ShmoopTube

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Here's your shmoop du jour... Which word could fill in the blank so that

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the sentence below makes sense?

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Mr. Smith may be the most blank and highly trained librarian in the university, but the

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other staff members dislike working with him because of his tardiness and blank.

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And here are the potential answers...

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So Mr. Smith is a highly trained, expert librarian. Awesome. We wonder where you go to become one of THOSE?

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Librarian boot camp?

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Anyway, we know that the first word needs a positive connotation that jibes with Mr.

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Smith's extensive training.

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We can therefore eliminate (D) and (E) right off the bat. Neither "questionable" nor

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"inconsistent" have positive connotations.

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The rest of our first blank choices are plausible, so we'll move on to blank number two.

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Despite his training, Mr. Smith's compadres in the library aren't all that impressed with him.

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So for the second blank, we know we're looking for a negative sounding word to go along with "tardiness."

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"Efficiency" is a good thing, and "accomplishments"

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are pretty sweet too, therefore (B) and (C) are both off the list.

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(A) is the correct answer, because no matter how well trained you are, being "unreliable"

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isn't usually a good thing...

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OK, it's never a good thing.

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