JollyLibrarian

Most of us like to think of ourselves as helpful beings. When we see someone struggling, we jump in to help.  And that is a good thing. Usually.

But there are times when we are so sure that we know the answer to someone’s problem, that we forget to ask if our help is wanted or needed. Or if there’s even a problem.

This happens all the time in the workplace. Someone is doing a task that we know we can do better or more efficiently. So we jump in and give all sorts of unasked for advice. And then we wonder why the person doesn’t seem grateful and maybe even angry.  

Perhaps it’s because we’ve made some unwarranted assumptions. We’ve assumed the person wants our help. (Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of our brillance!) We’ve assumed that the way the person is doing the task is not simply different, but wrong. And maybe we’ve even assumed a person should be grateful when we point out the error of their ways. None of the above is a given. And while workplace issues can arise from such misunderstandings, they pale beside the problems such assumptions can cause in personal relationships.

What we need to do is to add a step between the seeing of a “problem” and the “helping.” That is asking if the person wants or needs our help, such as “I’ve been dealing with angry customers at the front desk for several months now. Would you like some suggestions on how to calm them down?”

If the person says yes, then we’re free to offer our advice. But that’s not the hard part. We have to remember that the person has every right to say no, that she may be quite content with the way she is doing her job or handling her relationships, etc. (And let’s face it: some people just like the drama.)

 Sometimes we can’t give the person the option of refusing our help. If I’m having surgery and someone’s about to cut out the wrong organ, I don’t want any asking going on. I want those hands stopped immediately. But those life-or-death moments don’t happen that often. Often, what’s really at stake is simply the matter of being right.

So take a stand on improving workplace (and personal) relationships today. When you ask if you can help, listen to the answer. And if the answer’s no, move on without rancor.

For the past two weeks, the airwaves and internet have been buzzing over the deaths of Michael Jackson and now Steve McNair. Just as with the death of Princess Diana, commentators have marveled at the extent of the public emotional outpouring over complete strangers. Celebrity gives the impression of familiarity, they tell us.

For those of us in Nashville, the death of McNair seems to have hit especially hard. People on the screen as well as the average person on the street have done all sorts of verbal gymnastics to try to maintain the McNair-as-hero image in spite of the very sobering facts surrounding his last months. Perhaps part of it is due to the coupling of words “sports” and “hero.” We do this pairing way too easily in American society in spite of the fact that we have more than enough evidence by now to realize that high-level, high-paying sports are just as likely to bring out the meaner part of human nature as they do the heroic and noble. Secondly, we seem to have a hard time accepting that people can be both mean and noble. It reminds me of a friend of mine who had an affair. She once said to me despondently, “I still want to be Gandhi, but people only think of me now in terms of this one mistake.” But in our sound-bite culture, we often find it hard to take the full measure of a person.

But perhaps the real lesson to be learned here is the reminder that, despite the number of times we see celebrities on television and online, despite the number of interviews they give, and despite the number of articles we read about them, we don’t know them. Most celebrities spend a great deal of money to hire people to ensure that the public image is the only one we see. We need to take a step back and remind ourselves that the fact that someone is cheerful in an interview doesn’t tell us much about the real person. (In fact, it only tells us that he/she knows how to give a good interview.)

Recently, I read an article by two philosophy professors who said that instructors of critical thinking have traditionally spent their time on critically reading texts, which, of course, is important. Still, for most people now, the main mode of garnering information is not through text. People need to know how to critically evaluate what they see on the screen as well as what they see on the page.

Despite the gossip and publicity, to me, it all comes down to this. Three lives are lost, and families are grieving. Let us hope that we the public will give them the space to mourn in private.

Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is to say ”I don’t want to.”

 –Lao Tzu

Now if you’re like many people, this saying from Lao Tzu is not going to go down in your list of favorites. Research shows again and again that many of us feel time deprived, giving up sleep and exercise time to get work and family chores done.

Still, I think we should not dismiss Lao Tzu so easily. Saying “I don’t have time” has become for many of us the excuse that covers everything from doing distasteful things to trying new activities or even working towards goals that we say we want to achieve.

But a honest analysis of our time might reveal some troubling truths. Many people who say they don’t have time to exercise watch hours of television each day. I often say I don’t have time to work on my writing, but do manage to make time to read chapters of a novel or play hearts on the computer.

There’s nothing wrong with ditching a goal that no longer fits or choosing to spend time with family instead of going out with a friend who keeps asking you to the movies. But it’s important to realize that we are making choices, at every moment, on how we’re going to use our time.

To paraphrase Annie Dillard: How we spend our moments is how we spend our lives. Let’s make sure that we spend them consciously.

Probably Michael Jackson is the most popular search term this week six days after his death. The amount of information about him being placed on the web is astronomical. And some of it is accurate: TMZ was the first to report on his death on its website.

But the days following his death show the weakness of getting all of one’s information online. Getting information out instantly may be one of the web’s strengths, but the resulting weakness can be that rumor is put up instead of fact. Information is not checked out before published.

The other major weakness of the web is that anyone can post anything at any time. A good example is the story that Jackson is not dead.

So how to tell the good from the bad? It’s not always easy, but use your critical thinking skills:

• Look at the source. Who is publishing the site? Who is the author? Have you heard of them before?
• Does the position or argument make sense?
• Can you find the information backed up in other places?

By using common sense and critical thinking, the web can be your friend when doing research.

A simple definition of empathy  is the abilty to understand someone’s feelings, thoughts, and concerns. It’s the ability to walk a mile in another’s shoes. It is a soft skill that reaps great benefits.

At a college, we employees are so enmeshed in the academic world that we sometimes forget how overwhelming things can be for the prospective or new student. Taking a minute to understand where the person is coming from can defuse an awkward, or even hostile, situation

Here are some daily practices to develop empathy:

•  Listen to people. This would seem obvious, but how many of us are actually thinking about the next thing we need to do while ‘listening’ to someone?
• Don’t interrupt people.
• Don’t rush to give advice before listening all the way through.
• Don’t dismiss others’ concerns as minor.
• Encourage people to speak up.
• Ask questions to get the full story.
• Just think how you would want to be treated if you were the person, and then act accordingly.

Source material: Bruna Martinuzzi: The Leader as a Mensch.

Do you associate the Kisber Library with academic tomes only, heavy subjects that you’re trying to escape from in the summer? Then take a second look at us!

Don’t hate us because we’re smart! We’re fun too!

Our new exhibit features our fun books–books just right for taking along to the beach or the pool or lazing away a sunny afternoon. Come by and take a look, and then take one home.

Here are some of our favorites:

Andrew is amazed by the political ravings of Stephen Colbert.

Our wonderful student worker, Po, likes short stories.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to be using The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow by Bruna Martinuzzi as a guide. For Martinuzzi, we are all leaders in some aspects of our lives, and her advice is very useful for bosses, employees, family members, and friends.

 According to the Random House dictionary, humility is defined as the “modest opinion of one’s importance or rank.” Humility has gotten something of a bad rap in the work force today. We’ve been to told to get noticed and let people know of our accomplishments.

But Jim Collins, in his key book on business success Good to Great notes that leaders of really successful companies have in common the ability to put aside their personal egos for the good of the companies they lead. Having humility does not mean denying our accomplishments, but accepting them without arrogance. A person with humility respects others’ accomplishments and is patient with their faults, knowing how easy it is to make mistakes.

Some practices for humility:

• Don’t get engaged in “contests of perfection,” where both sides try to look good and avoid admitting mistakes. Simply step back and let the other person have the limelight.
• Let other people be right.
• Don’t preach or coach without permission.
• Don’t attempt to do others’ job. Although you might think you’re doing someone a favor when you take over a task they’re struggling with, it is actually belittling.
• The next time something goes wrong, don’t spend time assigning blame. Instead, ask ‘What can we learn from this?’

By guest blogger: Emily  Bush, Instructional Librarian

As librarians we attempt to convince students that subscription databases search as intuitively as Google – “It’s easy just insert ‘AND’ between each word, think of three different ways to say the same thing, make sure to click full text, hit search then weed your way through 300 irrelevant results OR try again.” Though several database services have changed their interfaces to look and act more like Google, students continue to Google their way through Comp I (and beyond) . So why then do we steer students away from Google, the king of searching with no heir apparent? First and foremost, students can’t access the full text of most journals and magazines through Google –– or at least not without digging into their pocketbooks. Enter Google Scholar – Google’s nerdy stepsibling hidden under Google’s “more” menu.

Google Scholar looks and acts just like Google; however, it only searches scholarly journal articles. In fact, you can search articles from the Nashville State databases through Google Scholar. To do so click on “Scholar Preferences:”

Then scroll down and choose Nashville State Community College (make sure to uncheck all the other boxes).  Save your preferences.

Now you can perform your search in Google Scholar (no ANDs, ORs, or NOTs required).The items Nashville State owns will say “Full-Text availability at NSCC.” Clicking the link will bring you to NSCC’s journal finder. Now you can click on any database with full access to the article and you’re there.

I’m not talking here about formal mentoring, although that is a very wonderful thing to do. What I am talking about is just showing the children you know ways to be happy and responsible adults. One of my proudest moments came from a young friend of mine who told her grandmother, “You know, I’ve always thought that you had to be married to be happy, but now I’m no longer scared of being single. Faye seems to be one of the happiest people I know, and she’s not married.”

This week, let’s be conscious of the messages we send to children around us. Are we saying, by our example, that it’s okay to snap at others when we’re grumpy or things don’t go our way? Do we show that it’s okay to shortchange a business because “it’s only a few cents and corporations make a lot of money”? Do we show them that our work is meaningful, no matter what it is?

I’ve recently been hanging out with a three-year-old, and I have become painfully aware that children soak up messages right and left from all sorts of sources. Let’s make sure we send them the right ones.

Facts:

• Almost half of all junk mail goes unopened. Only about 2% ever gets a response.
• The average person gets 500 pieces of junk mail a year.
• 5.6 million tons of catalogs and direct mail ads wind up in landfills each year.
• A year’s worth of junk mail destroys more than a million trees.

Take action:

• Remove yourself from as many mailing lists as you can.
• When you enter a contest, fill out a warranty card, or donate to a charity, make sure you write “don’t rent or sell my name” on the form.
• Recycle the junk mail you do receive.