Happy Valentine's Day

A Valentine

OH! little loveliest lady mine,
What shall I send for your valentine?
Summer and flowers are far away;
Gloomy old Winter is king to-day;
Buds will not blow, and sun will not shine:
What shall I do for a valentine?

I ’ve searched the gardens all through and through
For a bud to tell of my love so true;
But buds are asleep, and blossoms are dead,
And the snow beats down on my poor little head:
So, little loveliest lady mine,
Here is my heart for your valentine!

- Laura Elizabeth Richards

in Stedman, Edmund Clarence, ed. An American Anthology, 1787–1900. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/248/. 14 Feb 2007.

Vacation

I'm writing to you from the balmy midwest, where it currently feels like it's 9 degrees F. I'm here performing my auntly duties and having a jolly good time. Today we played tic tac toe and colored in our Color Wonder coloring books. While the nieces were at school, my sister in law and I went to Costco and Trader Joe's. (I bought the new Harry Connick, Jr. cd at Costco and UFO's and chocolate orange sticks at Trader Joe's). After dinner, Niece #1 taught the Family Home Evening lesson about honoring and obeying our parents.

Tomorrow, we're going to the dentist and to school for the Hundredth Day party.

Details, Part 4

The Search Committee Interview
You usually think of the search committee interview as the real meat of the interview, so it was surprising to me that they held it at the end of the day. It really turned out to be more of the same--answering a bunch of questions, this time posed by any of eight people, including the dean, the administrative services librarian, the two managers I already met with, and three non-supervisory librarians from the user services department. This part lasted about an hour. I found out that the distance education librarian, a younger woman whom I really liked, is interested in using wikis in the library and has thought about writing on the same topic I have--faculty authorship. I hope that made me look good. Right in the middle of the interview, the dean blurted out the question, "So, do you like to eat?" I thought that was a bit random, but I answered, "Of course!" Maybe it's a test question he asks to set apart the live prospects from the duds?

The Tour
After the search committee interview, Dean Craig drove me around town on a 20-30 minute tour. R_____ County is, I believe, the third-fastest growing county in the country, and there is a lot of building going on in the town itself, including a new hospital complex, new open-air shopping center, and a new hotel/convention center. The city recently gave the university 5 million dollars to renovate its sports facilities because so many state high school athletic tournaments are held there and it brings money to the city. On the way back to campus, the dean drove past and pointed out the local LDS meetinghouse. I thought that was particularly kind of him (he either guessed my religious affiliation from my alma mater, or he read far enough into my resume to see that I have church organist listed under community service (for lack of anything else to list)).

Wrapping it Up
When we got back to the library after the tour, I still had about 15 minutes before the shuttle was to pick me up. The dean said it was too cold to wait outside, and that I couldn't see the shuttle from inside the building, so we sat in his car and talked until the shuttle van came. I tried to sound intelligent and ask a few informed questions.

The Trip Home
The shuttle driver is also a real estate agent, and she told me all about the town, where to get good Mexican food, which grocery stores are in town, etc. The shuttle was a bit late, and I was worried about getting to the airport in time to change out of my suit and still check luggage for my 7 pm flight, but it all worked out just fine. There were only about 30 people on my flight, and I had the row to myself.

The Wait
I valiantly wrote thank you notes to nearly everyone I met in the interviews, and now I'm just waiting to hear if they liked me enough to have me back permanently.

Details, Part 3

The Presentation:
The room in which I was to present is huge, with two screens and probably 50 workstations. There were about 12 people who came to listen. We had to wait for at least 10 minutes for the computer technicians to fix some problem on the instructor workstation, so I had the chance for some small talk. I made a joke about why no one wanted to sit in the front row, just like in a real class. I think that went over ok. The computer was finally up and running, and I launched into my presentation. I think it went well, except that when I went to move from slide one to slide two, I hit the B key by mistake, which gave me a blank screen. So I covered (sort of) by apologizing and then explaining that it was a PowerPoint trick I just learned--hit the B key to toggle back and forth between a blank screen if you want to take the students' focus off the screen for a minute. I stayed within my twenty minutes, and when I was done I asked for questions. No one said a word. That was a bit disconcerting, but I guess it's just how they're used to conducting themselves in interviews. Or they were bored to tears and could think of nothing to say.

The User Services Librarians:
Immediately after the presentation, we pulled chairs around a table in the classroom and I met with some of the User Services Librarians, who took turns asking me more questions. That probably lasted an hour. One cool thing they told me about was their Reference Blog, where everyone who works at the reference desk can post notes about assignments that students bring to the desk or things that other people working the desk need to know about. I think it's a fabulous idea, far better than sending an e-mail to everyone and then taping the e-mail printout to the desk.

Lunch:
After the librarians' meeting, it was off to lunch. The lunch party ended up being 6 women, though I think all the user services librarians were invited. I rode with Sue, the Curriculum Collection librarian who grew up in Anna, Texas and says "ain't." I really liked her a lot, and she asked me about people at UNT and in North Texas, including Dr. Totten. Lunch was at B. McNeels, where most of us ordered salads or sandwiches. Jiannan, the unlucky soul, ordered fried chicken, and apparently, the kitchen was out of chicken. It took at least 40 minutes for us to be served. Why on earth someone didn't come out and tell us they were out of chicken and we should choose something else, I do not understand. I had wilted spinach salad with grilled chicken on it. Very tasty. I tried to ask questions of the group about what they like to do outside of work, do they have families or children or hobbies, etc. I didn't get a rousing response. We did talk some about knitting and about food. I let on that I like to bake and am learning (sort of) to knit. There were a few crocheters in the group, but no knitters. They did say, however, that Murfreesboro has a nice LYS.

to be continued (don't worry, we're about to the end) . . .

Details, Part 2

The Interview, continued

The Rest of Sunday Night:
After the taxi dropped me at the hotel, I walked down the block to have dinner at IHOP (Vive la French Toast and a Diet Coke). There was too much cigarette smoke escaping the hotel restaurant into the lobby for me to even consider eating there. Of course, at IHOP I was seated inches away from the smoking section and had to ask to move to the other side of the dining room, but it worked out fine. Back at the hotel, I enjoyed a long hot shower, read all the background information I had on XYZU, its city and county homes, and then buckled down to finally finish writing my presentation. I turned in at 2, much chagrined that I wouldn't be able to spend more than 4 or 5 hours in the extremely comfortable bed.

The Frantic Rush:
I of course hit snooze more times than I should have Monday morning, and raced out the door of my room at probably 7:47, two minutes after Bill Black was supposed to pick me up downstairs. I got to the end of the corridor and couldn't find the elevator. Certain I had taken the correct direction out my room door, I nonetheless went back to the room and down to the other end of the hall. Nothing. After several passes up and down the hall, I realized that a door at the end of the corridor leading to the elevators, which had been open the night before, was now shut. Strike One - Late for the Pickup. The car ride to campus took about 15 minutes, and we passed it making small talk.

The Interview Begins:
After entering the building by the staff entrance and taking the staff elevator to the Administrative Offices, I left my things in Bill's office and he took me on a tour of the library building. They have over 300 public workstations in the library; this for a school with 23,000 students, which I think is pretty impressive. We spent several minutes looking at the impressive replica Franklin printing press (it really works!).

After the tour, I met with the Library Dean for about 30 minutes. He told me about the history of the university, what its makeup and operation is like now, and told me about the library organization. He was very nice and seems extremely approachable.

After meeting with the Dean, I met for an hour with the Reference/Instruction Team Leader (Sharon, who I met Sunday night), and her manager, the coordinator of User Services. We talked about the job and what it entails, about some of my experience, about how things work in the library etc. They also talked about promotion and tenure, because the job is tenure track. Everyone has a one-year contract subject to continuation, and has until their fifth or sixth year to achieve tenure. At the end, Sharon asked if I was still interested in the job after hearing all about it. Of course, I was.

Sidebar:
Let me say at this point, that I really was not nervous at all during any of this. I woke up with so little time to spare, and was so focused on getting down to the lobby, that by the time I was able to think about it, I was already deep into the interview. The Sunday night scouting trip also helped.

Amenities:
As I mentioned, the library is eight years old. All of the administrative offices are in one corner of the building, though on three or four different flours. They are connected, however, by the staff elevator. There is a rather large staff lounge with tables and chairs, and a kitchen with a vending machine, full-size refrigerator (might be two of them), sink, and microwave. The user services librarians' workspaces are in a nice suite with enclosed offices and a stainless steel sink in the hallway. I hear they lobbied for a mirror above the sink, but that didn't work out.


Panic Ensues:
My one moment of terror occurred when after meeting with the two managers, we went back to Bill's office on the way to my presentation (15 to 20 minutes, on the topic of how I would apply my teaching philosophy to successfully administering a formal literacy program). In an effort to meet the strict 1+1 carryon rule, I bought a "business" tote at Target and used that as briefcase and purse. Apparently, it's too difficult to find things in a bag that big, and I don't recommend such consolidation as normal everyday practice. Anyway, when we got back to the office, I couldn't find my notes in the folder that had my handouts. I couldn't find them in my tote. So, I had to kneel down on the floor, unzip my suitcase, and I still couldn't find them. This is when panic set in. Keep in mind that I only finished writing my notes at 2am that morning, and I was in no position to speak completely without notes (Sidebar - that morning I figured out that in my haste to print my notes before I left home on Sunday, I didn't even get all the notes printed--I apparently had more than one page of notes for most slides, and whatever wouldn't fit on the first page just got left off, so I was already working from a handicapped position even before I finished writing notes). Finally, I figured out that the notes were in another compartment of my tote, so I was good to go.

to be continued . . .