NaNoWriMo and Me
Posted November 5, 2015 by Tara Pealer
For most of the school year, I struggle with my time management skills. It’s not that I don’t have the skills, but rather that I struggle to effectively use them. I have planners and notebooks and generally know of the syllabus and the schedule I should be on to get everything done. I have a tendency to ignore all of them in favor of doing other things, which, often, are not actually productive. This, however, completely changes in the month of November. November is NaNoWriMo. I’m very passionate about NaNoWriMo. I’ve won the official NaNo every year since 2013. For the uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It occurs in the month of November when a bunch of completely crazy people, myself included, decide to write fifty thousand words in 30 days. This averages out to 1,667 words per day. It’s a lot of writing, and, to get it all done requires a lot of planning. I haven’t stayed up past midnight yet to get homework done or get a head start on my…
Walk the Walk (on Commonwealth)
Posted November 2, 2015 by Alexandra Bernson
Last week I somehow caught laryngitis. To my memory, I have never been that sick in my entire life. I was sleeping 20 hours a day, quarantined to my little apartment, voiceless and surviving on canned soup, white rice, and rolled-up tortillas, and mentally swaying back and forth on whether I wished I still had roommates: On the one hand, I’d have someone to take care of me. On the other, they would be forced to be witness to my sickness and squalor. Thankfully my prescription meds worked wonders and I’m on the up and up, but my lost week means that autumn in New England appeared out of nowhere for me. Before I was sick, the leaves were just starting to change, littering the streets with neon yellow slivers. Now, the reds and oranges have arrived, bold and utterly beautiful. On Sunday afternoons I work at the Boston Architectural College Library and I take advantage of the still mild weather and Boston’s essential walkability and stroll through Beacon Hill, across the Public Gardens, and…
A Devotion to Knowledge
Posted October 31, 2015 by Amy Wilson
This post is for anyone who may be worried about their undergraduate programs being (or seeming) totally unrelated to a master’s program. I came into the SLIS program feeling a little bit of this anxiety, which lived next door to my fears about having been away from any school for a year. I have adjusted without too much difficulty, and I think this last year has been invaluable in terms of gaining some real perspective. In May 2014, I graduated from Saint Michael’s College (VT) with a double BA in English and Religious Studies. After those four years of liberal arts, I appreciate a healthy dose of critical self-reflection. I have recently been trying to imagine a rough intellectual trajectory to rationalize how I came to my present studies in LIS – in fact, this question is part of why I started this blog. The English piece of my B.A. degree makes sense (books, right?), but how do I bridge my past studies in religion to my present work in LIS? My answer arrived in…
I Do Love a Themed Snack!
Posted October 30, 2015 by Katie Caskey
I am currently waist-deep in my classwork for the semester and starting to feel the toll of the impending final projects, presentations, and papers, not to mention the weekly coursework I still need to stay on top of. But, thankfully, I was recently treated to a wonderful surprise that brightened my week and reminded me again why I love this school, this program, and my fellow students. One of the classes I am taking is entitled Victorian Literature, in which we are focusing particular attention on the subgenre of school stories. Well, as any lit. major knows, it is almost impossible to escape a Victorian literature class without encountering the infamous Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. Now, it’s time for a confession…I’ve never read either of the Alice books before this year. I’ve seen the Disney movie a couple dozen times, sure, but I entered this class and this book with fresh eyes. Well, Mr. Carroll did not disappoint. The whimsical characters, bright poetry, and charming word pictures were a welcome change from the…
Presentations: Or, the overwhelming fear you’re doing it wrong
Posted October 29, 2015 by Tara Pealer
I love to give presentations. Give me a PowerPoint or Prezi, a somewhat captive audience, a chance to pretend to organize my notes, and I’m off. My philosophy for presenting is ‘if you want to make a splash, you’ve got to jump’. For me, that means is that when I start a presentation, I go into it believing that the most important part of a successful presentation is the actual presenting. If I go into a presentation knowing everything, having an exact plan, but get nervous and stumble or get mentally disorganized, I feel like I’ve negated any work I’ve done. My confidence is derailed completely. Other people, I know, feel confident in their presentation if they’ve collected and organized all the knowledge they wanted to get across. They just hate the presenting part. I’m flashy. I’ve got the substance, sure, but flash is where it’s at for me. I did a presentation last week which I kicked off by handing out two jars of m&m’s to the closest guesses of the number of book…
Happy Halloween!
Posted October 28, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
Grab your pumpkins and copious bags of candy ’cause Halloween is right around the corner! This year the holiday fortunately falls on a weekend which means that us students do not have to deal with the epic struggle of deciding whether or not to attend class dressed in full costume. While I will certainly support anyone who has/would do it, I sadly have never really had the opportunity to do so. Life just has a way of messing with my plans. Oh well. In preparation of All Hallows Eve I’ve been binge watching and reading anything and everything that reminds me of my favorite autumn holiday. From watching Let’s Plays of survival horror video games to reading a horror novel set within a store reminiscent of IKEA, I know that come November 1st, I am definitely going to need a year to recover from my apparent Halloween overdose. But until then, the parade of all things spooky, creepy, and nightmare-tastic will keep marching on. While I sadly could not make a visit to Salem, MA this…
Flexibility
Posted October 27, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
One thing I like about being an older student is that I have some flexibility. I’m not trying to finish SLIS super fast to get a job or move somewhere else — my job and family are already here. I can take my time with the program and get what I want out of it. Since I have two kids in elementary school, that flexibility is pretty important to me. When I entered Simmons, I expected to take three years to finish the program — two classes each semester (instead of the traditional three) and no classes in the summer, since my kids would be out of school. It seemed like a good plan. Then I took a three-credit short course late last spring, which put me ahead of where I expected to be. Suddenly, I had options — should I take another short course and graduate a semester earlier than I’d planned? Should I take only one course some semester, and pick up additional work hours? Which brings me to the upcoming semester. As…
Shifting Focus
Posted October 24, 2015 by Amy Wilson
As a SLIS student at Simmons, there is a big deadline for two important items. One is finishing the TOR (Technology Orientation Requirement) and the other is to complete your first advising session. I finished the TOR before the semester started and this past week I completed the second task with my adviser, Jim Matarazzo. What a wealth of knowledge that man is! Connecting with him was a bit of a circuitous route of self-discovery (through another advisor, the registrar’s office, our Assistant Dean Em Claire Knowles, and finally Jim) and by the end of all these conversations, I had changed my concentration and found my voice. Choosing classes meant that I had to make a decision about where I wanted to take them – online or on-campus? This semester both of my classes have been on-campus, and it is definitely a lot of work to run back and forth; however, I still think it’s worth it for me. I absolutely see that online learning could be useful for someone who has social anxiety, or lives…
“The Process of Submitting Call for Papers Proposals”, As Told By Picture Book Characters
Posted October 23, 2015 by Katie Caskey
Step 1: You find the Call for Papers. It even aligns perfectly with your particular area of research and interest! You excitedly save the link to your bookmarks tab. This is something to seriously consider. Then the daydreaming begins. What if your proposal was accepted? You could be a published author in an academic journal! You have arrived! https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ab/ff/4c/abff4c459eb3d169f4c0551b3086d071.jpg Step 2: You realize you actually have to write this proposal! Can anyone say “writer’s block”? While the prompt was most likely engaging and thought-provoking when you chose it, those original inspirations have quickly vanished into a cloud of confusion and self-doubt. How will I ever get this done when I have all of my other class work to do? Should I even be submitting something when I don’t have a degree yet? Am I an academic fraud? Don’t feel bad…we’ve all had these thoughts. The important thing is moving through this phase without completely halting all productivity. Even if all you can muster out of your overwhelmed and overworked brain is one sentence or idea…
The Fraud Police and the Real Adults
Posted October 22, 2015 by Tara Pealer
This semester I’ve had trouble finding time to read books for my own personal delight. There’s the Excitement of A New City and of My First Semester As A Graduate Student, and the stress of When Will Someone Find Out I Don’t Know What I’m Doing?, all of which have taken over most of my time. It’s about halfway through the semester now. No one’s noticed yet that I’m making it up as I go. I’m getting worried. In her book, The Art of Asking, Amanda Palmer describes that feeling as ‘The Fraud Police’. The Art of Asking, which is the only book I’ve read this semester in full (though I’ve read it religiously) is about asking for help, and about accepting help. It’s about flowers and donuts. It’s about a lot of things, really. I have the section on ‘The Fraud Police’ underlined and highlighted. It helps to hear other people tell you that they’re also making it up as they go along. Amanda Palmer’s book cover For most of my life, I’ve been…