I have figured something out. Something that I should have, in retrospect, already known. Graduate students are the grunts of the academic world. You need some extra help with registration for that conference you’re putting on? Call the grad students. You’d like to unload some of those old texts you’ve got lying around the office? Get the grad students to put on a book sale for you (and buy most of the books themselves, incidently). You’ve got a bunch of unpublished letters sitting in your research library? Assign your grad students to edit them as a class assignment.<\/p>\n
Just got done with that last assignment, and I swear, it took me three days to just figure out who all the people were that were referenced in the letter. Two-paragraph letter. And finding out information about unpublished letters when you don’t have the time to fly all over the world looking at various uncatalogued collections in research libraries is not easy. So I largely gave up and went with what I had. I’m sorry, but giving us one week to do this sort of thing, when we don’t know how to do this sort of thing? I did enjoy finding out the stuff, but I’m really fairly content with just knowing things. I don’t care whether the things expand our knowledge of such and such or shed light on this or that (which we’re supposed to write a bit about in an accompanying essay). Maybe I should be a librarian instead. I have seriously considered this…if only to work on getting better electronic search tools. Libraries have come a long way in the last several years, very true, but there’s so much more that could make this research easier! To start with, Amazon.com-style “recommendation” algorithms would be extremely useful. Also, tags. And community features. Yep, we need Libraries2.0, complete with Web2.0 folksonomy features.<\/p>\n
But to do that I’d probably have to quit here and go get a degree in library science or something. Grrr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have figured something out. Something that I should have, in retrospect, already known. Graduate students are the grunts of the academic world. You need some extra help with registration for that conference you’re putting on? Call the grad students. You’d like to unload some of those old texts you’ve got lying around the office? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/courtesy-of-the-honors-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":0},"title":"Courtesy of the Honors College :)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 12, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The Honors College had a professor from University of North Carolina down to do a lecture here last night, and because he's the mentor of one of my professors, he taught my British lit class today on Joyce. That was pretty cool, but even cooler is that my professor invited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":154,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/brrr\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":1},"title":"Brrr","author":"Jandy","date":"November 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, November finally hit Waco. Walking a half-mile to school in freezing rain really isn't all it's cracked up to be. After our last Bibliography and Research class last night, several of us students had a mini-party, which was well-deserved in my opinion. Sangria, chips and salsa, and good conversation.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":227,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/my-new-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":2},"title":"My new perspective","author":"Jandy","date":"February 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, it isn't really a NEW perspective. I've been utilizing this perspective on and off since I started grad school, but I'm now embracing it even more fully. The perspective is this: School is for learning. That's it. Simple, right? But oh-so-helpful when most of the people around you are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":261,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/zen-making-perspectives\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":3},"title":"Zen-making Perspectives","author":"Jandy","date":"March 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Three things to remember to make grad school enjoyable*: 1. School is for learning. Therefore, if I learn something I didn't know before, I am ahead. I have succeeded. I have fulfilled a goal. This means that my success in grad school is measured based on the difference between the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":139,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/grad-student-nuggets\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":4},"title":"Grad Student Nuggets","author":"Jandy","date":"November 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight's nugget of post-class wisdom: \"Not understanding poetry is just like women's clothing sizes.\" This weekend's haul at the bookfair: 42 books for $8.00 (rough estimate, based on a paper shopping bag with books three layers deep, the top level having 14 books; I hope it is 42, because, as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School"","block_context":{"text":"School","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/school\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":164,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/de-canonization\/","url_meta":{"origin":114,"position":5},"title":"De-Canonization","author":"Jandy","date":"December 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What do grad students talk about in their downtime? Why, what books to kick out of the canon of English literature, of course! I think between ten or so of us, we nominated the following for de-canonization: F. Scott Fitzgerald Romeo and Juliet (not all of Shakespeare, just R&J) Thomas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}