Learning
Finals Approaching
Posted April 28, 2022 by Bryanne McArdle
My last set of finals is approaching and I’m both nervous and excited. But I’m not too worried about what lies ahead. I have a few group projects and to be honest, I’m really excited to work alongside my peers for this last set of projects. I am not the kind of person to like group projects. But I have built good friendships and working relationships with my classmates over the past 2 years, so working together with on these last things just feels right in a way. It’s a nice way to wrap things up. However, it has been a tough past few weeks for everyone in my classes. There has been some illness, stress, and just general life things that get in the way. Having people to work alongside, even though we are all dealing with these issues, helping each other cross the line, just feels right. So as things wrap up, I am excited to work together this last time with everyone and hopefully everything will finish up really nicely. Here’s to…
Overcoming Growing Pains
Posted April 12, 2022 by Elizabeth Poland
I am very surprised to say I am nearing the end of my first semester here at Simmons! It feels like a whirlwind, to be honest – I applied and got accepted in October, moved to Boston in December, and started school in January. I am very grateful for the people who have supported me in this big life transition from my parents to my boyfriend to the friends that I’ve made so far in my classes. I definitely believe I made a smart choice moving to the city a full month before the semester started, but nothing could have prepared me for the transition into grad school life. It might have been because I accidentally signed up for 4 courses instead of the recommended 3 or fewer, so I quickly started to drown in responsibility. About a month into the semester I had one of those existential crises where nothing I was doing made sense — why was I going to grad school anyway? Why don’t I just escape civilization? What am I doing…
Spring and the Midway Point
Posted March 21, 2022 by Bryanne McArdle
The past few weeks have been your standard Boston spring weather. Beautiful days sometimes going up to even fifty degrees followed by frigid windy days that sting at your face and snow that covers the ground, only to melt in the next few warm days. Meteorologically speaking, it is a strange time, but so is coming back to classes after a weeklong spring break. For all my classes, we have officially passed the midway point. It’s a great feeling and my classes have all been going really well. But it’s also strange to be nearing the end of the semester and, in the grand scheme of things, my time at Simmons. I’m starting to realize how much I will miss my classes. I know that may be strange to say, but I did miss the lectures and discussions last week, and it made me start thinking about the future. But let’s not dwell on melancholy topics. I am truly excited to really start getting into my assignments for the end of the semester. I have…
Garden Archives
Posted March 1, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
Sometimes, the semester is busy and the world is loud. The long and short of this week’s blog post is that I need a distraction… Today’s particular break comes in the form of the Smithsonian Archive of American Gardens. According to their website, the Archive “Collects, preserves, and provides access to visual resources that document the history of gardens in America” and “Inspires new ways of interpreting garden history and design so that America’s rich garden heritage can be better understood, appreciated, and enjoyed today and in the future”. All of these are very noble and worthwhile causes. But really, I turn to this Archive to see some lush, green vignetted photography when Boston is feeling slushy and the rest of the world particularly smokey. The collection seems to be entirely digitized, and can be browsed by state, garden structure/furniture/feature, or by type. Looking for the familiar flora of your home state? How about indulging your pastoral interests with some topiary or trellises? If you’re like me and dream about that herb garden you…
There You Are
Posted February 15, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
Lately when I am not in class at Simmons, it feels like I’m only ever at my job. It isn’t technically a bad feeling in itself. I work, essentially, as records management at a financial firm right off the Boston Commons. When you squint, my job responsibilities look like archival work. I am tasked with taking the old files from my office basement, some older than myself and all slightly funky with various degrees of water damage, and digitizing, organizing, then shredding them. My closest colleague is our network room printer. He is large and one of the more temperamental machines that I have had the pleasure of toiling beside. I don’t do much appraising, just checking that the tax returns are over seven years old before I send them to the document organizer where all files go to die. The problem is that this feeling of constant work is paired with the second semester of graduate school conviction that I am terribly behind everyone else. My work does not have a museum…
New Semester Nerves
Posted January 25, 2022 by Abbey Metzler
As a first Student Snippets’ blog post of the new semester, this is an admission of nerves. The first week of classes is never my favorite time of the academic year. I always feel a little lost, whether in the carefully arranged but still difficult to navigate online syllabi or when trying to find my new classrooms. This inaugural week of spring semester was hosted online. A brief but harrowing few days where I got to go back to the virtual learning environment I had escaped at the very end of my undergraduate career in 2020. We all grinned and got through it, seeing the lower half of our professors’ faces for perhaps the only time before summer arrives. These first week jitters alone would not warrant a blog post about them. What makes me take to this word document with a lingering sense of unease is my technology class. I have always imagined my archival ambitions through a haze of crumbling old paper and the smell of used books. It was always the History…
Returning to Campus, freeform style
Posted January 20, 2022 by Bryanne McArdle
The sound of the train pulling up to the platform, ~~~ The squeak of metal, ~~~ The quiet and noise of the people in the ancient subway, ~~~ So many people, but with so little interaction, ~~~ The way the car weaves and bobs, ~~~ Jerking me awake from time to time, ~~~ Until my stop comes, ~~~ And I walk the streets, ~~~ Filled with busy people, frantic cars, and bored buses, ~~~ The cold air feels refreshing, ~~~ Until campus looms, ~~~ The smiles of students, ~~~ the hum of excitement, ~~~ the murmuring of studies, ~~~ and the focus of lunch, ~~~ Makes this place feel like an oasis in the city ~~~ Of learning, of fun, and of community ~~~ I’m glad to be back.
SLIS Faculty Finds a Silver Lining to 2020 and Wins Award
Posted November 5, 2021 by Johnna Purchase
Creativity – albeit forced creativity – became the order of the day when teachers and programs pivoted to online learning for the end of the 2020 and the entire 2020-2021 school years. In recognition of the optimism and innovations of the faculty, Simmons dedicated a $10,000 Presidential Grant from the Davis Education Foundation to a Post-Pandemic Innovative Teaching Award, colloquially called the “Silver Linings” Award. Out of more than thirty applications, eighteen faculty members were recognized, including SLIS’s own Professor Lisa Hussey. Professor Hussey was recognized for her implementation of a flipped classroom to foster meaningful remote engagement and to engender class community even from afar. An initial hurdle for Professor Hussey was imagining how to transition her course Reader’s Advisory, built around class discussions of nine novels and the application of genre theory, to a remote setting. Although Professor Hussey had taught other courses virtually, she never imagined this course in a remote learning setting. However, thanks to the success she had with transitioning it online, Professor Hussey plans to offer the class virtually…
Taking a Moment to Enjoy the Semester
Posted October 28, 2021 by Bryanne McArdle
It feels like only yesterday that the semester started, even though I know that’s not the case. I could get into the semantics of how short in reality a semester is, usually a mere 14 weeks, and how much shorter seven weeks are. But debating time and how long (or what it is really) doesn’t have much of a place on a Library and Information School blog. Unless we’re discussing the concepts of cataloging or creating dates for Metadata. This is the first semester that I have had an on-campus course, mainly due to the pandemic. Last year they were all online and mostly asynchronous, with the exception of one that had a synchronous lecture via Zoom. And while it was not how I originally intended to study for my MLIS, I wasn’t too bothered by it. I had always intended to take a mix of online and in-person courses as I wanted to continue working a day-job while working towards my degree, the pandemic just made me change the percentage I envisioned with more…
Compare and Contrast
Posted October 14, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I’m still feeling a twinge of disappointment after dropping the database class but overall I’m having a much easier time keeping up with schoolwork, and I’m a lot less stressed. So, yay! I’m also really enjoying being able to focus on a single class. This week’s topic in Collections and Materials for Young Adults was particularly interesting, as we focused on young adult non-fiction adaptations. We had to read Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and its YA adaptation, Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, both of which chronicle the history of racism in the United States. While I read a lot of YA fiction, I don’t read YA non-fiction at all. Truthfully, I never gave too much thought to the genre before this week. I thought most young adults would gravitate towards reading adult non-fiction, because that’s what I did when I was younger, but that’s not the case for everyone. I happen to love history and biographies, but I know they can be boring, depending on the author and style. So adapting adult non-fiction for young adults makes a lot of…