Librarian-dar
Yesterday evening I went to Drexel’s new graduate student orientation. We all sat in an auditorium and listened to presentations on financial aid and library resources and the grad student association and whatnot, and then we all trooped out to eat free food and talk to our advisers at the tables our respective schools had set up. The iSchool gave everyone a little bag with handouts and an assortment of logo’d souvenirs (including a stress ball shaped amusingly, if a bit inexplicably, like a brain). During the sitting-and-listening part of the evening, I’d been looking around and trying to guess which of the sea of people around me were fellow iSchool students. So I was rather pleased to spot a fair number of the people I thought looked like librarians-in-the-making walking around with iSchool bags at the reception. There must be such a thing as librarian-dar; I suddenly remembered how I managed to spot the ALA attendees on the plane to Chicago last year.
My first class is on Tuesday. I’d been feeling a bit apprehensive and odd about being a student all over again, but now (apart from textbook sticker shock) not so.
I don’t know “dar,” can you explain? It sounds slightly sci-fi, and therefore fascinating.
Oh, sorry — it was an invention of my own, based on “gaydar” (which in turn is based on “radar”) — the ability to recognize members of one’s own group even when they’re not overtly identifying themselves as such.
(Incidentally, I just looked it up, and “gaydar” has made it into the OED. I *heart* the online OED…)