Beginning of the End

Posted February 28, 2014 by Emily Boyd

That’s not entirely true, I’ve got so much work to plow through between now and the end of spring semester that at times I feel like I’ll never be done. However, Wednesday afternoon I signed up for my last ever classes at GSLIS. True to form, I’m taking the road less travelled and finishing up my GSLIS career with two weeklong intensive courses over the summer, including one that I think is intended for archive students. My final semester as a masters student will be done in short intensive bursts. I’ll spend the last week of May taking LIS 450: Organization and Management of Public Libraries, a class I’d planned to take in the fall semester but timing hadn’t worked out. The second course will meet for two three day periods during the month of July, LIS 425: History of the Book. I’m most looking forward to LIS 425, in fact, it’s the class that made me originally decide I wanted to go to school to become a librarian.

I remember very distinctly the day I was looking at the Simmons GSLIS curriculum from my desk, at a job I absolutely detested, and seeing that part of library school could involve taking a class called “History of the Book.” That sold me right then and there. What could be better, and more nerdy (in the best possible way), than devoting a whole class to books; how they’ve evolved as physical objects and what they’ve meant to society over time. When I saw that this course was being offered over the summer it seemed serendipitous that the last class I take with GSLIS would be the one that made me initially decide to pursue library school.

In total, of the twelve courses I will have taken at Simmons, seven were regular in-person courses meeting once a week on Simmons’ Boston campus, one was entirely online, and four were weeklong intensive courses. Of the intensive courses, two met/will meet in Boston, one met in Rome, and the last will meet at GSLIS West at Mount Holyoke. Excluding the blended course format, one that’s mainly online but meets in person a few times over the semester, I’ve managed to experience just about all the Simmons has to offer. This wide range of courses and formats has made me really think about how I learn best and has forced me to become a more independent learner.

As of now, the online class is proving most challenging, as I suspected it would, and the weeklong courses have tended to be most enjoyable. In some ways I can’t wait to be done with GSLIS, in others, I can’t believe I’m almost done! It may not be quite the beginning of the end, but the end is certainly just around the corner.