I've always
thought one of the best things about librarians/library schools is that
they attrack a range of people from all different academic fields of
study.
I mean, if you're doing a Masters in English, you pretty much know all
your classmates have English undergrad degrees. But in this
program, we have one person with a PhD, various people with Masters in
all kinds of subjects and undergrad degrees (usually Honours) ranging
from English to Computer Science to Biology.
I never thought of it this way but a classmate made a good point the
other day – most of the people in our course tend to be pretty big
overachievers.
“I'm the kind of person who never got under an 80% in my life
ever. Not in elementary school. Not in high school.
Not in undergrad and I didn't expect to get any here.” But even
though that person is doing really well and is getting mostly 80's,
she's also gotten the odd lower mark and maybe even one or two quite a
bit lower than 80%. “It's a shock but I guess it just makes you
realise that you're in a class full of people like yourself and that in
any assignment, someone's going to have to bring up the bottom half of
the class, no matter how the marks range.”
Interesting thoughts definitely. For me personally, I sometimes
think my intelligence peaked out around Grade 7 when I got a
Proficiency Cup for having a 90%+ average for the year. After
that, it was all downhill and now I can barely remember how to spell
“proficiency”, let alone win an award for it.
I guess I received a couple scholarships when I entered University
based on my Grade 12 marks but afer that, my undergrad degree was,
well, not exactly floundering but not as dedicated as many people were. (That's probably where my theory that “marks don't matter” began to take shape as well! 
)
At the time, I never thought I would even do a Masters program and
because of that, I had serious doubts as if I would be accepted here
based on my undergrad average which was, er, completely average.
Obviously though, marks don't tell the whole story and here I am – not
overachieving but not doing too badly either all things
considered. And unless you're planning to do your PhD or win
scholarships or eventually work in a library where you know that
transcripts are one of the major hiring assessment criteria, do you
really think anyone cares if your average was 75% or 80%? I
don't. I think marks never tell the whole story about who a
person is and probably often paint a false portrait. Is the
person who gets the 90% average but never leaves their house or
socializes with their classmates or takes in other events going to be a
better librarian than someone with an 80% average who also does those
things?
By the way, this rant was in no way inspired by me getting a low mark
in a class or anything. Just wanted to try and capture some of
the thoughts coming out of that discussion with the classmate
yesterday.
Classmate of the Day: Kelly
Farrah, Derek Bates, Jim Taron and maybe someone else I'm forgetting
[2006-07-01 Theresa], all got offered co-op jobs today. While I'm happy for them, I'm
also a bit sad. The end of the semester is only three weeks away
and this is the first signal that our class is beginning to go our
separate ways. Next term, some will be gone while all will be
taking different classes.
It reminds me of my semester in England. I lived in residence
with a group of people 24/7 for four months and then, poof!, one day it
was over and I was on a plane back to Canada. Even though we had
bonded incredibly in our short time together, I haven't seen any of
those people in person since then and have lost touch with almost all
of them, even via phone or e-mail.
Although I don't think the separation will be quite so drastic with my
classmates, it's still going to be an adjustment to not being with the
40-odd people who have been such a close part of my life every day for the past
three months.
Boy, somebody's in a reflective mood tonight, eh? And I only had
a few glasses of wine at Kelly's excellent wine and cheese party
tonight.
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