That's a Wrap

I have now officially completed my MA in history!!

The semester is finally over.  This has certainly been my most stressful part of graduate school.  I’ve been running the whole semester and have had so much on my plate.  I took four classes, three info science and one history.  Here’s a brief review in no particular order.  This semester I: 

attended a NYS Preservation regional meeting at Peeble’s Island State Park

gave a half hour long DAR presentation to 23 ladies

processed a small archival collection, I spent roughly 40-50 hours on site working with the collection (and spent lots more time on assignments and creating a website for the project)

took and passed my 3 hour written comps exam in history

struggled through XML, I had to completely redo my term project on Sherlock Holmes books the morning it was due (I spent 5 hours on a library computer to get it to work, and finished it roughly 2 hours before class)

baked goodies for and helped man the table for two club bake sales

read a ton of books and articles (including 5 new Civil War books for my comps, thanks a lot Dr. Hamm)

actually attended every club meeting for SCSAA

attended an archivist Q&A panel

worked ~175 hours at Price Chopper

wrote a load of papers

gave several short-medium length presentations (seriously why did every class have to require multiple presentations?)

I managed to have a bit of fun along the way to help keep me sane:

went bowling a couple of times with fellow students (at the beginning of the semester)

went to the Whistling Kettle for high tea with some classmates

saw Hunger Games with a friend

read most of the Sherlock Holmes canon

went to NYC on a club fieldtrip

went to Vermont for a Tolkien Conference

saw The Avengers at midnight and then went on a late night Denny’s run

I also applied for a summer internship, I was lucky I accidentally stumbled across the job posting.  After not hearing anything for a while I took part in a phone interview with the curator.  A couple weeks after that I was surprised and really excited to be chosen to be the first ever Collections Intern at Fort Ticonderoga. 

On top of that I set up a fall internship as well; I’ll be back at the Foundation of New York State Nurses.  Fort Ti is a paid internship which is really nice, but it won’t count for academic credit, since there is no archivist to supervise me.  I will be finishing the MSIS in the fall.  I had a bit of a hold up along the way, since apparently I had applied to graduate from both departments at the same time, so I didn’t have an advisement number for the fall.  After a few emails and filling out a degree withdrawal form we got everything sorted so I could enroll part time for the fall.  I met with my adviser several times, and with the assistant dean of the department, and my future supervisor. 

Tomorrow I have an all day orientation at Fort Ticonderoga, and then I start work next Friday.  I can’t wait to get some in-depth archival experience.