Summer
Planning Your Move: Spreadsheets, Time Machines, and Lime Skittles
Posted September 12, 2021 by Johnna Purchase
With only three weeks until term begins and the annual “great lease renewal” of Boston September 1st, if you have yet to plan how you are moving yourself and belongings to your new apartment, the time has come. I moved to the city cross-country from Texas in early August and so, with 1,839 miles and nearly thirty hours in a Kia Niro hybrid worth of experience, here are a few suggestions I have about how to prepare for your move if you, like me, need to cover a long distance: Utilize Google Sheets. There are many variables when planning a move so instead of relying on your potentially-running-on-overdrive-thanks-to-all-the-change brain to remember everything, start keeping track in Google Sheets. You can use formulas to tally costs, project budgets, make checklists, and organize it on separate tabs. It’s also a great opportunity to brush up on your Excel/GSuite skills. If you need more help, check out the resources provided from Simmons in the Technology Competencies Guidelines which was emailed out to students in mid-June. Choose your mode…
Final Summer Thoughts
Posted August 13, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
I finished all my work for Collections Management last week. I can’t believe the summer semester is over already. It went by so fast. I loved this class and would recommend it to all SLIS students, especially those who like hands on activities. It was a great introduction to book repair and definitely made me curious to learn more. It will be very nice to have a few weeks off, but I’m looking forward to my classes in the fall. Since SLIS announced that all of its classes for the fall would be online, all the in-person classes that I normally would not have been able to take were suddenly available to me. I had to rethink my classes a bit, and I ended up signing up for a new class, LIS 532R, Reader’s Advisory. I wanted to take this class as soon as I saw it in the course descriptions, but I wasn’t able to because it was at the Mount Holyoke campus. But now I get to take it, and I am excited. …
Summer Classes
Posted July 15, 2020 by William Crouch
Hey everyone, long time since I last posted. Hope everybody has been staying safe during all this craziness. I’ve been keeping busy taking a summer course while history courses are being offered online. This summer, the history seminar being offered is divided into two different parts both focusing on how the United States functioned as an empire in the early 20th century. The first section was taught by Professor Frances Sullivan and focused on labor movements within United States territories like Puerto Rico or Hawaii. It was really interesting reading some of these groups’ thoughts about how they would gain a new government to try and gain more equity but that the governments would often revert back to being more unequal. Reading about these ideas in the midst of similar discourse occurring in the United States with the Black Lives Matter movement has been very enlightening. The second half of the course was taught by Professor Laura Prieto and focused on women’s suffrage movements within United States territories and how the United States womens’ suffrage…
Adventures in Ethics
Posted June 25, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We’ve completed the first week of the of the Summer 2020 term everyone! As you know, classes at SLIS are online for this term due to the pandemic. I’m not going to lie; I came very close to forgetting it was the first week of classes last week. If I hadn’t received an email from my professor announcing it was the first day of class last Monday, I would have completely forgotten. I’m taking LIS 475: Organizational and Information Ethics this summer, and as is usual for Simmons summer classes, it is only seven weeks long, but is the same amount of work as a normal semester-long course. This means we cover two weeks-worth of material a week. If you’ve read my past posts about summer classes, you know my feelings about this. Summer classes have a lot of content in a very short amount of time. I’m not wild about the rushed feeling, but this summer, like last summer, there is no “locked” content, so I can see everything ahead of time. In summer…
All About Paper
Posted June 22, 2020 by Amie Grosshans
This summer, I’m taking LIS 447, Collections Maintenance, and I absolutely love it so far. There are two parts to the class: the lectures, which explore the topic of the week and show how to do the repairs, and the hands-on part, where we get to do the repairs ourselves. All of us were mailed a big box with the weekly materials before the class started, which included damaged books, different types of papers, newspapers, magazine ads, archival quality tape, and tissue paper. We also bought a tool kit from the school bookstore, which included a cutting mat, ruler, retractable knife, paint brush, and other necessities. I created a designated workspace for myself and laid all the tools and folders on a little table. It’s been working out great, because it keeps all the tools and materials in one place and I don’t have to constantly pack and unpack all the materials. I would probably lose something that way! The first week, we repaired small paper tears with tape and glue, and last week we…
Seven Classes Down, Five to Go!
Posted May 8, 2020 by Sarah Callanan
We are DONE with the Spring 2020 semester everyone! Seven classes down, five to go! This summer I’m taking LIS 475: Organizational Ethics. I was originally going to take a different class, but due to the unpredictability associated to COVID-19, I switched classes. This class looks very interesting—based on the description, I think it’s going to be more of a theory-based class and we’ll be covering a lot of interesting topics. However, the class doesn’t start until June 15, so I have a bit of a break before school starts again. Usually, when the semester is over and we come up on a break, I’m thrilled. However, this time it is different because there is a pandemic happening. This now means that there is a gaping hole in my everyday routine. The stay-at-home advisory has been extended until May 18, and my sense of time and structure during the pandemic has pretty much come from two things, school and work, and now one of them is gone until mid-June. On one hand, it’s nice not…
Summer Job – Something New
Posted May 1, 2020 by Peggy Hogan-Rao
Today I filled out my paperwork for a new job, which is so exciting! I will be a personal shopper at Stop & Shop, working in the Peapod home delivery department. Although the semester is coming to the end, I’m excited to have a new beginning. I am not taking summer classes, so a job will give me something to do this summer. Except for a few forms to be signed for practicum, I am all done with the semester! I got my last grade back for my online technology class a couple days ago, and I had my final meeting with my supervisors for practicum yesterday. It feels so weird thinking about how the semester is over now, after working so hard. Thinking about those students at the elementary school in Waltham, I am so sad that I missed out on a whole month in school with the kids. I am happy that I still saw the Kindergarten students I got to teach my 4-lesson unit with on Google Meets, but it isn’t the…