The New Grad School Try

Posted April 23, 2012 by Sarah Barton

I could have tried harder in college. In fact, I should have tried harder in college. For some reason it just didn’t seem “cool” to do so at the time. When I embarked on my thesis at the beginning of my senior year, I realized that I was going to have to change my work habits. And change them I did. I daresay I enjoyed writing my thesis, and even finished it before the deadline. I relegated myself to the library for self-imposed “Thesis Thursdays” in addition to several hours per week when my former self would have been watching some stupid dating show on MTV. (Because clearly that was the cool thing to do.) My thesis went without a hitch, and I realized that investing myself in my work could actually be…cool.
After three and a half years in the real world (MTV pun intended), I entered GSLIS and promised myself that I would work hard.

College started preparing me for life in general, and now GSLIS is preparing me for my specific career aspirations. This is the real deal. I do not want to graduate from Simmons and say that I could have or should have tried harder. In some sense, part of my time here will be me proving to myself that I can make the most of this educational experience.
Driven in part by a desire to outdo my college self, I have been doing all the readings and posting to the class discussion boards. I attend extracurricular events and I peruse library-related articles and posts online. The piece of paper that will be my GSLIS degree is going to look exactly the same regardless of how much effort I expend along the way, and I am ok with that. The degree itself is only worth as much as the paper it’s printed on, but the work and effort that I put into obtaining it are invaluable. The saying goes that I’m giving GSLIS “the old college try,” but for my own piece of mind, my own experience, and my own good, I’d like to think that I’m giving it “the new grad school try.”