Summer Fun: Musical Mondays
Posted June 11, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
In recent years I have come to realize something about myself: I absolutely love traditions. Defined by Merriam-Webster as being a “a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, etc., for a long time,” traditions are something that anyone and everyone has. At the same time, traditions can be anything that one or many people want them to be. From family traditions such as always stopping at a specific spot on a road-trip to more sacred and religiously symbolic traditions such as attending Easter Mass, lighting the Sabbath candles, or by marking the end of Ramadan by celebrating Eid al-Fitr, traditions are practices that unite individuals together in unique and special ways. And then there are silly traditions; the kind that you have with your close friends, that ones that just sort of started out of nowhere but have since become something sort-of special. Within my apartment, we have a tradition. We call it Musical Mondays. What started one Monday night a few weeks…
Summertime Panic
Posted June 10, 2015 by Alexandra Bernson
As an online student, it is difficult to connect with one’s professors or fellow students on a regular basis. Certainly in this day and age there are so many ways to reach out to someone – email, social media, Moodle and discussion forums, but these will always pale in comparison to good ol’ fashioned face-to-face time. While I know that I can reach out to my professors and advisor when necessary, and I certainly have, I’ve learned to be my own support. Because of this, coupled by the fact that I spend so much time on my own reading through discussion forums, tracking down articles, and navigating through modules on Moodle, my education often feels like a very solitary experience. I learned a great lesson recently in taking responsibility for my personal experience as a Simmons graduate student, specifically regarding summer semester. During my undergraduate education, summers usually involved internships in random fields as I tried to figure out exactly what it was that I wanted to do. I was still unsure about library science…
Summertime Gladness
Posted June 9, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
So lately I’ve been blogging about jobs and work and all things professional. A lot of this is because I finally feel like I know what I’m doing to a certain extent. Yay for me, but let’s talk about something more interesting, namely how many more opportunities there are for fun and socializing during the break between the summer and spring semesters (and any of the semesters). This is when SLIS students have more time to spend with their friends to hang out, have get-togethers, see the sights, etc. I’m especially grateful for the time I have now to finally grab a drink or get a cup of coffee with friends I haven’t seen in months. Before, maybe we’d grab a quick coffee at school and use that time to talk about how we were too busy to get a simple cup of coffee. Now we can talk about anything really. We can even have TWO cups of coffee. Whoa, right? Talk about living it up. I had a very enjoyable Saturday last week in…
Pen Pal Experience
Posted June 4, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
This last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet up with a pen pal of mine. Back in October or November, Promising Pals sent out an email and asked for pen pals for students at the Timilty Middle School in Roslindale. I loved pen pal activities when I was in school, so I was happy to sign up for the experience. Usually, Promising Pals asks their pals to exchange four letters. Of course, this year, the snow storms made all plans go haywire. The mail was delayed, and I, at least, received two letters within three days. It was difficult to build a rapport with my pal when the mail was so irregular. However, Friday morning and meeting my pen pal for breakfast was exciting. The pals were able to hear a little bit about the history of the program and listen to some inspirational speeches and music. Then I got to collect my student from his classroom. We ate breakfast and bonded over basketball and horror movies. I bought him a book from the…
Well, that was fast.
Posted June 2, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
I just submitted the final assignment for LIS-505, Reader’s Advisory. Hurrah! LIS-505 was a two-week class, and by that I mean a full three-credit class jammed into two weeks. We read eight novels from different genres, about 20 articles on different aspects of reader’s advisory, book selection, leading discussion groups and genre fiction, completed three assignments and gave an in-class presentation. I’m not going to lie — it was a lot of work in a short period of time. But it was fun work, interesting work, and I enjoyed the professor, classmates, readings and assignments. I did not enjoy the timeframe so much. It turns out that I really like to take my time with assignments. I guess I knew this, but taking a two-week class really made it clear. Usually, I write a first draft well before the assignment is due, and revise it considerably until the day before the due date, and then try to submit early, which is essentially impossible in a two-week timeframe. However, every once in a while it’s good…
Ready Set Rhubarb
Posted May 27, 2015 by Jill Silverberg
Well, it might have taken a bit longer than I would have liked but at long last the Boston Ice Age has ended and Spring has firmly declared its presence. For the last few weeks of April and even the first few weeks of May, I was seriously starting to get worried. After the winter we just went through, the last thing I needed were any more days below 55 degrees. However, judging from the explosion of flowers, leaves, and the sudden outbreak of open toed shoes, I think it is safe to say that those chilly days are behind us. Goodbye winter chill, hello spring/summer humidity! Wait….I hate humidity. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Fortunately my apartment’s ability to remain far cooler inside than it is out will mean far more pleasant days than my old place last year. While I will forever miss my very first apartment, the place’s lack of windows made the unit a walk-in-oven. While this certainly encouraged my roommates and myself to get creative with ways to stay cool (three of them bought…
Two Jobs and Three Clasps
Posted May 25, 2015 by Samantha Quiñon
This past week I started two new jobs. Well one is not that new, it’s the same library assistant position I had during the Spring Semester, but now my hours have been doubled and I have a few new responsibilities. As I write this, it is Memorial Day Weekend, and for the first time, I’m the senior staff person on duty. No managers today; no one will bail me out or make a tough decision for me if there is any sort of incident. It’s really not a big deal on a slow weekend like this, but it’s nice to know my managers think I’m competent enough to handle things. I also was invited to co-author a libguide with another librarian, which is basically a set of webpages with useful resources and for patrons on a specific subject. Many jobs I’m interested in applying for after graduation prefer applicants with experience in patron instruction and creating digital resources, so I’m excited to be able to eventually put this on my résumé. The other new position…
Author Events and Expectations
Posted May 21, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
Before moving out to Boston, I had never been to an author event. There were a couple in my old town, but they weren’t authors I was interested in, so I never went. Since moving out here, I’ve had the opportunity to go to three different events (and The Horn Book Awards, but I don’t count that). I’ve been a little spoiled though because the first event I went to was amazing. I wrote about the experience on this blog. I went to listen to Lois Lowry speak about The Giver. It was so much fun. I only had a short wait in a line to get my book signed, and then she spoke for an hour about her life and what inspired her to write The Giver. As someone who wants to write, I love hearing what inspires other authors. The other two events I’ve since gone to were hosted by the same book store. The first was to see Kiera Cass, author of The Selection series. My roommate and I got to the…
Exploring Options, SLIS Style
Posted May 19, 2015 by Alison Mitchell
When I enrolled at SLIS, I was sure that I would take all my classes on campus, in person. That was the whole point of going to grad school, right? I wanted to meet my professors, form relationships with my classmates, ask questions and have face to face conversations. Then, for family and scheduling reasons, I ended up taking an online class this past semester. While I still prefer on campus classes and face-to-face interactions, I now appreciate the great flexibility online classes provide, and I’m actually taking another one in the fall. I was also pretty sure I’d take all my classes during the traditional fall and spring semesters. A friend of mine, who also went through Simmons when her kids were in Elementary school, shared horror stories of the shortened, intense summer semester — “that’s when my kids learned to cook their own meals, since all I did was study.” However — and I think you know where I’m going — I’m about to start a 2-week “short course.” It meets every day…
Revisiting Childhood
Posted May 7, 2015 by Hayley Botnen
As someone who is pursuing a degree in Children’s Literature and Library Science, I spend a lot of time in my courses rereading books I loved as a child. I also get to read books which I missed as a child or which came out after I grew up a little. Many of the books which I reread are considered classics in the field of Children’s Literature (Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Ramona Quimby Age 8). I always enjoy reading the books. Sometimes I will get little flashes of memory-feeling which remind me how I felt when I read the book when I was younger. I’ll remember having my mom read to me, or the first time I connected to the character. Outside of school, I’ve moved away from rereading in the last few years. There are just so many books out there! If I reread a book, I’m giving away the time which I could otherwise spend reading a brand-new adventure! However, this last month, the West Roxbury Branch of the Boston…