Falling Back into the Swing of Things
Posted September 22, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
It’s hard to believe that a month of this semester has already gone by! I suppose that’s what happens when you’re having fun. This semester looks a bit different than previous ones for me, which in some ways means that it’s going by much quicker and in other ways it seems endless. Instead of juggling a couple of jobs and an internship I just have two on-campus jobs, which has freed up some of my time during the day. Since having surgery I put volunteer work on hiatus and cut out other extra responsibilities so I could limit my time outside the house to just work and school. Finally, this semester I’m just taking two courses and opted to work on an independent study to complete my final elective requirement. This means that, while I have to dedicate more time to research and outreach, I’m able to work from home more and hone in on projects that excite me. So far I’ve found my coursework this semester invigorating. I’m taking LIS 442:
Establishing Archives and Manuscript Programs and HIST 561: Topics in World History
African Diaspora Religions. LIS 442 is the last of the three core archives courses that everyone in the Archives Management concentration are required to take. It’s often internally referred to as the “archives management course,” as it’s focused on how to create strategic planning, enact policies, and manage staff. While a component of this does relate to how one manages a collection, this course is all about the staff and organizational dynamics and why that skillset is central to the archivist’s role. An integral part of the course is a long term group project where students are assigned to a fictitious archive and work through a multi-step plan to address the archives situation. This can vary from establishing the archive itself to an upcoming program/project that the archive has to take on to a change in the archive’s leadership and subsequent policy shifts. All throughout SLIS’ program professors hammer in the point that librarianship is collaboration, but nowhere is that more important than in LIS 442.
Personally, I’m enjoying learning more about this as my experience with leadership, management, and professional advancement was primarily while I was in the military, which has its own idiosyncrasies that don’t translate well outside of that environment. In the military there isn’t a distinction between leadership and management and integral to the culture is that no matter what rank you are you aren’t respected unless you’re able to do the basics like an entry level soldier (no one is above embracing the suck). Now, that’s an overly simplistic way of describing it, and certainly some of these ethos do have value outside of the military, but it’s rather limited. Since I got out in 2018 I have primarily worked pre-professional jobs and internships which are typically at the bottom of the organizational structure and have very limited room for advancement.
As for HIST 561, this course is so interesting. It’s primarily looking at religions practiced in the Caribbean and Brazil and why and how they developed through the absorption of various traditions. I took a couple of classes on religion in undergrad, one on Asian religions and another on Judaism, so I’m not entirely unfamiliar with analyzing religion and cultural practice, but I am completely unfamiliar with this topic. I’m really glad that Simmons is providing the opportunity for students to take a course like this Since I could go on forever about my independent study I’ll be writing all about it in my next blog post. For now, I have plenty of readings to complete for my class sessions this week.