Summer
Summer Wrap Up and First Week of Classes
Posted September 11, 2024 by Aurora Daniel
It’s so nice to be back at Simmons after a jam-packed summer! I was a fellow for Warrior-Scholar Project, which is a nonprofit that helps veterans and active duty service members transition to college through one to two week bootcamps focused on building core study and writing skills as well as providing information about how to apply to schools. Over the course of the summer I worked at Yale University, the University of Notre Dame, Cornell University, and the The California Institute of Technology. I was a participant way back in 2018 and wouldn’t be in grad school now without it so it was wonderful to be able to give back. Additionally, being a fellow ensured getting some teaching experience under my belt, which was one of my goals for grad school. I led morning study groups and evening college success sessions, helped grade problem sets, and tutored students on their writing and physics. On top of getting to travel and building my professional skills I also made friends and had a lot of fun…
Summer Reading Recommendations
Posted May 2, 2024 by Olivia McGovern
Whether it’s laying out a towel at the beach or setting up a hammock at the park, there’s nothing better than reading a book on a beautiful summer day. Even though I’ll be taking a Summer Semester class for part of it, nothing and no one can keep me from getting an iced coffee and reading in the sun! Here are some of the books on my list to finish this summer: Fantasy The Dreamblood Duology by N.K. Jemisin N.K. Jemisin has been one of my favorite authors since my mind was blown by The Fifth Season several years back. I’ve now finished two of her fantasy series, and I think it’s time to tackle another. In this duology, priests of the dream goddess roam rooftops to collect the magic of sleeping minds, until one priest becomes entangled in a murderous conspiracy. World building? Check. Magic? Check. Conspiracy? Murder? I’m in. Science Fiction The Vanished Birds by Simon Jiminez I picked up a copy of this book in the used section of Harvard Book Store,…
Course Registration Is Upon Us!
Posted April 9, 2024 by Aurora Daniel
In the midst of the last few weeks of the semester is another crucial time: course registration for summer and fall. I’ve decided to take one summer course this year, LIS 488, in order to wrap up the general degree requirements so I can take an elective course in the fall. Since it’s my second semester I have to take LIS 438: Intro to Archival Theory & Practice as well as HIST 597: Historical Methods in order to complete general requirements for my Archives Concentration and my MA degree. That leaves me with one course I can choose to register with what I want. Right now I haven’t decided if I’ll take LIS 446: Art Documentation or LIS 532Q: Museum Studies. That’s always the hard part: what do you choose when there are so many options? While taking a summer course may seem like an easy decision so I could knock out requirements I did not make it lightly. I’ll be working full time this summer and want to avoid getting burned out. The summer…
Summer Session Summary
Posted August 11, 2023 by Magenta Jasinski
As the Summer II session begins to wrap up, an urge to write non-academically has been pushing at me. Writing for this blog in particular has been a source of joy, so I figured I should get back into it! In this post, I’ll take some time to detail both of the summer classes I took during Simmons’ two summer terms, as well as how I experienced academic burnout. I took one class for each summer session this year, which totaled out to five credits. The first class was CHL 424C (Series Fiction – Middle Grade) and it took place from May 22nd to June 28th. This was a rigorous two credit course where we explored five genres of books that make up the foundation of the middle grade category. Not to be confused with middle school, middle grade books are written for a third to sixth grade audience. I enjoyed the depth that our discussion went into each week, but finding time to read an entire series in seven days was a challenge. When…
Summer Dreamin’ to Bust the Mid-Term Monotony
Posted March 10, 2023 by Rebecca Devereaux
I have reached the monotonous section of the semester. School is chugging away, meaning there are papers to write, books to read, lib guides to build, and I am looking for the time needed to cook something more nutritious than top ramen or a quesadilla. If anybody told you the life of a graduate student is glamourous, they were seriously delusional. The graduate students I know tend to drink more coffee than is good for them, they struggle with anxiety, and all of them can’t wait to be doing the work that this degree will allow them to do. In library school many of the assignments serve as models. While it is necessary for a professor to have a standardized assignment to give out, it can personally be frustrating knowing that my work, as of yet, will not make a direct impact on a library or archive. The work I do is stuck in theoretical land. I am looking forward to truly doing the work, directly shaping collections and helping patrons. To expedite the process…
Internship in the Outer Banks: Collection Closing
Posted August 1, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Twelve papercuts. Four knuckle abrasions. Three split cuticles. I have finally finished unboxing, foldering, labeling, alphabetizing, and reboxing my collection. 161 archival boxes and 905 folders. In seven weeks. My hands and fingers took a much-needed break this past weekend! While I’m trying to revel in my sense of accomplishment, I still have two weeks left in my internship. I want to soak in as many additional experiences as possible. There’s a four-shelf display cabinet for an exhibit on my collection in wait. A finding aid that wants to be written. A coffee with my collection’s donor to share. A podcast with the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to record. An oral history with a descendant of the original Outer Banks seafood empire to conduct. Just as my to-do list has reached zero, I have filled it back up. When I accepted this position for the summer, I made a promise to myself to embrace the slower pace of rural, island life as an antidote to the frenetic energy of studying for…
Internship in the Outer Banks: Learning from Leaders
Posted July 18, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
This past week ended with a two-day visit from the Special Collections Section Head for the State Archives of North Carolina, Judy Allen Dodson. Earlier in the week she had led a virtual monthly staff meeting, and I was impressed by how encouraging and supportive she and the rest of the archivists were. They genuinely wanted to learn more about the projects their colleagues across the state were working on and nerded-out together over new acquisitions like a collection of Civil War era photographs and sheet music from a nineteenth century Black composer. Used to the endless complaining and storm-cloud-gathering of department meetings from when I was a high school teacher, the enthusiasm for work and the curiosity about their colleagues took me by surprise. Later that week when Judy came to visit, all of her joy for her work doubled in-person. She took the time to really listen to each staff member, asked detailed questions to understand ways she could better support each member in their specific roles, and added in doses of humor….
Interning in the Outer Banks: Personal Information Organization
Posted July 11, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Although almost a year has passed, I still remember the first Moodle discussion board topic for the course 415: Information Organization. It was my first course in graduate school, and I did not know what to expect. The discussion board topic itself asked us to classify our personal information organization style based on three criteria researchers derived that had been the subject of one of our readings that week. (Yes, you do have readings for your first week of grad school.) I struggled with this post. Not because of the content – I knew exactly where I fell along the personal organization orderliness spectrum – but because this, my level of computer file organizing, was how my classmates would first meet me. I have returned often to the ideas in that discussion board this summer as I have worked through my internship collection. On the one hand, I have been heartened by the fact that even though the best-laid organizational plans can crumble – life, the passing of time, other unknown factors get in the…
Interning in the Outer Banks: An Archival Analogy
Posted June 28, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
An analogy for archival work that they don’t teach you in 438 is this: archival processing is cleaning up other peoples’ messes. Without a key, without a blueprint, without any inkling of what, potentially, the original organizational system that the donor, maybe, possibly, hopefully attempted to follow for at least part of their document-generating life. You, the intrepid archivist must venture through boxes, pulling out sheaves of paper that seem to share nothing in common except the rusty paperclip holding them together, dusting your black pants with the glitter of deteriorating fax paper, and puzzling over the names of repeat characters in the documents like a crime scene detective building profiles for each murder suspect. Or so I’ve felt these past few weeks processing my first collection. In the midst of the chaos, though, I stumble across little gems that make me forget about the filing conventions my donor seemed to create and then drop on a whim or the fact that desperately-relevant online records for certain local government officials don’t exist. An inspirational quote…
Interning in the Outer Banks
Posted June 20, 2022 by Johnna Purchase
Billowing white sand dunes, salty sea breezes, and Elizabethan history lurking at every corner – welcome to Manteo, NC in the Outer Banks! Today marks my second full week interning at the Outer Banks History Center (OBHC) on Roanoke Island after I spent my first week virtually due to an outbreak of COVID in the guesthouse I am staying in. A satellite archive in the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the OBHC collects materials about the history of the region – often maritime in nature – ranging from oral histories about life on isolated Ocracoke to extensive photo archives of the generations of beach goers in this late-blooming tourist destination. While Manteo, the town I’m working in, touts itself as the “birthplace of English-speaking America” and as the birthplace of the first English baby born on American soil – Virginia Dare – the collection I’m processing is decidedly more modern. It was donated by a prominent local who served two tenures as mayor, led on a variety of boards and commissions, spearheaded…