FYI incoming students: Simmons usually distributes financial aid refunds a little later than some other schools, generally to make sure that students aren’t receiving extra financial aid for classes that they may have dropped by the deadline, which is about four weeks into every semester. This is good in terms of not having to repay that extra money, but all incoming students should know that they’ll need living expenses for a few extra weeks while they wait. Of course this information is on the GSLIS Web site <http://gslis.simmons.edu>, but if you’re like I was when applying for graduate schools, your eyes may have glazed over that little bit of information in the midst of studying for the GRE and rewriting personal statements for the application. Or you may simply underestimate how much money it actually takes to live during that time. But it’s definitely good to plan ahead for that.

And now that it’s here, I can pay bills and plan my trip to the winter farmer’s market in Natick that ends on February 27. It’ll probably be cold but organic butternut squash and homemade jam are so worth it. It’s yet another one of the advantages of going to school in a major city!

]]> http://alanis.simmons.edu/blogs/admissions/2010/02/22/financial-aid-refunds/feed/ 0 http://alanis.simmons.edu/blogs/admissions/2009/10/26/registration-dun-dun-dun/ http://alanis.simmons.edu/blogs/admissions/2009/10/26/registration-dun-dun-dun/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:14:15 +0000 Colleen Mahoney http://alanis.simmons.edu/blogs/admissions/?p=211 It’s a more stressful than normal day here at GSLIS…registration starts for the spring semester. People are very tense, hoping to get the sections they want (because who really wants class on Friday afternoon?). Registration is done completely online, so everyone sits at their computers, refreshing the screen until it lets them register at their appointed time. Times are randomly assigned, but students further along in the program get the earlier times (that way, if you need something in order to graduate, you are pretty much guaranteed to get into it).

Clearly, I wasn’t too stressed this year because I forgot to register! Oops. I had a great registration time, at 9:10 this morning, but it wasn’t until I saw someone’s twitter status at 10:00 that I remembered it was registration day. Luckily, I hadn’t waited too long, and I had no problem getting into any of the electives I wanted. I even had my choice of which time slot for my required class.

So to satisfy the curious, my classes for the spring semester:
LIS 471 – Photographic Archives
LIS 440 – Archival Access and Use
HIST 571 – Seminar in Early American History

One thing both new and current students are worried about right now is their fall course schedule. During registration, a lot of students enroll in more classes than they plan to take, and wait until around now to decide which ones they want to take.
Others find that classes they registered for months ago now conflict with their work or vacation schedules (this happened to me!) Luckily, Simmons offers classes during the days, nights, and weekends.

The typical “full-time” student, like myself, takes three classes a semester. I was originally planning to take LIS 440: Archival Access and Use, a required class for archives concentrators. As part of this class, students are set up with internships at archives in the Boston area, and are required to work 60 hours over the semester. I was worried about having time for the internship this fall because I have several vacations planned and am taking two reading-intensive classes. So I decided to wait until the spring, and am now enrolled in LIS 456: Records Management instead. Records Management is also a required class for the archives program, and covers a lot of important practices for corporate archives and electronic records (what are we supposed to do with all of our old business emails, anyways?)

Those two reading-intensive classes I mentioned? Because I’m in the Archives/History dual degree program, I am taking a history seminar on women’s history in 19^th century America. My third class is the one I’m most looking forward to—LIS 443: Archives, History, and Collective Memory. This class is required for dual-degree students, but is also open to any GSLIS student who is interested. Team taught by faculty from GSLIS and the history department, it goes beyond the practical aspects of the archivist profession to examine why we have archives and what purposes they serve. One of the things I most appreciate about my classes at Simmons has been how they include both the theory and practice of the field.