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Post-Thanksgiving

I just got back from NYC last night. I visited my brother and his wife. They've got a place in Jackson Heights and it's not too far from midtown. I had the best intentions of getting my school work done over the break, but I couldn't work on it consistently. too many distractions. i should have left my work behind because it would just worry me when i'd see it tucked away in the corner of my brother's apartment. I imagine my homework saying stuff like, "pssst, ricah. why don't you work on me a little bit? if you don't, you'll end up pulling an all-nighter. do you really want to do that to yourself?"
yes...yes, i do. and stop telling me what to do!

Posted by rmarquez on November 28, 2006 at 02:15 PM | Comments (0)

Outside of school

Grad school isn't supposed to preoccupy all of your time. I realized that this past semester. It's been great to take time to spend time with friends and take advantage of what Ann Arbor offers. Like this weekend, my friends and I went over to the Ann Arbor Ice Cube to skate. We're thinking that this would be a great weekly outing now that it's gotten cold. Also, there's a great paintballing place in Pinckney. It's good exercise and you get to take out your frustrations on your fellow paintballers. There are also 2 great indie movie theatres in town and a dollar movie theatre in the mall. So, I can watch the new Almodovar film and then watch a crappy romantic comedy for a dollar if I want to. So, get out and take a break. There's more to life than school.

Posted by rmarquez on November 13, 2006 at 04:26 PM | Comments (0)

Bentley Historical Library

One of my non-SI friends asked me what I do at the Bentley. The Bentley is a repository that holds Michigan historical collections and the University's records, therefore there are 2 departments within the Bentley. I work for the Michigan Historical Collection, and I process incoming records/papers. Processing seems easy, but it's not at first. For my first collection, I had so many questions on what I should do: what should I keep? what should I discard? how do I arrange the records/papers? how do i write up a finding aid? My supervisor, Tom Powers, must have been annoyed with the barrage of questions especially ones that were nitpicky. And when I question myself about little details, I felt very inadequate at my job. Now that I've been there for a year, I feel more confident about what I'm doing and I'm processing collections quickly.
Since processing is the only thing I've done at the Bentley, I feel that I don't have the full archivist's experience. I should have been more proactive about getting more reference work under my belt. So, for future archives students, I recommend that you do a year of processing and a year of reference. Doing both will make you more marketable.

Posted by rmarquez on November 13, 2006 at 04:16 PM | Comments (0)