Winter blahs and everyday information seeking

This has been a week of tiredness and too many layers of clothing and that nagging "am I coming down with a cold?" feeling, combined with mild panic over the fact that within
the next five weeks, I have to plow through a big stack of readings,
write a grant proposal, and put together a literature review. I remember this particular feeling quite well from the University of Chicago: the midpoint of winter quarter always seemed more dire than the midpoint of other quarters. I know I’ve survived just fine before, and can do it again. Still, winter blahs are one of those things you can’t quite reason away.

But tonight’s class actually chased the blahs off; we were talking about what’s known as "everyday life information seeking," which I find totally fascinating. We had a discussion that zinged back and forth between the prevalence of Google as a first stop for ordinary information, what it’s like to grow up in a town served by a bookmobile, and the "strength of weak ties" theory. It was a good class, and I’m starting to feel much more like we’re a cohort now that most of us have been in at least one class together this term and last term.

Now for some Battlestar Galactica, some tea, and so to bed. (BSG seems to keep the blahs at bay, too.)

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