Sunday, October 25, 2009

Miss Information is annoyed by academic success

...maybe just baffled.

To recap, Miss Information understands only about 10% of what goes on at library school. For one thing they've stopped calling it library school. It is now Information School and she is getting a degree in information. Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't all school informational on some level? In kindergarten, Miss Information learned that you shouldn't eat glue. This is great information.

Anyway, in Information School, she has found herself surrounded by people who use words like "epistemological" and quote Kant in normal conversation. She is clearly over her head here.

Recently she handed in a paper. She was supposed to read a couple of specific articles and write about their main points. This was not easy because one of the papers was written in Etruscan, a language Miss Information is unfamiliar with and the other was composed in one of those freaky secret codes that only identical twins understand. With no choice Miss Information wrote a paper that contained actual verbs. It was the only thing going for it. The paper was returned last week. She peeked at the grade, put the paper down stunned.

The person sitting next to her asked what was wrong, said she seemed upset.

Upset doesn't begin to cover it. The paper was covered with exclamation marks that weren't following words like "you moron" and "stop wasting our time" but instead words like "good point" and "yes". Miss Information had gotten an A.

So, the question is: does Miss Information actually know what she's doing? That can't be it.

7 Comments:

At 5:50 PM, Blogger Jennifer said...

Very familiar with that phenomenon. I felt like I could have handed in a take-out menu so long as it had my name and locker number on it, and I'd be golden! Getting an A at "information school" became utterly meaningless..

 
At 7:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

O.M.G. Precisely how I would feel and why I still haven't tried to get in to Libr... I mean, Information School.

 
At 7:14 PM, Blogger Sassenach said...

Don't sell yourself short. The ability to form complete sentences into a concise and coherent paragraph is a rare talent.

 
At 7:46 PM, Blogger charlesm said...

Miss Information, you write very well; probably better than a lot of them epistemological-sayin', Kant-quotin' bums. -charlesm

 
At 2:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank god you can't read kant.

 
At 9:46 PM, Blogger Janene said...

I always thought you were more succinct than many folk at the information school.

 
At 1:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I find that 95% of library life is improv. I never know what I'm doing, and nobody has called my bluff.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home