Warning: Probably a very long post!

HELLLLOOOOOOOOO! 

Wow, I have not made a blog post in a million years (4 months) because so much has been going on!

When I last left off, I had just failed my driver's test and I was not loving life. I had tons to look forward to but my independence was trailing a bit. I'm happy to report that I passed my test in August and am now free to roam the land!

The end of the year was pretty active to say the least. I ordered new tables, had a plan to change the library's look a tad and weeded 100 or more books from the shelves. I had little helpers to stamp "Discarded" on all the books, and they were added to our "Little Free Library" that is now located in the paper room. A few students have noticed it's location and staff have taken some books as well.

I also mentioned before that the school division ordered 100 books for each classroom. It was like Christmas in June to a librarian. There were boxes of books to the ceiling, and only one woman for the job (me!) It was so much fun, but so so much work. I spent most of September cataloging the books for the high school classes to be added to the library since there is limited classroom space for their books. Since we are a k-12 school in a rural area, we also have an adult section for frequent readers, staff and community members. That section is now exploding with brand new amazing books. What a whirlwind!

My summer was awesome! Took a 20 day trip to visit my family and made it into a fun road trip with some new friends. I love showing my culture to my friends, especially love reactions to the ocean. I miss it already. The library was open once a week in the evenings but it did not see many patrons. Most of the time, the carpets were being cleaned and there were tools everywhere. I mostly took that time to reorganize the room a bit and do a TON of laminating. Just before school began, we had a 2 day workshop on trauma. It was quite helpful.

From the very start of the year, I have been on a learning curve. Being an adviser for the Yearbook Committee has been amazing, yet challenging. The students that have joined are wonderful kids. Some of the students are involved in every possible extra curricular the school can offer, therefore yearbook can sometimes be left behind by them. Thankfully, we have some great photographers this year, students that may not join much during the school year, I am feeling quite accomplished. We've been to a workshop, we have regular meetings on Tuesdays, and we are on top of our picture taking and page designing. Thankfully, I have a great relationship with the adviser from last year, and she has helped me with so much. If you are taking on a new project, a month by month schedule of "what you should be doing" helps infinitely. Having come into this job with not a single clue of what I was doing, it was great to have some insight for yearbook! Of course, I owe a lot of my knowledge as well to blogs, pinterest boards and yearbook company representatives.

My library budget this year is great, but I feel as though I'm ordering too many books (if that's even possible) too early. The budget is modest but it has already gotten us some very sought after reads. Yes, I'm taking about the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. It's barely touched a shelf since it's been here.

As far as life at school has been, our new staff members (and members that have come back since the new school year) are wonderful people. They are very knowledgeable and have impeccable control over their classrooms. This makes pleasant library time! We also have loads of new students, it's been great getting to know them. Because my job can involve a lot of sitting, I've joined the gym. it's been great so far. Somehow I haven't lost my will power, since the time change has happened, it's darker earlier and I have so much Halloween candy leftover (kinda gross now)

My plans for the future are: get some doctors appointments organized, put away the remembrance day books and organize the winter books. Get those books on display and figure out how I can deck out a cart with wrapping paper for Christmas books. I also need to find bulk stickers to begin "genrefying" my YA section. That is going to take forever but, it will be fun and also tricky, given the library is the highest traffic area in the school (can you believe it?)

My hands hurt. I'm done.