Thoughts of a [wannabe] librarian

After weeks, nay months, of hard slog, I have finally completed my Sources and Services module.  Time to crack open a beer, chill out and then, when I have just started to relax, worry about what marks I’ll receive.  Ah, the life of a postgraduate distance learner – it sucks.

Anyway, this last module caused a great deal of consternation amongst many of my peers who found the assignments too vague.  I thought I would benefit from the previous discussions when it came to my turn, and use their experience to my benefit.  Well, it didn’t really turn out like that (what a surprise).  It has taken me almost a full four months to complete this module, which must be some kind of record for me.  Four months on two assignments.  Here’s hoping that won’t happen again!

The assignments themselves were a report and a PowerPoint presentation and accompanying report.  The first report was relatively straightforward, although it was difficult to know what the boundaries were.  Should it incorporate some of the content you would expect to find in a business plan?  Or should it be treated entirely differently?  The one thing I particularly struggled with on this assignment was the dividing line between fact and fiction.  Wherever you can reference, obviously you do so. However, when you cannot access accurate figures and you fabricate costs, how do you know that the assessor can determine whether they should be referenced or not?  I don’t know.  I guess the whole thing was simpler than I made it, it still made my head spin though.

And then comes the PowerPoint presentation.  Do you make it all bells and whistles?  Just how far is too far with all the little embellishments that you can add to a PowerPoint presentation?  None of this was defined within the assignment outline.  But that was nothing compared to trying to get your head around how someone would assess a presentation dominated with bullet points without the aid of the presenter’s notes.  How can that make sense?  Perhaps all that was required was to demonstrate the ability to utilise PowerPoint, and the actual content was secondary.  Whatever, it took weeks to get my head around that little conundrum.

Still, here I sit tapping away.  Beer in one hand, neat pile of envelopes containing completed assignments by my side.  Closure perhaps?  Well, maybe when I get my marks.