The month of June

The month of June has flown by. The beginning was very hectic due to the end of the school year and Capstone. I was very happy to have made it through my first year in the school library. Everything went really well and we increased circulation almost 10,000 books this year!! Unfortunately we had 26 books not turned in by students at the end of the year but I am hopeful that a few shall still turn up at the beginning of next year. After we wound down the year and completed the inventory and moving of the books in the library, my true fun began.

Capstone! This is the exam I had to take in order to determine if I will graduate. It is a 1 week period of writing 3 research papers. They give 10 questions to choose from and each person must pick 3 of them to answer. I choose the 3 and got started right away. I decided to start with the question I thought would be the hardest to answer, then the next hardest, and last the easiest. It turned out that the last one wasn't the easiest to answer because I had trouble finding evidence to back up my arguments. I did finish with over 8 hours to spare before the deadline even with all of the difficulties of the week. First dad came home on Friday and asked about how to go to CareNow. I knew he was sick because he never volunteers to go to the doctor on his own. Then Saturday we had my cousin Michael's graduation party. We spent the day with family enjoying good food and swimming. Then on the way home mom started feeling worse. She ended up going to CareNow on Sunday. Then she had to stay home most of the week with me running any sort of errands to pick up food and medicine. My original goal was to lock myself in my room and not come out unless it was time to eat, clean up, us the restroom, or for short breaks. I didn't get my wish but did have 1 less distraction because my TV decided to bite the dust on Saturday night. I ended up just playing my music from iTunes over and over again to get me through the time. I am one of those people who can't just work in quiet. I must have some sort of noise to distract me somewhat. I am very happy the papers are all turned in now I just have to wait for the results. It is either pass or fail and I really don't want to fail.

The rest of the month flew by with workshops, my sister's birthday, and other class work. I am so glad this month is over and now I just have a few more days to find out if I will get to graduate in August or not. Please!!!!! let me get the results soon so I can quit thinking about it.

Summer???

Although school is out for the students, it is not out for me. I have a longer contract than teachers in order to get everything wrapped up in the library. Monday was spent cleaning, organizing, and finishing the inventory. Today I decided to attend a workshop that sounded promising. It was suppose to be about collaborating with teachers and sounded very promising. Unfortunately most of what she talked about are things I have learned in my library classes. I also started an online workshop today. It should last about 2 weeks but I think I'll have everything done by this weekend unless the teacher shuts off the other parts of the site.

My last summer class also began on Monday. It promises to be rather boring since I have already been working in a library for a year and know about our automation system. It will help out if I can learn about other systems (in case I ever leave Decatur). Friday will start my Capstone experience. This is a 1 week exam in which I will write 3 research papers and get very little sleep. Originally the plan was to hole up in my room other than food and restroom breaks but that has quickly changed. I now have a graduation party for my cousin's son on Saturday and a workshop on Wednesday. Even though these may interfere I plan to do both even if it means pulling all nighters.

After Capstone finishes, all I'll have is my summer class, a couple of days of work to finish my contract, and a ton of workshops. At least the workshops will pay off later since I will earn an extra $1,000 by completing 40 hours of workshops. I guess I will eventually see a summer again one of these days. Now I am in countdown mode. All I have to do is make it to August 13th when I graduate!!!!!!! My mantra has become "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."