The New Student Experience: My First Week at Simmons (And in Boston)
Posted September 26, 2025 by Brooke Thomson
Hi there! My name is Brooke, and I’m starting my first semester of the MLIS program with a concentration in Archives Management. I thought a good way to start things off might be going over my first week in town. Stick around if you want to hear more about the famous September 1st move-in, my first days of class, how I joined a club called Panopticon, and what went down at the President’s Welcome and SLIS Kick Off event! Move-In DayIf you don’t live in Boston, you probably don’t know that most leases here turn over on September 1st (I sure didn’t). In a city affectionately called “America’s College Town”, that means on this day every year, thousands of Boston students—and their families, friends and movers—hit the streets with boxes and furniture galore. Parking is a nightmare, Target is a warzone, and so much stuff gets left out on the curbs that Boston has its own unofficial curb-shopping holiday called “Allston Christmas.” Allston is a neighborhood of Boston well-known for its college student residents, but…
New Bloggers Joining Us!
Posted September 25, 2025 by Lindsey Clarke
Hello Readers! We are lucky enough to have many new bloggers joining our team. Today I am introducing two of them to you. Please welcome – Brooke Thomson and Will Romey! A little about Brooke: I’m Brooke, a first year Simmons MLIS student with a concentration in Archives Management. I come from Tampa, FL and this is my first time living out of state! I’m really excited to get to know Boston and Simmons University. Many students come into this program with some practical library, archival, or museum experience already under their belts—I have none, so I’d like to share my journey with other students who may relate to that. Before coming to Boston, I got my BA from Florida State University in Creative Writing and History. Storytelling is something I’m passionate about, so it tracks that I’m also a total geek! When I’m not too busy, I like to obsess over TV shows and movies, read fantasy novels, and window-shop the merch at BoxLunch. Two things on my Boston bucket-list are: getting a Boston Public Library passport and seeing a Bruins game! A…
Fall Bucket List
Posted September 24, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
I love being a graduate student, but it is a lot of work. After classes, homework, internships, and jobs, I usually end the day scrolling aimlessly on my phone. This academic year, I am trying to be more intentional about my time. With the fall season starting up, I have decided to create a fall bucket list to achieve that goal. My fall bucket list includes a variety of tasks, but can be sorted into three categories: major activities, minor activities, and activities that I can do while completing my graduate work. Starting with the major activities category, these list items require preparation and larger amounts of time. Because of the time and preparation required to participate, I usually only complete one or two during the fall season. Some examples of these major activities are apple picking, going for a hike, and trying a new fall recipe. The major task that I would most like to complete this year is pumpkin carving. The next category is the minor activities. As the title suggests, these list…
Falling Back into the Swing of Things
Posted September 22, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
It’s hard to believe that a month of this semester has already gone by! I suppose that’s what happens when you’re having fun. This semester looks a bit different than previous ones for me, which in some ways means that it’s going by much quicker and in other ways it seems endless. Instead of juggling a couple of jobs and an internship I just have two on-campus jobs, which has freed up some of my time during the day. Since having surgery I put volunteer work on hiatus and cut out other extra responsibilities so I could limit my time outside the house to just work and school. Finally, this semester I’m just taking two courses and opted to work on an independent study to complete my final elective requirement. This means that, while I have to dedicate more time to research and outreach, I’m able to work from home more and hone in on projects that excite me. So far I’ve found my coursework this semester invigorating. I’m taking LIS 442: Establishing Archives and…
Back to School!
Posted September 9, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello, everyone! This semester, I am starting the second year of my graduate school program, and I am very excited to jump back into learning. Having survived a full year, I have some tips for students entering their first year of graduate school. In terms of keeping up with assignments, one of the best pieces of advice I can offer is to find a calendar system that works for you. This could be a planner, a monthly calendar, a digital calendar, or something else entirely. My preferred calendar system is to create a large poster of the semester, which outlines all of my assignments and their due dates. This helps me to visualize the semester as a whole and make long term plans for completing school work. Furthermore, I hang this poster by my desk, so I am consistently reminded of what I need to accomplish. My next piece of advice is to schedule a recurring time in which you do not complete any school work. This could be at a certain time every day,…
Now for the rest of my summer!
Posted September 3, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
First, I continued working at the Simmons University library part time on Mondays and Tuesdays. Since we had a lot of student workers graduate this spring for the first month of the break I was one of the few workers trained on all of our tasks. This meant that I was busy my entire shift sorting mail, processing interlibrary loans, updating book catalog records, and responding to reference chats, emails, and phone calls. Since I like to stay busy this was perfect for me. Once the new student workers were trained on our tasks I transitioned to some of our longer term projects like collections inventory, updating book labels, and spent more time on collections cataloging. Inventory in the Beatley Library stacks Additionally, all throughout the summer I was coaching Ultimate Frisbee. The Spring session ended mid-June, so I said goodbye to all of my elementary school players as they don’t have practices during the summer. I brought popsicles for the last day and I was swarmed by players. They gobbled them right up and…
Summer in Rewind Part I
Posted August 28, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
This summer has been packed! As the last summer break of my time at Simmons, I felt that it was important to squeeze as much work experience as possible while also maximizing my VA education benefits by taking summer classes. On top of this, I needed to have surgery at the end of the summer to repair my left hip labrum that would prevent me from having an internship this fall, so I felt it was all the more pressing to maximize my time. Since I did so much this re-cap will be split into two blog posts: the first focused on my summer courses and the second on my work experience. Summer courses at SLIS are typically split into two 8-week sessions, although a select few are spread out over the entirety of the summer. In order to get my scholarships and VA education benefits to cover my classes I had to be enrolled “full-time,” which over the Summer session means 6 credits. I had to take two summer courses in the same session…
Summer Classes
Posted June 2, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello everyone! Even though the spring semester has ended, I have decided to continue my studies by enrolling in summer classes. Simmons offers a wide variety of courses each summer that students can choose from. I am currently enrolled in two classes for the first summer session, which runs from mid May to the beginning of July. The first class that I am enrolled in is LIS 439 Preservation Management. This class is an introduction to preserving physical items that information science professionals may encounter in libraries, archives, and museums. We have discussed many of the possible materials that these physical objects are made of, how they deteriorate, and how to preserve them for future generations. So far, the professor has covered different types of leather, film, and digital media. The course has a more scientific feel, which is exciting to get back into after years of studying the humanities! The second course that I am enrolled in is HIST 574 Seminar in Modern US History: The American West. This class discusses the exploration of…
Summer Reading
Posted May 16, 2025 by Emmy Mahoney
Hello everyone! One of the things that I struggle with the most during the school year is that I have less time to read for pleasure. Now that the spring semester is over and I have much more time, I plan on reducing the vast size of my reading list by a large chunk. The first book on my list is the romance novel, Funny Story, by Emily Henry. Several of my friends have repeatedly recommended this book to me, not only because it is a fun read, but also because the main character is a librarian. You know what they say: if the shoe fits! Looking to the opposite side of the genre spectrum, I am looking forward to exploring some horror novels. On my list, I have The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and Maggie’s Grave by David Sodergren. I have also most recently added Stephen King’s The Long Walk in the hopes of reading the novel before the movie comes out this September. While I enjoy reading…
First Semester as LISSA President In the Books
Posted May 13, 2025 by Aurora Daniel
As I wrap up finals, my library shifts dwindle until my summer internship starts, and I attend my last meetings about student engagement, I find myself wanting to reflect on my most productive and busy semester at Simmons. Way back in January I was elected to be the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA for short) president at SLIS. LISSA serves as the umbrella organization for all student orgs at SLIS. As LISSA president in many ways I serve as the student body president of SLIS. I attend various meetings with SLIS faculty and administration, other centers at Simmons, and even the Simmons University Board of Trustees where I serve as the voice for the SLIS student experience. Additionally, LISSA itself is an organization so I plan and host events, create and send out the “This Week at SLIS” email newsletter, and oversee our Instagram. Some of the events LISSA has held this semester were selling SLIS t-shirts, a movie night for “Google and the World Brain,” a study break event in the Simmons…