First Weeks

Posted February 6, 2019 by Sarah Callanan

So it has been a crazy few weeks! 

First, the weather has been insane.  We’ve had super cold weather, we’ve had snow squalls, we’ve had ice, we’ve had rain, we’ve had sun, we’ve had wind, and yesterday the high was 63 degrees!  We’ve had a little bit of everything!  Will the weather ever make up its mind?  Every day is a surprise!  I thought one of the things about living in New England was guaranteed freezing cold weather all the time in the winter, but the past two days have proved me wrong (although I’m certainly not complaining because I did not enjoy the snow squalls last week, and I do not want anything similar to the polar vortex the Midwest experienced). 

The first few weeks of class have been going great!  As you know, I’m taking LIS 451: Academic Libraries this semester.  It’s my first elective at SLIS, and my last blog was posted on the first official day of my class, so I didn’t have many details to share, but now I do!  The material for this class is so, so interesting, and because I work in an academic library, it is very relevant to my life now (and it will be relevant later if I decide I want my future library career to be in academic libraries), and I am really happy I chose to take this class this semester.  I’ve learned so much already.  We’ve talked about mission statements and goals, understanding student audiences, outreach to students, and so much more.   Also, even though I’m taking this class online, there is so much participation, and I do not feel disconnected from my classmates at all.  So far, this feels to be the most participation-heavy online class that I’ve taken.  However, there was something that seemed a little strange though: in most of my online classes, there was an “Introduce Yourself” forum where you get to “meet” all of your classmates.  This class didn’t have that; however, we did have an introduction forum for our group project, and our participation/activity forums have been very lively which I have really enjoyed!  

 I can already tell that I’m going to need to be at the top of my time management game this semester with all of the projects, readings, and weekly assignments.  There are so many projects in this class.   However, every single project, every single assignment, and every single reading has a purpose in this class (and in every class at SLIS).  One of our projects is a mini-grant writing application–that is so useful, and I know I will use that later in my career.  Our big semester-long group project is a Committee Group Project, where we all sign up for a committee and we submit a written report, a presentation, and we all take turns being chair and submit a chair report.  Committees are how work gets done in academic libraries, and in universities in general, and this will be so helpful for my future. I’ve said it before: there is no busy work at SLIS, everything you do for homework is like professional development, and I know that is the case with this class.  Even though I know this class is going to be a lot of hard work, I’m really excited to be taking it, and I’m excited to learn more!