Murphy's Law (and Intern's Corollary)

Murphy's law states:
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

I propose an Intern's Corollary to Murphy's law:
"The important phone call will arrive on the same day as the flu."


So far, thankfully (*knocks wood*), I've managed to avoid Murphy's Law during this internship. But when I woke up this morning coughing, head-achy and barely able to speak, I somehow should have known that it would be the same day that I would get an important phone call -- not e-mail -- from a Peer library!

Today was the first time we'd heard from Second City, our seventh participating library, and so I was eager to ask them all about their digital policies -- but because I'd just woken up from a long nap, was coughing and shivering, and barely had a voice to speak, the conversation got off to an awkward start.

Luckily though, Second City's contact person understood and sympathized with my predicament and together we came up with a good solution: I would put her on speakerphone, and would concentrate on transcription instead of on interviewing. She would use the two letters that she'd received from me as guidelines for what to talk about.

The strategy worked perfectly!

Now I have a solid core of information from Second City with which to work. And just to be safe, I asked for my contact person's e-mail address, so that I can do follow-up with her via e-mail, on the off-chance that I lose my voice completely over the next few days. (But let's hope that doesn't happen!)

So thank you very much, Second City! I'm so happy we've heard from you.