Classes
The Last Week of Summer
Posted August 27, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
And just like that, our last golden week of summer is over. My, how golden it was. The kids and I spent our last full week before school starts enjoying some gorgeous weather and having all kinds of fun and leisure time. I could not have asked for a better summer send-off. We did all the things: nature center, aquarium, IMAX, libraries, parks, and playdates. I have LOVED being able to spend all this quality time with my two kids, unhurried, unburdened, and unscheduled. With my first child about to embark on his public school journey and the second starting preschool, it feels like we’re about to lose something that we can never get back. For all my reluctance to leave behind these lazy summer days, I am actually quite excited for the fall and the new challenges and opportunities it will bring. Remember that exciting news I hinted about in my last post? Well…the exciting news has officially been rescinded. I had been accepted for a reference and instruction internship at a nearby university,…
From Summer to Fall
Posted August 15, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
It. Is. Over. My summer class is done. The class (LIS 415: Information Organization) was interesting, invigorating, and utterly exhausting. I know I’ve said this before, but one of the reasons I really enjoyed the class was because even though it was an online class on an accelerated schedule, we had so many opportunities for discussion. Additionally, the new concepts I learned will be useful to me throughout my career. I learned so much about why and how we organize information. The class challenged me to think in new ways, and I am walking away with a valuable set of new skills which I will use in future classes and in my profession. However, I did struggle with the accelerated timeframe of the class. What really helped me was setting aside designated hours of each day to work on schoolwork. Admittedly, that didn’t always help, because I underestimated the amount of work in the beginning (it’s double the work of the normal semester because it’s done in half the time), so there were a lot…
Summer Class Wrap
Posted August 13, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Welp, my summer class (Records Management) is a wrap. What a whirlwind! What a race! What an adventure! In typical life fashion, just about everything went wrong with my carefully laid plans the last week of class. Kids got sick (so no summer school ☹). Hubby extra busy at work. Cue mad scrambling. I never intend for the end-of-semester time to be a hot mess, and I always try to be well prepared. But somehow it just seems to happen anyway. Did you know that I (or my kids) have gotten sick the last week of class EVERY semester I’ve been at Simmons? It’s true. I’m keeping track. Anyway, enough complaining. I have exactly one month now to pick up the pieces and get my affairs in order before fall semester starts. I have a lot going on this fall and some very exciting news to share…………which I’m saving for my next blog post! Haha! I wanted to use this post to talk about my summer class and the online format in general. So: Records…
Not So Lazy Days of Summer
Posted July 25, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
It is currently Week 6 of my online summer class. Now in a usual semester, which is 14 weeks long, we would just be approaching the halfway point. But, as this is a summer class that is only 8 weeks long, I only have 2 weeks remaining, and it is crunch time. We have accomplished a lot in a very short amount of time in this class. I’ve learned so much! However, there is still a lot of work to be done and topics to be covered in the remaining weeks. I have a group project to finish, numerous readings to complete, several assignments and exercises to do, and lots of discussion forums to participate in. One of the key takeaways from this experience is that summer classes require you to be at the very top of your game. As it is the full amount of work for a semester class in half the time, there can be no slacking off whatsoever. You have to manage your time very wisely. Balancing school, work, and your…
Staying Busy and Finding Meaning
Posted July 23, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve been wracking my brain this week trying to come up with a good metaphor to compare summer online courses with regular semester ones. The one I keep thinking about is running. Let’s say the normal semester course is like running the mile. You know it’s going to be four laps around the track and you know you can’t sprint the entire time and so you pace yourself, trying to keep your speed steady and saving your energy for a little burst at the end. This online summer course is like running 800 meters. You can still try to pace yourself, but there’s not as much distance in this race and so you mostly just run and hope your strength holds out. (I don’t actually have any experience with these kinds of races so I apologize if the metaphor doesn’t fit.) There are just two weeks left in my class and today I went and signed my kids up for summer camp at their adorable little preschool. At the beginning of the summer my husband…
Summer Has Arrived
Posted July 11, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
Oh my goodness a heatwave has hit Massachusetts! If summer wasn’t here before, it has definitely arrived now. I must admit, I’m not really a fan of excessively hot and humid weather, and I’m glad that it seems to be cooling down just a bit. Because of the heat, I’ve been trying to stay indoors with my beloved air conditioning as much as possible. Between work and my summer class, it really has not been difficult. As I mentioned in my last post, my summer class is online, and we’re fitting 14 weeks’ worth of material into 8 weeks. The class is keeping me very busy between the readings and assignments, but I’m really enjoying learning all the new concepts and interacting with my classmates. We’ve been learning about information organization, metadata, and as of this week, encoding standards. I will admit, learning all the new material in the shortened time frame has been a challenge, but it has been an enjoyable one. One of the best parts about this class is that there…
Dog Days
Posted July 9, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Well I was right about my online class – it is all the work of a normal semester class in half the time. We had a research paper due at the end of our second week (last weekend)! That assignment was a bit of a wakeup call for me that 1) I really need to stay on top of the work for this class and 2) I need to prep early for research papers and take better notes. I’ve been on “vacation” still in Virginia this whole time but it hasn’t felt like much of a vacation because every night I’m up doing homework! I don’t mind too much though because I am really enjoying this class. I could have never guessed that records management would be so interesting to me. The discussion forums have been very lively and I do feel highly engaged in the course. Maybe it’s the accelerated schedule that makes it more of an “immersive” experience. Despite the rigor of the class I was still able to drive to go visit…
A Glimpse of Summer
Posted June 28, 2018 by ShanTil Yell
I had almost forgotten about the feeling of that sweet exhale summer break brings until now. I don’t know if what I’m doing 100% qualifies as a “break” since I am working a lot and still managing to keep my schedule quite full, but it is nice to be doing all of those things without having to worry about homework and readings for a few months! In terms of work, I’m still filling in as a senior substitute at the Somerville Public Library. I love it for…well, many reasons. 1) SPL is an awesome place and you should come visit us, okay? Okay. 2) We’ve got three branches, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work in various roles at each of them. Plus, I have amazing co-workers who have been so helpful and supportive. A little circulation here, some reference desk there, and my personal favorite–the children’s room. I got to do an impromptu preschool story time a couple of weeks ago and it was only a little scary, but mostly a lot of fun…
Back in the Saddle!
Posted June 25, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Hoo-boy it’s been a wild week! Summer has officially started. My online class has officially started. I spent two days at Hershey Park with my family, two nights at a remote cabin getaway with my husband, and have somewhat settled into the new summer routine at my folks’ house in Virginia. Everyone is healthy and things are going really well. My online class is off to a great start with the usual virtual introductions and the first forum discussion. I didn’t realize it before, but this summer class has only seven weeks and each week encompasses two “modules.” So I guess I should expect it to be more intense than a typical semester-long class? This is my second online class and as with the first, it will be a lot of reading and writing. The way I see it, the extra reading makes up for the lack of classroom lecture time and the extra writing fills in for the lack of classroom discussion. There are pros and cons to online courses that I hope I’ll…
Pondering the Future
Posted June 13, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
So, readers, my little summer break is almost over. My new class starts next week (LIS 415: Information Organization). As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, it’s an online class again and I’m excited to start. I am a little bit ambivalent about the shorter timeframe, but I’m really excited about the topic and I’ve already started in on the reading. Over the past few weeks I’ve been pondering my future a lot. Currently, I’m doing the Archives Management concentration within the MS in Library and Information Science program. Even though I’m near the beginning of the program and am still taking my core classes, I can’t help but wonder whether or not the Archives Management track is right for me and if I should instead be doing the design-your-own option. I’ve been doing a lot of informal networking lately, and through my discussions with other librarians I’ve started to think about what I really want to do with my life once I graduate from Simmons, and if archives will play a role in that. …