Ho Hum

Today, as my school age friends will know, is the first day of term 3.

I was rather looking forward to today as I haven't had an actual day of school for about 10 weeks. I was going to have to leave early in order to get myself the 30 km to Westmead via off peak public transport (let's call that 1.5 hours on the conservative side) by 2.45, but today being a tuesday, I'd still be able to attend 7 (of my usual 12 on a tuesday) periods of class before having to leave in order to see if the discharge I've been enjoying over the past two weeks was permanent.

Long story short, mum decided there was no point in me going to school today, and so I spent the morning bumming around Usyd. I was sent to Fisher to look for some textbooks Sarah needed for Uni (it seems UNSW's library system just isn't as good), but the call numbers she had given me were incorrect. Way to fail there.

I did however borrow one of their copies of Girt By Sea: a Quarterly Essay by Mungo (Wentworth) MacCallum about the refugee crisis. I'd been meaning to read that for a while.

I then walked to Town Hall to look for an Angus and Robertson store so that I could use a voucher I'd had for ages. I was hoping to find a Gutenberg Bible journal similar to the one I got last week, but depicting a different print. The range there was shit to put in nicely. I instead bought 'Poll Dancing': MacCallum's review of the 2007 election.

So today hasn't been a total loss. I'll be blogging about the PolCom stuff once I've read it.

Ethics

For my extension history research, I need some books which are somewhat off the beaten track. Generally because they're in French.

Luckily, my mother, as an academic at the University of Sydney, has access to the University of Sydney libraries. Which are big.

Fisher alone is HUUUUUUUGE.

Unfortunately, some of the books and articles I need are so far off the beaten track that not even Fisher in its magnitude has it.

This is when the joys of inter-library loans becomes evident.

All I need to do is fill out a form online (whilst pretending to be my mother because I'm using her card) which means I can request any book in existence, and they'll probably be able to locate it. At which point I turn up to Fisher library and pick it up.

This means I can get an obscure book generally available only in France, and thus read it and use it as a source.

I had just requested numerous books and an article from TIME magazine when I received a call from Fisher (I was using my mum's office while she took my younger sister to the dentist and orthodontist). In this call, the librarian enquired as to the language of one of the books I was requesting.

I than lied through my teeth in order to get the librarian to believe that I was requesting the books at the request of my mother, because otherwise I would be misappropriating University resources, and that would be unethical. It would also be unethical for him to allow it, which would thoroughly derail my research.

I am amazed by the level to which I can justify my own lack of ethics.

I'd be well suited for politics. Or public relations...