Good Heavens!

So I am starting to drive myself crazy by catching myself saying the above exclamation all the time. I don't know why but I sure say it a lot.

My biggest "Good heavens!" moment recently was on Friday when I discovered that I am going to have to put together an electronic portfolio as my culminating experience (or the last final project) to earn my Master's degree in Library and Information Science. In theory, I think it sounds pretty cool to have a collection of all my coursework that I have done in the process of earning the degree. My dilemma comes from the fact that I lost my hard drive this last March and I had NOTHING backed up! *sigh* Yes, I learned a valuable lesson from the experience, "There are two types of people in the world: those who have lost their hard drive and those who will." So said the Mac guy who was trying to help me troubleshoot my computer as it was on its deathbed. Whoops, enough of a digression. All this is to say that I am missing a lot of the coursework that I did. In particular, three of my classes (dating back to Spring 2004) I completed and submitted my schoolwork through the Internet. And I never bothered to print up any of this work (planning to do it later, of course).

I emailed the professors in hopes they might still have my assignments. I heard back from one today. She does not keep student files anymore. I sadly realized this would mean I would have no evidence of what I learned about online searching: no exercises, no quizzes, and no essay. *sad frown* Another professor said that she has my cataloging assignments on her computer and she would get them to me in a couple of days. Yay! *smile* Then I was sad again as I really wished I had done some sort of back-up of the online searching class. Maybe I could at least include the greensheet from the class... I went back to my SLIS email account, which I generally avoid because it has usually has 800-1200 unread messages-hate that, and stared at the inbox for a bit in contemplation. That is when I saw it: LIBR 244. A folder. Perhaps my assignments were there? With great hope, I clicked on the link for this promising folder. And lo and behold, they were all there!!!!! Yippeee!

Now I just have to get my external hard drive up and running, any volunteers to help me?

Note: Perhaps I could have avoided some of this hassle if I had paid to have my computer data retrieved, but you know what? I don't regret my decision to use this money instead to provide a village with a milking cow and give 6 children a year of school. God has provided me with many many blessings and I am humbled.