haven't lost my touch, baby. Nope, I still gots it! A three page accreditation paper done in three hours. And, if I do say so, without manipulating the facts, I managed to spin it so that the library really is a wonderful, functioning, vibrant and essential part of the school; poised to go on to even more spectacular and resourceful libraryness in the future.

I will say, though, that it felt a little weird not to have been writing it in the APK.