Blimey I cannot believe I have not posted on this blog since the end of July. The Dreaded Dissertation took over my life in August. Last minute panic panic set in as the September deadline loomed. I finished the work the weekend before the due date. Some of my classmates were still writing their drafts on the day it was due. That scares me a little bit. Why give yourself that stress?
September was spent moping around a little. Said goodbyes to classmates returning home which was a little sad. Some people are making Glasgow their home for the time being which is good. It's nice to have chats with people about archives stuff. Some have paid jobs; lots of us have volunteer work. I have a new job working in a university library (which shall remain nameless on this blog). It's loosely connected to my Masters but does not involve archives. So I am volunteering at a local community archive. Again it will probably remain nameless on this blog, unless they give me a green light to name (but not shame) them.
Lots of rubbish television has been consumed in the past couple of months. Television is cheap entertainment when you don't have much cash. A friend in a similar situation agreed with me. She said she does not like Friends but has started following it on E4 because it's something to do.
I developed a slight fear of reading after I finished my dissertation. Just in case I gleaned something from the books I read. Silly I know but the course I was on promoted the idea that you can find "evidence" in any resource. For one of my archives essays I quoted from Bridget Joneses' Diary and Possession. So I stayed away from fiction. Luckily my love of reading has returned and I am currently chomping my way through The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. It's a massive tome of a novel and is about building a cathedral in 12th century England. My knowledge of that period is a little hazy but I'm enjoying the lives of the characters and the twists their lives take. The one constant is the cathedral and I'm intrigued to see how it ends.
This year I am taking part in NaNoWriMo for the second time. Last year I stupidly decided to take part in the month when I was on a placement with a daily 4 hour round trip. The work load at university began to pile on and I lost interest in sitting in front of my computer on a nightly basis. So I'm hoping to do better and at least hit the 50, 000 minimum word count.
Finally I have set up another blog to discuss my experiences in the archival sector. On both sides of the pond there has been a massive outcry about the lack of jobs available to newly qualified archivists. Anyway I decided to set up this blog to discuss my thoughts about the subject. It can be found here and I have called my blog Wannabe Political Archivist. This stems from my experience of archival work which has had a focus on working with collections that have political overtones. My belief that "the personal is the political" is a big reason that I enjoy working with archives.
