Students
First Weeks
Posted February 6, 2019 by Sarah Callanan
So it has been a crazy few weeks! First, the weather has been insane. We’ve had super cold weather, we’ve had snow squalls, we’ve had ice, we’ve had rain, we’ve had sun, we’ve had wind, and yesterday the high was 63 degrees! We’ve had a little bit of everything! Will the weather ever make up its mind? Every day is a surprise! I thought one of the things about living in New England was guaranteed freezing cold weather all the time in the winter, but the past two days have proved me wrong (although I’m certainly not complaining because I did not enjoy the snow squalls last week, and I do not want anything similar to the polar vortex the Midwest experienced). The first few weeks of class have been going great! As you know, I’m taking LIS 451: Academic Libraries this semester. It’s my first elective at SLIS, and my last blog was posted on the first official day of my class, so I didn’t have many details to share, but now I do! …
First Impressions
Posted January 31, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
Over the past week my semester has truly gotten underway and I think it is going to be exactly what I need for my final semester at Simmons. The most exciting thing to happen this week was the first meeting for my internship! I sat down with the senior reference librarian & instruction coordinator at Fairfield University and we hashed out introductions, expectations, and scheduling. For the next few weeks we will be meeting to discuss readings, instruction techniques, and lesson plans. I’ll get to observe a few classes, and then, I WILL GET TO TEACH ALL BY MYSELF. Yep, you heard that right (because I was yelling excitedly). These kind people are going to let an inexperienced library school student teach undergraduate freshman English classes. In fact, I’m going to teach about ten classes over the course of the semester! Yay for real life experience! I AM SO EXCITED. Readings and discussions have begun in my online metadata class and I’m getting pretty good vibes about it. Many of the students are in their…
My Last Rodeo
Posted January 24, 2019 by Megan Ondricek
It’s been over a month since I last posted on the blog so Happy New Year everyone! I did survive last semester’s final week and I’m really proud of what I accomplished but boy was it tough. I needed a good break after that which is why I took a little hiatus from the blog. But now I am back in the saddle for what will be my last Simmons SLIS rodeo! In fact, I’ve been back in the saddle since January 10th which was the first day of the two-week long preservation course up at SLIS West. We met from 9-4, Thursday-Saturday for two weeks in a row and it was a blast. It was a large class too – probably the biggest I’ve had face to face – with a mix of students from Boston and SLIS West. I got a hotel in the area both weekends and it almost felt like a mini vacation. Preservation was so fascinating and what it did most of all was give me another “lens” through which…
One Year Down!
Posted December 19, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
I have officially completed my first year at Simmons! I started in Spring 2018, and I’ve just finished the Fall 2018 semester. I’ve completed all three of my core LIS classes- LIS 407 (Information Sources and Services), LIS 415 (Information Organization), and LIS 488 (Technology for Information Professionals). I’ve learned so much over the past year, and I’ve made such huge strides both personally and professionally. While the past year has been challenging at times, it has also been extremely rewarding. Here’s a quick wrap up of some of the lessons that I’ve learned and things that I have accomplished over the past year: I’ve learned so much about search strategies and techniques, instruction, finding and evaluating information, the way information is organized, circulation and cataloguing, ethics and professional standards across the industry, and so much more, and I’ve been able to directly apply nearly everything that I’ve learned so far in my professional life. I have learned that coding is an incredibly useful tool and it is not something to be feared. However, learning…
Resume Review & Planning for the Future – Ready to Upload
Posted December 18, 2018 by Maria Reilova
Whenever the end of the semester rolls around, I always start thinking about the future. I have a very day-to-day planning style throughout the semester. I plan my days out and try to focus in the moment so as not to overwhelm myself with how much I have going on. Luckily for me we have the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA) on campus that sends out emails every week with all the events going on around campus! This is how I found out that Student Services was organizing resume reviews with Amy Ryan, a former president of the Boston Public Library and honorary advisor at SLIS. I have to start off by saying I am a shy, sensitive soul (shocking for a library student, I know) and was genuinely terrified of having someone look over and critique my resume and cover letter. Especially someone as impressive as Amy! I was very worried about the regular things about one’s resume, is what I have enough or not enough? Should I put my education above…
My view from the trenches
Posted December 12, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
It’s Thursday morning as I write this, with only 2 more days until The Last Day!! It’s a mental game now, a test of endurance. Can you stay calm and resolved as the deadline marches closer, the nights get later, your freedom so close you can taste it? I was reminded again about the importance of self-care. Self-care is such a trendy word these days that I cringe to even use it, but here we are. I thought I could get through the week denying myself those little niceties that make you feel like a fully-functioning human being, like showers, exercise, sleep, good meals and leisure time. Those things are all so time-consuming and I thought I’d be better served spending every last minute I could scrape together on my assignments. Well yesterday I could feel myself beginning to crash. My motivation slumped, my body began to protest, and my mind wavered. After scaring my husband with a bunch of desperate-sounding texts, I switched tactics. I did the dishes and the laundry, exercised, and later…
Reflections
Posted December 10, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
As of last night, my final project is complete and turned in! As I mentioned last week, the final project for my LIS-488 class (Technology for Information Professionals) is a personal website and portfolio, coded by hand using the skills that I developed over the course of this class. There were some shaky moments during the process of doing this project, but I was able to either troubleshoot and solve everything, or compromise and change my original plan to work with what I had. All in all, I think that my final product looks pretty similar to the original paper mock-up that I sketched out over Thanksgiving. I’m really proud of this final project, although I should really stop looking at it, because I’ve noticed a few things that I would like to go back and change, but what’s done is done and I need to walk away and not dwell on it. This semester has been a wild ride for me. If you’ve been following my past posts, you know that I was a…
November don’t go…
Posted November 29, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
To my fellow blogger Sarah – yes, it is crunch time! We’re in the home stretch, the final countdown. This week I find myself returning to the busyness refreshed after a lovely Thanksgiving break with all the trappings: food, friends, family, shopping, games, and strolls in the Virginia woods. I feel that as long as it is still November, I can keep breathing and pretend the end is farther off than it really is. I’m afraid that on Saturday, the first of December, I’ll be sitting in my second-to-last classes of the semester and it will all suddenly become very real. I wish I could cling to November just a little longer, keeping my due dates at bay. I feel nervous and excited and cautiously optimistic for the end of this semester. Nervous because I have a lot of work to do before then: one 15-page “publishable” research paper, one 10-12-page reflection paper, one instruction module/lesson plan and a 30-minute instructional presentation. Excited because I only have one more semester after this one! Cautiously optimistic…
Keep On Keeping On
Posted November 15, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Well I survived “hump week” even though I had to drive up to class and back (and give a presentation) on about three hours of sleep. If you’ve been reading the other posts on this blog I think you’ll recognize a common theme: school is really hard and busy right now and we’re all exhausted. Actually I gave myself a tiny break from school work the first part of this week, mainly because I had so much housework and other things to catch up on. It was nice to have a short breather, but I am back at it today because the end of the semester is going to come up VERY quickly. At the SLIS West office on Saturday we had a special day-in-the-life guest speaker: Amanda Pizzollo! Amanda was the SLIS West blogger before me and graduated the same year that I started. It was great to see her again (I am kicking myself that I did not get a photo for the blog) and hear all about her job at Amherst College…
Nonstop Action!
Posted November 14, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
In my last post, when I said “life is getting pretty hectic,” that was an understatement. I thought my description was accurate last week, but I was just part of the way through the mountain of work that awaited me. Since last week, I have gotten sick (get your flu shots everybody!), completed yet another huge project, have tried (and succeeded) to keep up with my weekly labs and readings, and have begun to think about my final project. Additionally, this is registration week! I’ve been talking about my plan for a while and it is now time to put that plan into motion! This has been a week of nonstop action, with not a lot of time to rest (which I can tell you from experience, is not the best thing for being sick). In fact, I had my first all-nighter of grad school this past week! I don’t usually pull all-nighters (I think I only had to do it twice in undergrad) because I really need to stay on a good sleep schedule…