Going Dual Degree
Posted December 5, 2013 by Jill Silverberg
What many people don’t know is that back when I was in the middle of applying to Simmons for graduate school, I was originally planning on submitting an application for Simmons’s dual degree in archives and history. As someone deeply interested in working within a museum, I figured that having a degree in both history and archives would open to me to more opportunities in the future. Unfortunately, due to some minor miscommunication between a professor and myself, I ended up submitting my application to GSLIS with a concentration in archives. After talking to both my parents and a representative from GSLIS, I decided that I would try GSLIS for a semester and if I felt that it was necessary, I could always apply to the history degree for the following semester. Well, about two or three weeks after starting at Simmons, I knew that something was missing. While I do enjoy being a member of the archives program, I realized rather quickly that the program wasn’t giving me everything that I wanted out of it.
It was because of that realization that I decided to take the plunge. I submitted my application to the dual degree program and held my breath. Actually, just to clarify, I submitted my application to the history department. Since I was already accepted into GSLIS, I didn’t need to resubmit my application there. Talk about a relief. I wrote a pretty decent personal statement for GSLIS and I doubted that I could write a better one. Writing a personal statement for the history department was hard enough. How do you convince a department that you want to seek a masters degree for a subject you didn’t major, minor, or even concentrate in while an undergraduate student? With that question racing through my mind as I sat down in front of my laptop, I decided to write about my passion for history, how nearly every course I took at Clark University seemed to have a strong history component to it. I wrote about my interest in working in a Holocaust museum, how I want to work in an environment where I can be both an educator of history and protector of documents, photographs, and other items through the use of preservation and conservation.
Well, starting next semester, I’ll officially be a member of the dual degree program. While it is true that I have just handed myself another serving of academic responsibility, I have to say that I am super excited. I’ve met a number of Simmons students who are also part of the dual degree program and they only have good things to say about it. What this means for all of you readers out there is that next semester, I’ll be talking about my experiences with library science AND history! Won’t that be fun?