A Season’s Change
Posted August 17, 2018 by ShanTil Yell
I was listening to a podcast by one of my very favorite authors and speakers, Rob Bell, earlier this week. This gem of an episode was entitled “Everyone Is Your Teacher,” and it turned out to be one of those well-timed bits of amazingness that was dropped right into my lap. The day was oddly gloomy, I was on my way to work when I would have much rather been curled up in my pj’s while binge watching The Bold Type. Still, I had a half hour walk and decided to tune in and see if Rob had any words of wisdom and humor for me. (Spoiler alert: he did.) He shared a short vignette about the seasons that we experience in life, and how the various seasons we have teach us different things. He said that part of the power in celebrating any particular season is being honest with ourselves and letting it be what it was after it has run its course. Now, what am I getting at here? A few things…fall is…
From Summer to Fall
Posted August 15, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
It. Is. Over. My summer class is done. The class (LIS 415: Information Organization) was interesting, invigorating, and utterly exhausting. I know I’ve said this before, but one of the reasons I really enjoyed the class was because even though it was an online class on an accelerated schedule, we had so many opportunities for discussion. Additionally, the new concepts I learned will be useful to me throughout my career. I learned so much about why and how we organize information. The class challenged me to think in new ways, and I am walking away with a valuable set of new skills which I will use in future classes and in my profession. However, I did struggle with the accelerated timeframe of the class. What really helped me was setting aside designated hours of each day to work on schoolwork. Admittedly, that didn’t always help, because I underestimated the amount of work in the beginning (it’s double the work of the normal semester because it’s done in half the time), so there were a lot…
Summer Class Wrap
Posted August 13, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Welp, my summer class (Records Management) is a wrap. What a whirlwind! What a race! What an adventure! In typical life fashion, just about everything went wrong with my carefully laid plans the last week of class. Kids got sick (so no summer school ☹). Hubby extra busy at work. Cue mad scrambling. I never intend for the end-of-semester time to be a hot mess, and I always try to be well prepared. But somehow it just seems to happen anyway. Did you know that I (or my kids) have gotten sick the last week of class EVERY semester I’ve been at Simmons? It’s true. I’m keeping track. Anyway, enough complaining. I have exactly one month now to pick up the pieces and get my affairs in order before fall semester starts. I have a lot going on this fall and some very exciting news to share…………which I’m saving for my next blog post! Haha! I wanted to use this post to talk about my summer class and the online format in general. So: Records…
House Hunting
Posted July 31, 2018 by Ashley Jackson
This summer I decided to stay in Boston and look for a house to move into for the next couple of years. I can only compare this experience to my time I looked for homes and apartments in Austin, so let me tell you the number one thing I have noticed, broker fees. Boston is expensive enough already and to have a broker fee’s, it really adds to the moving expense. According to an article published in April 2018, Boston ranks #7 in most expensive cities to live in. The article states the average rent is $2100. In Austin, the rent is expensive, but not quite as much, and there typically is not a broker fee included. The property managers pay the brokers themselves. It was quite a shock to see so many places that require a broker fee! However, there are search engines that allow you to choose houses that do not have broker fees. You will need to be prepared to have patience and compromise and some of the requirements you may have…
Not So Lazy Days of Summer
Posted July 25, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
It is currently Week 6 of my online summer class. Now in a usual semester, which is 14 weeks long, we would just be approaching the halfway point. But, as this is a summer class that is only 8 weeks long, I only have 2 weeks remaining, and it is crunch time. We have accomplished a lot in a very short amount of time in this class. I’ve learned so much! However, there is still a lot of work to be done and topics to be covered in the remaining weeks. I have a group project to finish, numerous readings to complete, several assignments and exercises to do, and lots of discussion forums to participate in. One of the key takeaways from this experience is that summer classes require you to be at the very top of your game. As it is the full amount of work for a semester class in half the time, there can be no slacking off whatsoever. You have to manage your time very wisely. Balancing school, work, and your…
Staying Busy and Finding Meaning
Posted July 23, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
I’ve been wracking my brain this week trying to come up with a good metaphor to compare summer online courses with regular semester ones. The one I keep thinking about is running. Let’s say the normal semester course is like running the mile. You know it’s going to be four laps around the track and you know you can’t sprint the entire time and so you pace yourself, trying to keep your speed steady and saving your energy for a little burst at the end. This online summer course is like running 800 meters. You can still try to pace yourself, but there’s not as much distance in this race and so you mostly just run and hope your strength holds out. (I don’t actually have any experience with these kinds of races so I apologize if the metaphor doesn’t fit.) There are just two weeks left in my class and today I went and signed my kids up for summer camp at their adorable little preschool. At the beginning of the summer my husband…
Reading Deprivation
Posted July 13, 2018 by ShanTil Yell
I’m flipping the script in today’s post, meaning I plan to tell you about what I haven’t been reading instead of what I have, or rather, why I am not reading at the moment. I’m participating in an experiment this week called “reading deprivation” as a part of this Artist’s Way book I’m working through. If you think that sounds impossible and a bit insane, then I would have to agree with you. Do you know how difficult it is not to read something, or anything at all on a given day? It takes a real concentrated effort, and maybe a blindfold too. The tool is meant to “monitor the inflow and keep it to a minimum,” according to author Julia Cameron, that way you’re able to tune into your inner voice more clearly and hopefully be rewarded with more outflow. And while it’s true that I’ve seen my writing increase, I’ve also gotten petty and annoyed about the whole idea. What about my work emails? My text messages? Those quotable images that I love…
Summer Has Arrived
Posted July 11, 2018 by Sarah Callanan
Oh my goodness a heatwave has hit Massachusetts! If summer wasn’t here before, it has definitely arrived now. I must admit, I’m not really a fan of excessively hot and humid weather, and I’m glad that it seems to be cooling down just a bit. Because of the heat, I’ve been trying to stay indoors with my beloved air conditioning as much as possible. Between work and my summer class, it really has not been difficult. As I mentioned in my last post, my summer class is online, and we’re fitting 14 weeks’ worth of material into 8 weeks. The class is keeping me very busy between the readings and assignments, but I’m really enjoying learning all the new concepts and interacting with my classmates. We’ve been learning about information organization, metadata, and as of this week, encoding standards. I will admit, learning all the new material in the shortened time frame has been a challenge, but it has been an enjoyable one. One of the best parts about this class is that there…
Bookshops
Posted July 10, 2018 by Ashley Jackson
It is toasty outside guys! I took a rare day off last week to go visit a few bookshops in the Boston area and cool down out of the heat as my apartment does not have air conditioning. Who needs an excuse to visit a bookshop anyway? A quick Google search for used books leads me to Brattle Book Shop in downtown Boston. It is one of America’s largest and oldest bookshops in America! Established in 1825 and in the same family since 1949. I was in for a surprise when I went because I was really looking for newish books that were on sale. I didn’t think I would come across beautiful antique books. I kept thinking, wow, this would be an excellent place for aspiring writers to find a book about an obscure topic who want to research the old fashion way. I have a new interest in human anatomy books, and their section here was small and very old. Rubber bands held the leather covers to the books, the paper was brittle…
Dog Days
Posted July 9, 2018 by Megan Ondricek
Well I was right about my online class – it is all the work of a normal semester class in half the time. We had a research paper due at the end of our second week (last weekend)! That assignment was a bit of a wakeup call for me that 1) I really need to stay on top of the work for this class and 2) I need to prep early for research papers and take better notes. I’ve been on “vacation” still in Virginia this whole time but it hasn’t felt like much of a vacation because every night I’m up doing homework! I don’t mind too much though because I am really enjoying this class. I could have never guessed that records management would be so interesting to me. The discussion forums have been very lively and I do feel highly engaged in the course. Maybe it’s the accelerated schedule that makes it more of an “immersive” experience. Despite the rigor of the class I was still able to drive to go visit…