SLIS West
Hump Week
Posted November 8, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve dubbed this week “hump week” because I have major assignments due in BOTH of my classes on Saturday. They are the last assignments before our final projects, so it’s the last “hump” of the semester before the final hump. As such, this will be a brief post just to check in and confirm I’m still alive after last night’s adventures of writing papers and monitoring a child with a bad case of croup. I’d like to say it gets easier as you progress in your program and get into the rhythm of schoolwork, but that hasn’t been the case for me. Each semester has brought fresh new challenges, and each has necessitated some late nights and bouts of stress and anxiety. The fact that getting your library degree might be your dream or passion doesn’t make it any easier, but it does make the work more meaningful. We are more than halfway through the semester (only four classes left!) and it is just flying by. If my spring schedule shakes out as planned and…
Fall Beckons!
Posted September 13, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
My penultimate semester at Simmons has begun and the summer is officially over. I’m at this stage of my school journey in which things are beginning to feel very repetitive. Here I am: getting up before 6 am every Saturday, driving the same route to South Hadley, Mass., stopping at the same places for gas and a bite to eat, walking the same paths to familiar classrooms, seeing the same faces, eating the same lunches at the SlIS West office…. This is not to say that there’s nothing unique about this semester, just that it’s begun to feel very routine. In many ways, though, this semester is unprecedented. For the first time, both of my kids will be at school for some portion of the day, giving me chunks of dedicated homework time in the mornings. The kids’ school schedules force all of us to be up and at ’em fairly early so there will be more discipline and more routine. And I’m starting this semester with more planning, motivation, determination, and better personal organization…
Third semester: It’s a wrap!
Posted May 1, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I’m all done with my third semester at SLIS West!!! Even though my courses this semester were in many ways “easier” than my others, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a massive sense of relief. There was a lot going on in my personal life these past few weeks that made the end a major struggle. For example, the first thing I did once classes were over was to finally take my poor ailing five-year old to the doctor and find out he has a double ear infection (ouch!). I am a worrier by nature, and two things guaranteed to create a lot of worry for me are school and sick children. The difficult thing about being a mom AND a grad student is that you literally get no break. You’re with the kids all day long, and any “personal time” you manage to etch out must go to homework. You can’t just go to bed early one night if you’re super tired because then you’ll get behind in your homework and there will…
Crunch Time
Posted April 23, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
We’ve now entered the last two weeks of the semester, otherwise known as “crunch time.” I have three end-of-semester projects on the horizon that I’m busily plugging away at. Now is the time when my kids get away with a little extra TV in the afternoons and I remind my husband daily, “just two more weeks….” The summer break is so close you can taste it, as it hovers like a sunny promise just out of reach. Oh how the pleasure reading and the hobbies and the home organization projects are calling! In my experience, you never know quite how the end will play out until it is suddenly upon you, but this semester (so far) I feel like the crunch won’t be too bad. The end of the semester is always an exciting time, and not just for the prospect of homework-free evenings. It represents the culmination of all we’ve been studying and working on throughout the semester and usually includes some kind of presentation in front of our peers. The project I’m most…
Living Grad School to the Fullest
Posted April 16, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
This post was inspired by a guest speaker we had in academic libraries – a recent SLIS West graduate that many of us knew. Marco is now a Reference & Collection Development Librarian and he gave a wonderful interactive presentation about his current job. I remember taking Collection Development with Marco and it was inspiring to see how he had made that his work and now he was behind the podium, teaching us with the very same material he had been learning just the previous year. Marco was full of confidence and enthusiasm, and it made me feel very encouraged about the value of our preparation at grad school. Observing Marco gave me something to strive toward: a vision of what I hope to achieve after graduation. Library school is a lot of work on its own: there are some weeks when all I can do is submit assignments on time and get myself to class in some semi-prepared fashion. But I’d like it to be more than that. I’d like this to be a…
My Unexpected Library Class
Posted April 9, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
If you are like me, you’ll come to library school with some idea of what librarianship looks like and what subjects your course of study may include. I can tell you that there are plenty of courses that you might expect, such as subject cataloging, history of the book, collection development, and library programs and services. But you will also find courses that you might not expect, like usability and user experience, knowledge management, web development, and information visualization. The fact of the matter is, there will be more classes offered that you want to take than you can fit into your program. Library school is both too long and way too short. If you’re curious about Simmons’ course offerings, you can view the full course catalog here. Database management is one of those unexpected classes that I’m so excited to be taking. My interest in databases dates back to my internship at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the day my staff sponsor asked me if I had any knowledge or experience with Microsoft…
Librarian Advice
Posted April 2, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Spring break has come and gone (while we’re still waiting for actual spring to arrive) which means we’re entering the second half of the semester. It’s amazing to me how different this semester has been from my last. In the fall I had the same number of classes and the same number of credits, but 20 hours a week was barely enough time to complete all the assignments and I struggled to keep up with the reading (I was also doing my 60-hour archives internship). This semester, 20 hours a week feels fairly sufficient, and my current two classes require lighter reading and fewer written assignments. Last Saturday we had one of our Day-in-the-Life lunchtime programs that could have been called “Personalized Advice from a Career Librarian.” It was awesome. These lunchtime events are one of the best things about SLIS West. There’s free food and the opportunity to mingle with classmates and librarians from around the area. Saturday’s speaker was Barbara Friedman, current part-time director of Erving Library with nearly fifty years of library…
Conference Thoughts
Posted March 26, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
So, let’s talk about conferences. I knew that librarians had conferences before I came to library school. While I worked at an academic library in Virginia, I went to two of them. One was for the state library association, and the other was some kind of interlibrary-loan specific conference. Somehow this did not prepare me for how many library/archives conferences there would be happening in New England. As library students, we get plenty of emails about them and hear a lot about why we should be attending them. Students are even encouraged to submit papers and be presenters. Conferences are a great opportunity but they are difficult to attend. Most of them are a good distance from your home, necessitate overnight stay, require missing class or work (and in my case, lots of babysitting), and charge registration fees. Simmons and sponsoring organizations make a good effort to mediate these demands by offering professional development reimbursements, travel awards, and scholarships for students. These efforts are nice but they also require some time and work on the…
SLIS West Tradeoffs
Posted March 12, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I truly am grateful for the existence of SLIS West. I knew it would be difficult to manage grad school with a family and two young children, and I had begun to resign myself to the likelihood that I would have to get my degree online. When I found out (at the SLIS West information session) that their classes were primarily on Saturdays, the day my husband could stay home with the kids, it felt like my stars had finally aligned. However, every semester at SLIS West it becomes more apparent to me that there are still some tradeoffs to be made in attending grad school this way. I don’t intend to present this as a list of “cons:” just some of the realities you’ll face if you decide, like me, that SLIS West is your best option. 1. Smaller program, fewer people Fewer people means less networking and socializing possibilities. You won’t meet as many people at SLIS West as you might at Boston, but you will see the same people again and again…
Year 2: Ready, Set, Go!
Posted January 25, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
The start of this semester marks the beginning of my second year at Simmons. It feels like I’ve come full circle. Last January, I was one of the brand new students at the back-to-school lunch, declaring nervously that I’d just taken my very first class, feeling simultaneously triumphant and terrified. This Saturday I was a returning student at the back-to-school lunch, conversing easily with colleagues as we chatted about break and new classes. I had the funniest feeling talking to the new students, realizing that I was in their exact spot exactly one year ago, seeing the same fresh nervousness and excitement that I had felt reflected in their eyes. The past year has been an extremely fulfilling and challenging one for me. I’ve done so many things for the first time (like blogging!) and encountered so many new ideas. I’ve uncovered some hidden talents of my own (who knew I’d love coding so much?) and expanded the bounds of my comfort zone by tackling difficult assignments. I’ve taken 5 classes for 15 credits, which…