On Tuesday Adrienne, Manvir, and I had life talks because it was a slow day. It’s nice to get to know them. Manvir is a Political Science major and he wants to be a policy analyst. I have a Political Science minor, so we were talking about internships, life, and figuring out what we’re doing.

I keep thinking about whether I want to be Site Manager, Help Desk, or Special Projects. I know that everybody wants to be a Site Manager, but I’m not really interested in it. I think Special Projects would be the best for me because I want to do something I like to do. I’m creative and I think that I could fully say I want to do Special Projects if I knew a little more about it. Help Desk is okay and it definitely forces you to be very professional. North Reading Room Up is really crowded and rowdy and I don’t like it. I’m pretty sure I’d much rather be like Lisa. She works in the Media Lab mostly, but she also has hours in Main.

Parth subbed for Eddie in Help Desk and he was really serious with me. He was asking me things I had never even heard of. I know he was trying to teach me, and i know people say he’s one of the best mentors, but I felt discouraged.

I really hope I start to feel like I actually know things.

I’m having a lot of trouble memorizing people and phone numbers. There are just a lot of people! I have a little cheat sheet in my notebook with people and numbers just in case.

An interesting thing I learned this week was Lotus Notes. Nam showed me how he prints classroom schedules for his site. He also takes the classroom schedule and posts it on Blackboard so consultants can see it. We also talked about Sparky accounts and that we’re supposed to direct students to the main library account terminal to create one with a senior con.

The class on Friday about Blackboard was fun. Everyone was posting funny photos and videos while Jen was talking. She has a really important job. I’m excited to get access to edit Blackboard for consultants.

This week I also learned about Lynda.com. I never had a reason to take a workshop on Lynda.com but Victoria was showing me all of the different types of things I can watch and learn on there. It’s very cool.

I’m wondering how to keep this journal a reflective journal, and not just saying what we do each week. I think that Lynda.com is applicable to my actual life and future career because I like to learn. I think about journalism and my professional life every day and I know that I want to combine news writing and technology.

It would be extremely useful to take the classes on there like “Word Press Essential Training” and “Dreamweaver Core Concepts.” These are skills that would really make me a well rounded journalist and techie! I made my own account and I plan on learning about photography and Photoshop also.

This week our internship class started our mentoring hours. My goal for the mentoring hours is to find out what each Senior Consultant position is responsible for. I am not sure whether I want to be a Site Manager, Help Desk, or Special Projects Senior Con, so I am hoping to learn about all three and see what I like the best.

My first mentors this week were Adrienne and Ming in Main. We talked about basic things that I’ll need to know like staff members names and responsibilities. They said I should know all the site managers and what sites they are in charge of too. It was a general review day for what Site Managers and Help Desk consultants do.

Adrienne showed me how Help Desk answers emails, chats, and the phones. I learned that Help Desk consultants give public workshops. I decided that I’d bring a notebook to write things down because it’d help me make my journals more reflective.

Later in the week Victoria taught me more about Help Desk in NRR 2. Upstairs is busy and a lot of students study in groups there. Tashima was working at the same desk as Victoria to help patrol the site and make CoLA appointments.

Victoria taught me ALOT about Help Desk in just one hour and I already think that I would prefer her position to a Site Manager position. Victoria is very professional and intelligent. She handles herself well in front of students and in the way she communicates via email and live chat. I want to be like that. I want to know what is going on and how TLT works. Who doesn’t want to be the person with all the answers?

Unfortunately because of our snow day this week my mentoring hours on Thursday were cancelled.   🙁