Adhesive Removed

My goodness, I have been busy. I know you all assumed as much.

A week and a half ago, I started my job. So far it's been great! I've been scheduling appointments and meeting with all the people in CIT and the people that interact with the Blackboard team. So, I've been having lots of fun getting to know everyone. I've also been reading a good bit of documentation, listserv traffic and have been attempting to get accounts on all the appropriate systems.

It's wild being back on campus. Things have changed in the last five years. Students still wander around campus, oblivious to the world around them, particularly to things like moving vehicles. Now, however, they have things piping sound into their ears that makes them look as if they have an excuse. Most students walk around with cell phones or are using Ipods. Students did not have cell phones when I went to Duke. At least, if they did, they didn't turn them on and use them. Ipods didn't exist. I was one of the very very few students that took notes in class using a laptop and I only did that my last year and a half. Now I believe they are ubiquitous.

Another wild thing is the very fact that I am driving now. I didn't have my van or a driver's license when I was a student. Consequently, I didn't know where most things were on campus in relation to one another. I've been having to learn that very fast. In addition, several times I've had to go over to the American Tobacco Campus, where Duke's Office of Information Technology is located, so I'm much more familiar with Chapel Hill Street, Buchanan and the infamous Duke west campus traffic circle than I used to be.

My first day, I was assigned a "buddy" from a different department in the library. She is from Preservation, which is located in the basement of Perkins. She gave me a tour of many parts of the library that I never knew existed, where they have a lot of very large and cool looking equipment.

Most of the campus food venues have changed. There are so many new buildings that have popped up, too. They are all built using the traditional Duke stone, so they fit in beautifully.
One of the new buildings that is in the process of sprouting is the new library building, Bostock, which will be opening and we will be moving to in early October. There are still many very loud construction noises emanating from it. From my cube, you can hear what I believe is a hammer drill fairly often. I'm very excited that CIT will be moving in there soon.