Mundane Adventures of a Twenty-Something: Beantown in the Fall

Welp, for the last ten months I've been living in Boston. For anyone who watches the news, you know that Boston has been a pretty eventful place this last year. In spite of a hurricane, a blizzard, and a bombing, I've had an incredible time here so far.

In September I started my first semester in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Simmons College. I'm specializing in Archives Management, so most of my workload has been split about half-and-half between general library classes and archives classes. Contrary to popular belief, I have not spent the last year just learning about the Dewey Decimal System. :) In the Fall I took Information Organization (essentially an introductory cataloging class), Intro to Archival Methods and Services, and Preservation Management. I love the small class sizes at Simmons, and I feel like I have a great relationship with all my professors. Plus I feel like my professors all really know what they're doing; for example, my Preservation Management professor has some kind of management position at the New England Document Conservation Center, which has done some pretty impressive work with a lot of the natural disasters over the last several years. It was so cool to hear her experiences; from what I know of other schools, they just get tons of theory and not much practical instruction, so I'm really glad I'm at Simmons!

As part of the Intro Archives class, I had an internship at the Concord Free Public Library. I processed a couple of collections and made online finding aids (a finding aid is to archival collections as a catalog is to a library). I can technically say I'm published, since my finding aids are on their website! The collections I processed were a scrapbook of the Grapevine Cottage (where the Concord Grape was developed) and a huge collection of old almanacs, ranging from 1792 to 1950. I really enjoyed it! [If you want to see my finding aids, the scrapbook is here and the almanacs are here.]

Mid-October, my mom and sister were able to come visit and then my sister-in-law came the week after. Although I didn't feel like I knew much about the area yet, I loved showing them around! We did the Freedom Trail, saw MIT and Harvard campuses, and made trips to Concord and Salem. We had a great time.

Me with my mom and sister in front of the
numbers man on MIT campus

Ashley and I in Salem!

Autumn in Boston was absolutely gorgeous. It's always been my favorite season, and it's probably my favorite thing about living in New England.

This was one of the most
vibrantly-colored leaves I'd ever
seen. Just one of many examples
of the gorgeous New England fall.

A few days after Ashley's visit, Hurricane Sandy hit. Fortunately most of the Boston area only experienced some pretty strong winds and rain. Being my first hurricane, however, I was pretty freaked out. When I stepped outside the next day, the streets were littered with trash and tree branches, and a lot of the canopies above local businesses were totally shredded.

Thanksgiving came, and I was lucky enough to go home for a week and a half for the holiday and (more importantly) my best friend's wedding. My dearest Katie got married and I couldn't be happier for her!

The lovely bride with her bridesmaids: me, Britney,
Katie, Stacey, and Celeste

In December, there was a big Christmas tree lighting on the Boston Common. I went with some of my good friends from Simmons, and even though the rumors of Enrique Iglesias being in attendance turned out to be false, we had a great time!