Phew.

Weeeeeeeell, as expected, it only took a couple of days for the first mild panic attack to set in. I decided tonight that I was going to make my first real attempt at productivity and jump headfirst into the discussion boards for LIS 500, and oh lordy did I feel like a fish out of water.

I think the root of my problem lies in the fact that thus far, I've tried to do everything digitally to cut down on the reams of paper I'd otherwise be going through. Reading the PDFs online and taking notes via Microsoft Word, as it turns out, just doesn't have the same impact as the studying and review I did all through undergrad, because I couldn't turn to the articles while brainstorming discussion question answers. I hadn't marked them up with underlining and highlighting like I normally do, so when searching for relevant points, I got kinda lost. And trying to decipher the paragraph long comments people kept leaving definitely didn't help the confusion, so I wound up having my first real "What in holy hell have I gotten myself into?" moment. I started feeling a little better after sitting back and taking a few deep breaths, and put together a pretty awesome Introductory Powerpoint for LIS 510 (albeit slightly over the 5 minute limit), then when I decided to upload it to Screencast via Camtasia Relay, I find that Screencast has randomly crashed. *insert hyperventilating here*

At this point in the evening, I'm tired, I'm grumpy, I'm confused, and I'm really hoping a good night's sleep will help clear my head. I may have to rethink my strategy a bit when it comes to how I'll be doing my reading from now on. We've been told time and time again that this quarter will be the hardest, since we'll have to readjust our way of thinking and doing things quite a bit, and I certainly hope that's true. If not, I'm just going to have to suck it up and step it up. Can't take over the library world with online stage fright, right?

But for now, sleep sounds pretty great.

P.S. I've been doing laundry all evening, and I just noticed for the first time that there's a setting on our dryer for "Optimum Dry". But for whatever reason, there's an option right above it for "More Dry". Why is that there? Wouldn't "Optimum Dry" be the optimum option? I am confused.