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…
It’s Crunch Time
Posted November 28, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
It’s crunch time everyone! My final project is due next week. The class discussion doesn’t end until December 10th, so I suppose that is the official end date, but the project is my main priority. My final project for LIS 488 (Technology for Information Professionals) is a personal website and portfolio that I have developed and built myself and coded by hand. I have a lot of the groundwork done- I have a paper mock up of what I want the pages to look like (no guarantees that it will actually look like this!), I have most of the HTML coding done, I’m working on the CSS, and I think it’s starting to come together. On one hand, I’m so, so impressed that I now have the skills to do this. On the other hand, I’m panicking because I’m making a website by hand. I’ve never had to code anything in my life before this class, and now I’m coding an entire website. I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride every time I see…
International Opportunities at Simmons SLIS
Posted November 27, 2018 by Maria Reilova
One of the great things about Simmons SLIS is how many events are hosted each week! We have a very active student body and there are more panels, workshops, field trips, socials, etc. than anyone could ever hope to go. While being a graduate student is synonymous with overbooking your time, I have made an effort to attend a few events, specifically anything that has to do with international librarianship. I have always loved to travel and learn as much as I can about different cultures. So any chance I get to combine this passion with my passion for libraries, I will seize it! In this past month, I went to two really amazing presentations from faculty about their work abroad. The first was with Professor Lisa Hussey, who I currently have for 407, and Professor Nanette Veilleux on their Summer course in Rwanda. This program is only a year old but offers students interested in international librarianship, archives, and computer science an opportunity to gain hands on experience working with a handful of schools…
The SLIS Buffet
Posted November 19, 2018 by Katie Carlson
Hello again! I’m getting ready to register for classes in a few days, and I’m going to explain the way I’m feeling in true English major fashion — via metaphor. I feel as though I am at a Chinese buffet, overwhelmed by mouth watering scents, and surrounded by delicious food. I’ve already grabbed a tiny bit of scallion pizza, a donut, and a tiny bit of sesame stir fry, and about to go up for round two. But, just as I bounce over to the serving trays, someone walks over and informs me that I can only take NINE MORE BITES of food. As someone who (both in terms of course work and Chinese food) likes to sample a bit of everything, I can’t help but feel a bit distraught. In my advising meeting with Laura Saunders, I arrived armed in true future-librarian fashion) with a color coded Google doc, in which I had ranked by preferred courses per semester. That said, I know I will be taking LIS 488: Technology for Information Professionals, to…
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…
Wait…It’s almost Thanksgiving?!
Posted November 13, 2018 by Maria Reilova
So it’s November. Already. I’m not sure where September and October went but apparently it’s the past. These first few weeks of grad school have been a whirlwind and when friends and family ask me what I’ve been up to my brain just goes blank and my response is always something along the lines of “library things” and “school stuff”. Being halfway through the semester is both exciting and terrifying. I’m glad to be done with some of my projects but I still have a ways to go before the semester is over. I love my classes but I am very excited for Thanksgiving for a little time to breath in between all the craziness of papers, group projects, and final assignments. Since I am taking all my the 3 core courses this semester the workload has been heavy, especially since I’m taking 415 and 407 back to back on Thursdays (hello overlapping deadlines!). I’ve survived midterms though, which means I’ve survived three group projects all due the same week! Nothing like group assignments to…
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…