Princess Sparklefists

Yesterday I went to my MLS orientation at Maryland. I hadn’t really been feeling that hyped up about school, but I think actually going to campus and meeting some of the students and faculty in my college changed all that. I think for awhile I started to get worried that I wouldn’t like school again, and I’d have to come up with a whole new plan of what to do with my life. Now I’m pretty excited about the semester starting.

The people sitting around me at orientation seemed pretty nice. I didn’t meet a ton of people, but at least now there’ll be a few familiar faces at the Graduate School orientation sessions on Friday. A met two other students who are commuting to school from Northern Virginia, so I’m not the only crazy one with a long commute!

This semester I’ll only be taking require classes, but there’s really no way around that. I can for sure transfer six hours of credit from McGill as electives, but I’m going to try to get credit for our reference course. One of the professors this semester is even using the exact textbook that Joyless did, so I’m hoping it won’t be too hard to prove I’ve already covered the same material.

For the LIS types, here’s what I’m taking this fall:
LBSC 690 Information Technology – computer stuff, but seemingly practical, i.e. more building web pages and less InMagic.
LBSC 670 Organization of Information – more philosophy than cataloguing, guess I won’t need that AACR2 just yet.
LBSC 601 Users and Information Context – what to do if a kid in a hoodie asks for books about suicide. (Kids today!)
A lot of the semester will be review-ish, but from the syllabi it looks like they won’t be identical, and hopefully spring semester I can get on to some fun things. Next summer there may be a study abroad trip to Munich, which would be pretty darn cool as well.

Especially when you're a grad student with only $10 Canadian to your name.

Yesterday the Post-Graduate Student Society had a free wine and cheese night for first year grad students. It was held, of course, at Thomson House, the house reserved for McGill graduate students. We have our own restaurant and bar there. Because we are awesome.

Today the Education Graduate Student Society had a free lunch. Pizza, chips, and soda aren't as fancy as wine and cheese, but, hey, I'll take it. I like pizza. (I need to find a good pizza place around here. And a good place to get a cheeseburger.)

After the free lunch I headed to the bank to open up a new account. Since I'm a student I can actually get a free checking chequing account. Usually, chequing accounts have a monthly fee here. Because I was opening a new account, I also could waive the annual fee for a student VISA card, which apparently has a rewards program, so that's pretty cool. The woman who helped me open my account was really nice and gave me extra free checks so I would have enough for my rent checks without having to buy checks just yet. I also got a free pen and a free t-shirt. All the free stuff is good though, because I still won't have any money for 15 days. Since all the money I had to deposit in my account was in US dollars, I have to wait for the checks to clear. Until then I can have 100 bucks.

Which brings me to textbooks... I don't think the $100 I can withdraw and the $10 in my wallet are going to do it. So tonight I schlepped over to the library to take advantage of the textbooks on three hour reserve. The library is always free! There's even a copy of the course pack for one of the classes, which I'm not sure lots of people know is there, since she didn't mention it in class or write it on the syllabus. Maybe I just won't bother buying it, even when I'm not broke.