I will be the first one to admit that my grad school experience was awful. I worked full time at a day job, worked at the university before class to help pay for tuition, worked at a restaurant on weekends and went to night school full time, usually going to the computer lab at 11PM to try to do some work. For two years including summers. While starting a relationship with my current wife to boot. But I got it done and am glad for it.
The funny thing is I have not been in a library since I left school in 1998. I always thought of a library as a place to do painstaking research and cram for tests and wanted to have nothing to do with it since school ended. But last Saturday I went into the Milton Public Library for the first time. My first time entering a library since my almost 20 years of schooling ended.
And guess what. They have books. Lots of them. For casual readers to borrow. For free. And free DVD rentals. It was nice. I read a lot and usually just buy the books and put them in one of our many book shelves when I am done. Or, like my current series of books, I borrow from friends or family with a 50/50 chance of remembering to return them. But I discovered that the library will lend you a book to read ? for three weeks with easy enough renewal if no one else is waiting for it ? for no money at all. I do have a problem with their numbering and bookshelving system though. I still don?t understand why they use some convoluted system of numbering to find books. If I go into Borders and Barnes and Noble, I can find a book right away. They are in sections by category, ordered by the author?s last name. If I only know the title, I can usually find a kiosk to look up the author. But not at the library. I had to look up the book (I knew the authors and title) to find some really long number/letter thing like P143.34.AT.4420-NBU.41-FIC, then I had to write it down and wonder around looking for the section until I just gave up and asked a librarian. It could be much easier. And I know town libraries are publicly funded through taxes and donations and cake sales and money is tight, but mine could use some couches or chairs and a little nicer interior. If I wanted to sit and read a paper from Germany or browse some magazine I don?t get, or look at a home improvement book because I don?t want to take it out because I might forget to return it since I will not actually do the project I am interested in until the summer which is of course months away, I have to do on tiny rock hard wood chair in a musty and dimly lit room. Dim lights? It?s a place to read books for Pete?s sake. Put in some big windows and install 100watt bulbs so I don?t go blind trying to read some 1950?s Time Life book on installing a stair runner. Ugh.
Anyway, the library was great.
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