June 2015 Archives
Posted June 30, 2015
It’s almost hard to believe that it has been 150 years since Lewis Carroll’s Alice fell down the rabbit hole and tumbled into the weird, mad, and impossible world of Wonderland. Since its publication in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has not only become part of the literary classic but also a figure that squarely represents the innocence of childhood. Considering its age, it’s understandable that there have been quite a few interpretations on Carroll’s -or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s- most famous character. Indeed, the metaphorical journey of Alice has almost become as iconic as the girl herself. So, in honor of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turning the big 1-5-0, I’ve compiled a top five list of Alices. But before I reveal the list, let’s get some things out of the way. This list and its ranking has been created based on my own personal opinions. So yes, expect some biases For the sake of simplicity, I’m only sticking to Alices from direct adaptions. There are simply too many Alices from works that are allusions or influenced by Carroll’s novel…
Posted June 21, 2015
With classes starting this week, I’ve been running around checking things off of my “To Do In Boston” List. Two weekends ago, I walked the entire Freedom Trail with some friends. (It’s only about 2.5 miles long.) The weather was sunny and breezy, so it was the perfect time to take in the sights outdoors. We hit every stop! I was most impressed with the less touristy ones, like King’s Chapel and the Bunker Hill Monument, which commemorates an early battle in the Revolutionary War and is actually located on Breed’s Hill, where most of the combat took place. If you are walking the whole trail from end to end, you can either start at the State House or at the Bunker Hill Monument. We didn’t think we were going to see everything, so we started at the USS Constitution. Launched in 1797, it is the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat (even though it’s temporarily in dry dock). My friend Nick had been there on a tour with the New England Archivists (NEA)…
Posted June 19, 2015
Summer has been a bit of a whirlwind. I’ve finished two classes, I’ve been doing an internship and volunteering, and my roommate just moved back across the country. She moved out here with me from Montana, and I’ve loved having her here. Before she left, we managed to sneak in a last minute trip into the city. We checked out spots along the Freedom Trail, and it was interesting to see history in a place where I have grown accustomed to living. Once I got used to being in the city and used to treading the same path (or same couple of paths) every day, I stopped looking around me. I stopped seeing what I was going by every day. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of “oh I see that every day, it’s no longer interesting”. Ever since that walk along the Freedom Trail, I’ve been trying to remember that everything is interesting. Every person has a story. Every object has a history. It’s nice to approach each day with curiosity…
Posted June 16, 2015
Happy Summer! Two links today, one to make you laugh and one to make you think. Laugh: Librarian Problems. My favorite might be “watching patrons try to find things in the collection after shifting,” especially the comment “watching the rest of the staff after you shifted.” Um, yes, that was me. Think: The Library News. A great collection of articles. Unsurprisingly, several of these have appeared in my Facebook feed from other sources, and it’s nice to have them all in one place. Enjoy!
Posted June 11, 2015
In recent years I have come to realize something about myself: I absolutely love traditions. Defined by Merriam-Webster as being a “a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, etc., for a long time,” traditions are something that anyone and everyone has. At the same time, traditions can be anything that one or many people want them to be. From family traditions such as always stopping at a specific spot on a road-trip to more sacred and religiously symbolic traditions such as attending Easter Mass, lighting the Sabbath candles, or by marking the end of Ramadan by celebrating Eid al-Fitr, traditions are practices that unite individuals together in unique and special ways. And then there are silly traditions; the kind that you have with your close friends, that ones that just sort of started out of nowhere but have since become something sort-of special. Within my apartment, we have a tradition. We call it Musical Mondays. What started one Monday night a few weeks…
Posted June 10, 2015
As an online student, it is difficult to connect with one’s professors or fellow students on a regular basis. Certainly in this day and age there are so many ways to reach out to someone – email, social media, Moodle and discussion forums, but these will always pale in comparison to good ol’ fashioned face-to-face time. While I know that I can reach out to my professors and advisor when necessary, and I certainly have, I’ve learned to be my own support. Because of this, coupled by the fact that I spend so much time on my own reading through discussion forums, tracking down articles, and navigating through modules on Moodle, my education often feels like a very solitary experience. I learned a great lesson recently in taking responsibility for my personal experience as a Simmons graduate student, specifically regarding summer semester. During my undergraduate education, summers usually involved internships in random fields as I tried to figure out exactly what it was that I wanted to do. I was still unsure about library science…
Posted June 9, 2015
So lately I’ve been blogging about jobs and work and all things professional. A lot of this is because I finally feel like I know what I’m doing to a certain extent. Yay for me, but let’s talk about something more interesting, namely how many more opportunities there are for fun and socializing during the break between the summer and spring semesters (and any of the semesters). This is when SLIS students have more time to spend with their friends to hang out, have get-togethers, see the sights, etc. I’m especially grateful for the time I have now to finally grab a drink or get a cup of coffee with friends I haven’t seen in months. Before, maybe we’d grab a quick coffee at school and use that time to talk about how we were too busy to get a simple cup of coffee. Now we can talk about anything really. We can even have TWO cups of coffee. Whoa, right? Talk about living it up. I had a very enjoyable Saturday last week in…
Posted June 4, 2015
This last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet up with a pen pal of mine. Back in October or November, Promising Pals sent out an email and asked for pen pals for students at the Timilty Middle School in Roslindale. I loved pen pal activities when I was in school, so I was happy to sign up for the experience. Usually, Promising Pals asks their pals to exchange four letters. Of course, this year, the snow storms made all plans go haywire. The mail was delayed, and I, at least, received two letters within three days. It was difficult to build a rapport with my pal when the mail was so irregular. However, Friday morning and meeting my pen pal for breakfast was exciting. The pals were able to hear a little bit about the history of the program and listen to some inspirational speeches and music. Then I got to collect my student from his classroom. We ate breakfast and bonded over basketball and horror movies. I bought him a book from the…
Posted June 2, 2015
I just submitted the final assignment for LIS-505, Reader’s Advisory. Hurrah! LIS-505 was a two-week class, and by that I mean a full three-credit class jammed into two weeks. We read eight novels from different genres, about 20 articles on different aspects of reader’s advisory, book selection, leading discussion groups and genre fiction, completed three assignments and gave an in-class presentation. I’m not going to lie — it was a lot of work in a short period of time. But it was fun work, interesting work, and I enjoyed the professor, classmates, readings and assignments. I did not enjoy the timeframe so much. It turns out that I really like to take my time with assignments. I guess I knew this, but taking a two-week class really made it clear. Usually, I write a first draft well before the assignment is due, and revise it considerably until the day before the due date, and then try to submit early, which is essentially impossible in a two-week timeframe. However, every once in a while it’s good…
