Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Life at the library...

It's School Midterm Project Time!!! Aaaaaiiieeeeee!!! That means the library is a madhouse of tweens asking for help finding books on the most vague topics possible. And freaking out when the books on their chosen topic are all checked out, because it's Tuesday and the project is due on Thursday, and was assigned a month ago.

It also means the Helicopter Parents are hovering -- I don't mean the ones who bring their kids to the library and sit and read while their kids do their work, or even the ones who walk the kids up to my desk and either prod the kids to ask me for help, or do the asking themselves. No, I mean the ones who come in on their own, no kids anywhere in sight, and pick out the books themselves. Or the ones who call and ask me to put a bunch of books on their kid's topic on hold... usually while I can hear the kid in the background. I always have to bite my tongue to keep from telling the harried moms and dads who are frantically trying to get that one book that will be just PERFECT for the kid's term paper that maybe, just maybe, the kid will learn more if they do the research themselves. And they'll learn an extra-valuable lesson if they don't get the work done on time and have to deal with the consequences.

(I wanted to applaud the mom who, when her 12-ish-year-old son threw a whiny fit because all the books on the Muckrakers were checked out or at other libraries, and thus not available for him immediately, told him "Hey, that's too bad. You waited until the last minute, so tomorrow you can explain to your teacher why your paper isn't done." This, at about 8:30 on a Thursday night. Good for you, Mom! And thank you for not telling me how rotten the library is because we couldn't produce the books your kid wanted out of thin air!)

And now one of our regulars is walking around belching. Loudly. ::sigh::

1 comment:

  1. I would also like to commend that mother! Those are the lessons that stick, all right.

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