Students
The End
Posted May 2, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
The Fab Four (AKA The Beatles) once sang: And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love You make While the lyrics above might not directly correlate to my thoughts and feelings towards reaching the end of graduate school, I just really wanted to kick-off a blog post with something Beatles related. But, let me make some slight word modifications to make the four lines above a bit more topical. And in the end The experience you take Is equal to the work You make Okay so it’s not as good as the original version but I think it was worth a shot. Even so, I think my alterations work with the situation that’s going on here. Indeed, my time as a graduate student is dwindling down; about twenty days, I am going to walk across a stage to receive my Master’s in Library and Information Science!* Can you believe it ’cause I really, really, REALLY, can’t. It seriously feels like just yesterday that I attended SLIS (or GSLIS as it was known then) orientation…
A Weekend in the Big Apple
Posted April 29, 2016 by Katie Caskey
Last week I posted about the process of packing for and anticipating my upcoming trip to NYC. Well, as promised, this week I will share the highlights of what was one of the best trips EVER! The adventure began on Friday night when we caught a bus from Boston to Manhattan. Now, if any of you have ever ventured to New York, you will not be surprised when I tell you we hit a massive grid-lock on the freeway (at 11:30pm!) and ended up arriving at our destination an hour and a half later than we were supposed to. But we were so excited it didn’t matter! We woke up Saturday morning and went to stand in line for Rush tickets for some Broadway shows. If you don’t know, the Rush policy allows people to purchase suuuuuper cheap tickets (like $35) for shows that day, if they haven’t already sold the seats. We ended up getting tickets for both She Loves Me with Zachary Levi (swoon) and Fiddler on the Roof. Both shows were amazing,…
Keeping Busy
Posted April 28, 2016 by Tara Pealer
Yesterday, my mom finally came up to Boston to visit me, so I did what any normal daughter would do: I dragged her out to dinner with my two best friends and paid the tab. We went to Walhburgers, which, by the way, was amazing. The food was delicious, the atmosphere was low key and perfect for chilling with close friends and family, and the staff was fun and relaxed. The drink selection was pretty good too, though their online menu did not match their in restaurant menu. That was only part one of my plans for her birthday. I also got her a book on Mark Twain that a friend picked up at ALA Midwinter and highly recommended, and we’re going to be going out today or Saturday for a fun, relaxing day at the local malls. My friends are worried about how I’ll manage to get all of my homework done, and despite my amazing time management skills, I understand their worry, because I’m also wondering the same thing. I usually pull through,…
Planning for the Big Apple
Posted April 22, 2016 by Katie Caskey
I’ve now lived on the East Coast for two years, and I have just loved it! Being from the Midwest, I’ve always been drawn to the history and culture available out here. I’ve tried so many new foods, learned to deftly navigate public transportation, and taken in quite a few shows, recitals, and art exhibits. But there is one thing I have sworn to do before I move away, and this weekend I’ll finally get my chance to do it! My roommate and I are neck-deep in the final planning stage of our first trip to New York City together! We’ve both been before, but it’s been quite some time since either of us has gone, so we are more than ready to get back to the energy of that wonderful city! I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take advantage of Boston’s proximity to NYC while I was out here, so this trip is coming just in time (as I’m finishing up school and heading for home in May!) Because my roommate has…
Spring Days/Planning for Fall
Posted April 16, 2016 by Amy Wilson
I had been putting off writing a post this week because I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to say. It was a pretty quiet week – my boyfriend came home from a business trip on Tuesday, and he left again this morning, so we really just squeezed in as much time together as was possible. We went to see a bluegrass band on Tuesday night with some friends, went out to an early breakfast together Wednesday morning at our favorite restaurant, and yesterday (Saturday) we planted our backyard garden. Baby Romaines! I am going to make some hanging signs for these old white chair backs that say “flowers” and “veggies.” In school related news, I registered for my Fall 2016 classes this week (already?!). I also had to plan my financial aid from now until the end of my program because of the way my schedule will work out. I will only take one class in my last semester (fall 2017) which means I won’t meet the minimum attendance requirement (part time/two classes)…
Events, Elections, and Even More
Posted April 14, 2016 by Tara Pealer
This week was a little intense. I had completely new material to learn in tech class on Monday, two papers due Tuesday, four hours of volunteering at the career fair on Wednesday, and classes to pick out for my registration time on Friday morning. Between that, I had plans to come home to pick up my professional reimbursement check and plans to make with old friends I hadn’t seen in a while. This semester has been like that a lot…every other week. One week I have free time, I’m relaxed and I feel like I have time to breathe. The next week I’m so stressed out that I’m surprised that I can find time to sleep. But there’s plenty that’s exciting going on in SLIS right now. We’re about 25 days from the end of the semester, student elections just closed, and there are so many events happening in the next few weeks that it’s hard to keep track everything! Just in the last two weeks there were four or five different career focused events….
Food Advertisements
Posted March 28, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
When you are writing a thesis about food, it is almost inevitable that you are going to encounter some pretty interesting examples of food culture. Thus far in my study of American food culture from the 1950s to the early 1990s, I’ve encountered fan letters to Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer-Becker the mother-daughter duo behind the Joy of Cooking. Their cookbooks promote a vast array of recipes that utilize ingredients that range from diced vegetables to box Jell-o mixed. By far my favorite thing that I’ve had to analyze in the name of academia is food advertisements from magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and Better Homes & Gardens from the 1950s. These advertisements, which are very much products of their time, offer insight into consumer and food trends from the decade. For my paper, I am analyzing these advertisements as a means of understanding how the food and consumer industry promoted the gendering of the kitchen and the position of the home cook. The following advertisements were found within magazines that are a part of Johnson and Wales Culinary…
MBTA Commuter Rail Survival Guide
Posted March 13, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
As a former New Yorker, I am not unfamiliar with taking rail transport to get to the places that I need to go. With my Archives capstone internship in Providence, I’ve become quite familiar with the MBTA Commuter Rail. Would I say that it’s the best rail transport that I’ve ever taken? No. That title will always be reserved for my beloved Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). I have too many fond childhood memories of the lights flickering off and on while traveling under tunnels to ever consider awarding another train system the top honors. Yet the MBTA Commuter Rail does a perfectly fine job at doing the whole train thing. Most of the time. Listen, no train is perfect; all commuters can hope for is that their train arrives and departs on time. Yet sometimes, things happen, as they tend ton do. Thus far this semester, I have been stuck on a train for almost three and half hour due to Amtrak complications as well as stuck on a train traveling at reduced speeds,…
(Family) History Hunting
Posted March 11, 2016 by Tara Pealer
Last week, my grandfather called up my mother, who called up me because I live in Boston. He needed a favor. For years, my grandfather has been trying to hunt down family records to find out where the family immigrated from in Ireland, and he was able to trace them back to Boston sometime in the early 1870’s. Boston has the original records of marriage and ship arrivals in the Massachusetts State Archives, which is on the UMass campus. He was hoping I could find some of the original records concerning the marriage of my great-great-great grandparents, and maybe any records of their arrival. Of course I said yes. He also said the boring grandfatherly stuff you’d expect him to say like “Don’t let it distract you from your schoolwork” but I have no control when it comes to research. I did find an 1871 marriage record, and I do have a copy of it which gave him extra information (and then he pulled me off of it because “you need to focus on your…
Pop-Up Shops! Who Knew?
Posted March 10, 2016 by Katie Caskey
Who is enjoying their spring break so far? I know I am! As I write this, I am simultaneously finishing up laundry left over from a weekend spent hosting my mom who flew in from Minnesota and packing for a wedding in Tennessee that I leave for tomorrow…no rest for the weary, but I wouldn’t trade these frund times for the world! So, in honor of the fun, bubbly, vacation-y mood I’m in, I”m taking a week off of blogging (or thinking) about anything remotely schoarly. Sorry, but I want to talk about donuts instead. To be more specific, I want to talk about the maple bacon donut that I had a few days ago from the fun, new pop-up shop next door to my grocery store. This donut was perfection! First of all, it was HUGE, and, as we Americans know, bigger is always better when it comes to sweets. J The frosting was rich and maple-y without being too strong, and the bacon was real fried bacon, not those stale smoked bacon bits…