The End
Posted May 2, 2016 by Jill Silverberg
The Fab Four (AKA The Beatles) once sang: And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love You make While the lyrics above might not directly correlate to my thoughts and feelings towards reaching the end of graduate school, I just really wanted to kick-off a blog post with something Beatles related. But, let me make some slight word modifications to make the four lines above a bit more topical. And in the end The experience you take Is equal to the work You make Okay so it’s not as good as the original version but I think it was worth a shot. Even so, I think my alterations work with the situation that’s going on here. Indeed, my time as a graduate student is dwindling down; about twenty days, I am going to walk across a stage to receive my Master’s in Library and Information Science!* Can you believe it ’cause I really, really, REALLY, can’t. It seriously feels like just yesterday that I attended SLIS (or GSLIS as it was known then) orientation…
A Weekend in the Big Apple
Posted April 29, 2016 by Katie Caskey
Last week I posted about the process of packing for and anticipating my upcoming trip to NYC. Well, as promised, this week I will share the highlights of what was one of the best trips EVER! The adventure began on Friday night when we caught a bus from Boston to Manhattan. Now, if any of you have ever ventured to New York, you will not be surprised when I tell you we hit a massive grid-lock on the freeway (at 11:30pm!) and ended up arriving at our destination an hour and a half later than we were supposed to. But we were so excited it didn’t matter! We woke up Saturday morning and went to stand in line for Rush tickets for some Broadway shows. If you don’t know, the Rush policy allows people to purchase suuuuuper cheap tickets (like $35) for shows that day, if they haven’t already sold the seats. We ended up getting tickets for both She Loves Me with Zachary Levi (swoon) and Fiddler on the Roof. Both shows were amazing,…
Keeping Busy
Posted April 28, 2016 by Tara Pealer
Yesterday, my mom finally came up to Boston to visit me, so I did what any normal daughter would do: I dragged her out to dinner with my two best friends and paid the tab. We went to Walhburgers, which, by the way, was amazing. The food was delicious, the atmosphere was low key and perfect for chilling with close friends and family, and the staff was fun and relaxed. The drink selection was pretty good too, though their online menu did not match their in restaurant menu. That was only part one of my plans for her birthday. I also got her a book on Mark Twain that a friend picked up at ALA Midwinter and highly recommended, and we’re going to be going out today or Saturday for a fun, relaxing day at the local malls. My friends are worried about how I’ll manage to get all of my homework done, and despite my amazing time management skills, I understand their worry, because I’m also wondering the same thing. I usually pull through,…
Boston By Foot
Posted April 23, 2016 by Amy Wilson
One of my goals for 2016 was, as soon as the weather was nice enough, I would walk to work. From my house, it’s only 2.7 miles, which takes me about an hour. Normally, if I am taking public transit, I need to leave by 8:15 to ge to work for 9am; walking the same route only adds 15-20 minutes to my commute (which doesn’t say much for our transit system). One of the top women runners at the Marathon Attending the Boston Marathon on Monday inspired me to step it up (pun intended). After the marathon, I walked to Simmons to do some homework. Unfortunately, the computer lab was closed, so then I decided to walk home across the Charles (I live in somerville). My 3.5 miles was definitely no marathon, but I felt proud of myself because normally it wouldn’t even corss my mind to walk. View after crossing the Charles I think it’s easy to forget what a small city Boston is when you take public transit, because it can take so…
Planning for the Big Apple
Posted April 22, 2016 by Katie Caskey
I’ve now lived on the East Coast for two years, and I have just loved it! Being from the Midwest, I’ve always been drawn to the history and culture available out here. I’ve tried so many new foods, learned to deftly navigate public transportation, and taken in quite a few shows, recitals, and art exhibits. But there is one thing I have sworn to do before I move away, and this weekend I’ll finally get my chance to do it! My roommate and I are neck-deep in the final planning stage of our first trip to New York City together! We’ve both been before, but it’s been quite some time since either of us has gone, so we are more than ready to get back to the energy of that wonderful city! I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t take advantage of Boston’s proximity to NYC while I was out here, so this trip is coming just in time (as I’m finishing up school and heading for home in May!) Because my roommate has…
Sunshine and Seventy-Five
Posted April 21, 2016 by Tara Pealer
Today, as a friend put it, is the “First Nice Day In Boston”. Although my phone is trying to tell me it is partly cloudy, the skies are a clear blue, the 75 degree temperature is perfect, the grass is a lush green and the trees and flowers are in bloom. You can almost forgive mother nature for turning Boston in this two weeks ago: (Almost) At any rate, the weather has turned from winter to spring, and it is finally gorgeous enough out to just start walking everywhere again. This is wonderful, especially considering the fact that my commute home takes me through Fenway and Kenmore, and the Boston Red Sox opened last week for the season. As much as I’m a fan, I’m waiting excited for those nice, relaxing commutes in the summer when there are no games and there are a lot less undergraduates. (Do I sound like a grumpy old graduate student yet? I’ve been working on it.) While I don’t have plans for this weekend–yet!–I’m happy to force my friends…
Spring Days/Planning for Fall
Posted April 16, 2016 by Amy Wilson
I had been putting off writing a post this week because I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to say. It was a pretty quiet week – my boyfriend came home from a business trip on Tuesday, and he left again this morning, so we really just squeezed in as much time together as was possible. We went to see a bluegrass band on Tuesday night with some friends, went out to an early breakfast together Wednesday morning at our favorite restaurant, and yesterday (Saturday) we planted our backyard garden. Baby Romaines! I am going to make some hanging signs for these old white chair backs that say “flowers” and “veggies.” In school related news, I registered for my Fall 2016 classes this week (already?!). I also had to plan my financial aid from now until the end of my program because of the way my schedule will work out. I will only take one class in my last semester (fall 2017) which means I won’t meet the minimum attendance requirement (part time/two classes)…
Ode to Brunch
Posted April 15, 2016 by Katie Caskey
I have just recently become a regular bruncher (forgive the pretentiousness, but I don’t know what else to call it). Breakfast has always been my favorite meal of the day, but the whole concept of meeting your pals on a weekend for some hearty breakfast food and acceptable morning alcohol (ie mimosas) isn’t something I encountered much in the Midwest. But since coming to Boston, my eyes have been opened to the great variety of possibilities that this mid-morning timeslot can hold. “What’s so great about brunch?” The food!!! Pancakes, eggs, hash, bagels, burritos, fruit…and the list goes on. And since you are technically combining two meals into one sitting, feel free to go wild with your ordering. Chocolate milk and coffee? French toast and bacon? SURE! The time slot. I consider myself a morning person, but even I can appreciate the gloriousness that is sleeping in past 8:00am. Brunch is the perfect excuse to sleep in and still feel like you’ve accomplished something with your day. The breakfast-y food tricks your brain into thinking…
Events, Elections, and Even More
Posted April 14, 2016 by Tara Pealer
This week was a little intense. I had completely new material to learn in tech class on Monday, two papers due Tuesday, four hours of volunteering at the career fair on Wednesday, and classes to pick out for my registration time on Friday morning. Between that, I had plans to come home to pick up my professional reimbursement check and plans to make with old friends I hadn’t seen in a while. This semester has been like that a lot…every other week. One week I have free time, I’m relaxed and I feel like I have time to breathe. The next week I’m so stressed out that I’m surprised that I can find time to sleep. But there’s plenty that’s exciting going on in SLIS right now. We’re about 25 days from the end of the semester, student elections just closed, and there are so many events happening in the next few weeks that it’s hard to keep track everything! Just in the last two weeks there were four or five different career focused events….
Accessing the Potential of Graduate Students
Posted April 9, 2016 by Amy Wilson
Yesterday I attended a conference that was jointly hosted by LLNE and ABLL at Northeastern University School of Law. The focus of the conference was “Access to Government Information,” but I noticed a second theme throughout the day: strong partnerships. The LLNE/ABLL spring conference was my first as a graduate student, and my strongest take-away from the day has to be the power of strong partnerships to produce successful results. The conference itself was obviously a collaboration of LLNE and ABLL, but this theme also came up consistently during the day’s events. I think that the most important step in forming a strong and healthy partnership is to recognize one’s own limits, and then to identify how the other party’s strengths can fill the gap. We heard an example of this strategy from Dan Jackson from the NuLawLab when he described his partnership with game designers and law librarians to build a game for self-representative litigants. Susan Drisko Zago also spoke about aligning law librarians with public librarians to serve rural populations in northern New Hampshire. Beryl Lipton and Pam Wilmot shared…