Summer in Rewind Part I

Posted August 28, 2025 by Aurora Daniel

This summer has been packed! As the last summer break of my time at Simmons, I felt that it was important to squeeze as much work experience as possible while also maximizing my VA education benefits by taking summer classes. On top of this, I needed to have surgery at the end of the summer to repair my left hip labrum that would prevent me from having an internship this fall, so I felt it was all the more pressing to maximize my time. Since I did so much this re-cap will be split into two blog posts: the first focused on my summer courses and the second on my work experience.

Summer courses at SLIS are typically split into two 8-week sessions, although a select few are spread out over the entirety of the summer. In order to get my scholarships and VA education benefits to cover my classes I had to be enrolled “full-time,” which over the Summer session means 6 credits. I had to take two summer courses in the same session and so naturally the ones I needed were both only offered during the first session. This meant that spring classes ended on the Friday before my summer classes started, leaving me with a very short break in between. While this may seem like I’m a workaholic, which admittedly I am, I’m also really thrifty so I can avoid student loans. That’s why I chose to do the dual degree in two and half years rather than three as well as why I’m taking summer courses the way that I am. Thankfully, everything worked out in my favor! So, long story short, the courses I took were LIS 440: Archival Access and Use and LIS 439: Preservation Management.

Typical day in-person for LIS 440 at Greenfield Community College

For LIS 440, which is one of the required archives courses for the Archives Management program, it was mostly remote with a one-week intensive at the SLIS West campus in Greenfield, MA. Although the compressed format meant that I essentially had an assignment due per week for the last five weeks of the course, I appreciated being able to go over the assignments in person, discuss the difficult parts of each one, and get to interact with my classmates and professor face-to-face. Plus, this gave me an excuse to spend a week out in Greenfield and visit several of the bookstores out in the Pioneer Valley.

The BookMill in Montague, MA

Former car bridge that is part of a walking trail near Turners Falls, MA

LIS 439 was fully remote, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the course instruction and assignments. Unlike many of the LIS courses where the assignments include a component of how it would apply in a work environment, this entire course focused on the work environment and using your pre-existing knowledge to explain your decisions regarding how to address preservation concerns like pests, temperature/humidity, disasters like flood and fires, and so much more.

However, it hasn’t been all work. I’ve been going on short day and weekend long trips around New England, visiting historic houses (I have to maximize my free student membership to Historic New England), and trying out things I would have never dreamed of.

Great ice cream in Guilford, VT

In mid-June I went to the Quechee Hot Air Balloon festival in Quechee, VT and got to go on a hot air balloon ride. We had a perfect flight. We opted for a sunrise flight and got in the air about 6:30am. It was partly cloudy with very little wind, so we were able to stay in the air for about an hour. Originally the pilot had wanted to get us to this local airport to land but we didn’t have enough wind to make it there, so we landed in a yard of a local family. The parents rushed out the door grasping onto their children so they wouldn’t run out near the balloon. I learned that the landing tradition is to offer champagne to the landowner, which dates back to the earliest balloon rides. The family turned it down, so the pilot ended up giving it to the next door neighbor. We then drove back to the launching grounds and had a toast ourselves.

My fiancee and me on the hot air balloon ride

For my birthday at the end of June, my fiancee and I celebrated by going on a dinner train in Lincoln, NH and got to sit in a restored 1952 train car. We rode alongside a river, enjoyed a delicious 5-course meal, and of course had an excuse to dress up (my favorite part). Although there were other great highlights from that weekend, such as spotting fireflies along the river near our hotel, biking on the Franconia Notch trail, and visiting the Flume, the dinner was my favorite one.

Dressed up outside the historic train car

Stay tuned for more of my summer in the next post!