Well as some of you may know I work in a library. NOT a nice quiet library filled with dusty books and anally retentive librarians who spend their day reading, putting books on shelves and saying shhhhsh!
Anyone who has been in the library of a busy university will know that I am not exaggerating when I say it is not unlike the supermarket (without the piped music).
Each day something happens that surprises us or annoys us and someone is alway feeling stressed dealing with lazy students who want us to do the work for them.
That was my new experience today.
After 13 years and many difficult to answer, stupid, obscure questions I had one today that I still have no idea about.
A student (overseas and male-probably from a culture that expects women to wait on the men hand and foot) asked me to find him books to support his essay topic.
He had good English but a difficult accent and it took me a while to understand what he even wanted.
He had already written his essay (which I might add was his second attempt) without reading a single book or journal pertaining to his subject (politics).
He now wanted book titles that he could reference that would support his essay. He wasn't going to read them just say he had. He thought that having some of the words in the title that he had in the essay question was all he would need and that his lecturer wouldn't notice.
I spent 45 minutes with him and he never said please or thank you once, even though he left with 2 books and an article to read. At least I convinced him he would need to do a bit of reading to get through.
Some people are rude, some are lovely, some are overwhelmingly grateful and some think we owe them something. All in all the day is never boring and there is always someone saying those immortal word..."well I've never seen that before"
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