Bad day...

I suppose it has to happen sooner or later - Friday was my first "off" day at Mooresville.

The day started off fine - I had a bit of time in the morning to kill before accompanying Suzanne to Children's Park (local kindergarten) for a program about bugs and insects. The program went really well. She showed the kids pictures of bugs and asked them to guess if they were good or bad. The kids were not too bad at it - and they really seemed interested in learning about why some bugs are actually good. The program lasted for about a half hour and then Suzanne and I headed to the grocery store to pick up supplies for her Teen Council Lock-In. This was mostly unexciting but I did discover the joys of tax-exempt shopping and that she occasionally buys titles she thinks the library should have from the grocery store.

We headed back to the library and I had a little bit of time to work on my program (my first solo venture is Tuesday!). However, it wasn't long before Suzanne was hauling out brochures for me to staple and Jaymi was asking me to do some other menial task. I get it - I'm the intern so I get to do all the boring and monotonous tasks that they hate doing. And yes, I understand that it's probably taking me longer than it should to get these programs planned. However, this is my first time planning and executing a program on my own. I don't have a whole litany of books, songs, and activities that instantly come to mind as guaranteed successes. So, right now, the process involves quite a bit of research and checking things out for myself. I want to feel comfortable before diving in on Tuesday and, right now, I don't. Suzanne kept saying I could do these other things "when I had time" but it seemed pretty clear that they were expected to be done sooner rather than later. I just got annoyed.

After lunch, it didn't really get any better. My new distracting task was calling patrons about Saturday's program and about a third session of a program later in the summer. This was time-consuming. And, personally, one of my least favorite tasks in any job is phone calls. So I was doubly not excited for this. When I finally finished that, I tried to at least get Tuesday's program nailed down and I think I have everything figured out. However, I'm still very nervous. When I go in Tuesday, I'll have probably 45 minutes to get everything together and ready before heading over on my own. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't spend more time researching for my programs at home so I won't get frustrated when I get sent these other tasks at the library. I guess I'll see how it goes Tuesday. One thing is for sure: I will need to practice my children's music at home before my programs. It doesn't go over well if you want the kids to sing and you don't even know the words. So I'll be spending some time doing that before Tuesday. Overall, I'm enjoying the experience and I think I'm getting a lot of chances to do many different kinds of things in the library. I just was a bit frustrated on Friday for lack of planning time.