Registration!
Posted October 31, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
Registration time is upon us! And…I have no idea what class to take. As of December, I will be a fourth of the way through my program, and I’ll be done with my required core LIS courses. Now, I am currently in the Archives Management concentration, so logically, I should be taking LIS 438: Introduction to Archival Methods and Services, which is a prerequisite for a lot of the archives classes and is the recommended first archives class. However, in a past post of mine, I talked about how I was thinking about switching from the Archives Management concentration to just the regular DYO Library and Information Science MS degree, and I still haven’t decided what to do yet! It would make sense to take an archives class to be absolutely positive that I don’t want to do the Archives Management concentration, but I honestly don’t know if I can take LIS 438 next semester with my work schedule. LIS 438 is a course that includes a required 60-hour internship, and I’ve talked with some fellow students about the class and from what I’ve gathered, given my current work schedule, I’ll need to choose between my job or the class. I have other reservations about taking the class next semester, but right now my job is the main concern. I had intended to make my decision about continuing on with the Archives Management concentration by the time I’d finished my core classes, but I haven’t made up my mind yet. So alas, I don’t know what to do. A part of me thinks that my best bet is to just take an elective next semester and try and do more research about archives and what I want to do when I’m done with my degree to see if Archives Management is the right path for me. Even if I remain in the Archives Management concentration, I’ll need to take a few electives, so it’s not like I’ll be taking a class that won’t help me. And there’s so many great choices! That’s another reason why I’m hesitating on doing Archives Management–I feel I’ll be missing out on some great classes. But there’s some great archives classes too. Ugh–it’s such a hard decision! I mean, I don’t think I could make a wrong choice. Anyways–for registration, I think I’m probably going to end up deviating from the plan I made with my advisor when I came in to Simmons, and instead of doing LIS 438 next semester, I think I’m just going to take an elective, so I can delay the decision about my concentration for another few months. I’ll let you know what happens!