Brilliant and wonderful? Moi?

I love Thursday. More specifically, I love Thursday's during the term and especially when they preceed a long holiday weekend. My university is what we used to call a suitcase college; students pack up and go home over the weekend more often than not. Generally that means Thurday is party day (sorry). Friday night plans are Thursday night instead. Most of the students are sleeping Thursday mornings and the library is practically barren of patrons until noon. Naturally, the usual suspects are here doing work, but it should come as no surprise that I do not have a student worker scheduled until noon today. Peace, quiet, and time to order more children's books.

Yesterday, I was brilliant. Really. This time it isn't self noted brilliance, but a frantic student teacher told me I was brilliant. The student in question ran out of red paper for her Ellison letters and was quite distraught we did not have the right shade of red. It happens. After asking me twice if I was sure there was not another red, she steemed for a few minutes. I mentioned she could easily make her letter using white paper and take it back to school as a template to trace on the correct paper later. Just that simple and I was brilliant.

Today, I am wonderful. Again, really. One of the doctoral students I "mentor" is in the process of completing his dissertation and anticipating graduation in December. During his time here, he has made regular use of the opportunity to get reference assistance. Today he was looking for an unpublished dissertation. Armed with an author's last name and a number, I used Dissertation Abstracts and was somewhat unsuccessful (okay, I got 5400 hits and wouldn't go through all of them). I requested a title and viola one single correct hit. He would have to pay for the entire dissertation, but the abstract and 24 sample pages are available for free. His response a few minutes later "WOW! You are wonderful. Thanks again. "

Tags: Dissertation Abstracts, Ellison machine