Simmons College - Microcosm Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Five-year plan Evangeline H. Morris, Director You have seen her wandering the corridors in February and March wearing sensible shoes, carry- ing a black bag, and waving a large bar graph de- picting the annual cost of garbage disposal. She is Simmons ' prodigal daughter, the fifth-year nurse. Bent over a cup of black coffee (spare the fatted calf), she spins the saga of the Five Year Plan. Her vocabulary ranges from Aschhiem to Zondek, but she will allow you access to her library which may include a medical dictionary and battered copies of Stearns, Starling, Kafka, and Millay. Memories of prodromal days include summer ses- sions in Boston, bedroom slippers fashioned from yesterday ' s Traveler, the history of the profession from Neanderthal woman to the Brown report, fragrant felines, cabbage au gratin on the Foods Lab floor, and the chronaxie that could be defined. Her timeless devotion to her freshman English instructor transferred to the Biology Department, and she had then passed the point of no return. Somebody sold her a limp white cloth which a Chinese laundry, two common pins, and a minimal blood loss transformed into a white winged cap. Mrs. Whitten helps budding microbiologists. Lorraine Langenfeld sits by while Pat checks pressure. Jocelyn Walker gets in forty winks while Barbara Smith and Anne Smith do their stuff. 128 }

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cross reference, et al After a blissful three years of liberal arts, the typical library school senior is suddenly plunged into a maze of dictionaries and subject headings, selective aids and Cutter numbers. From this seeming con- fusion emerges one of Simmons ' most sought-after graduates; placement for her is simply a matter of deciding which one of the many offered jobs to choose. The library profession is flexible enough to provide for almost all kinds of interests and al- most all kinds of jobs — research or driving a book- mobile; scholarly or on the pre-school level. The senior year at Simmons is the starter in the library field. Into that one lone senior year have gone many hours of figuring out Dewey ' s simplified spelling, furtive searches for red pencils, cries of But what IS the difference between ' x ' and ' xx? ' and read- ing everything from Ideas and Men to Winnie the Pooh. There have been trips to the various inner sancta of the library world — the Atheneum (that proper Bostonian ' s retreat), to Harvard ' s Houghton Library. There have been coffee hours in Stowaway (an activity by no means restricted to the Library School) and social gatherings in 318. At the end of such a year, armed now with her BS in LS, the Simmons girl goes forth to brave the perils of the children ' s room or the intricacies of catalog- ing, or to answer rechercha questions about the annua] precipitation in Patagonia. And she also goes forth to prove to the world at large that the Library is a Social Institution. In addition to the four-year program at Simmons, there are the five-year plan leading to a Master ' s de- gree and two programs for college graduates — one general and the other specialized — also leading to a Master ' s degree. These graduate programs have be- come increasingly popular, which accounts for the apparently anomalous presence of co-eds. With a Master ' s degree even more doors open and a whole gamut of opportunities appear in the wonderful world of books. Kenneth R. Shaffer, Directo

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of labs, lament and lend-lease After two-and-one-half years as a member of the Simmons family, she packed her toothbrush and her knowledge of underlying principles into an old bandana and emigrated to MGH or the Brig. The sudden loss of one-thirties, weekends, and the privileges of a casual culture was a temporarily stunning blow. Soon, however, she became an integral part of a specialized community. Here were simultaneous stimulation and frustration — a real- istic reason for delving into the vast body of ac- quired knowledge and a realization of new depths and fields of learning with inadequate time to make complete use of them. The nursing procedure lost its formidable importance and assumed a second- ary relationship to individuals and their problems. She searched the operating room waste bucket for a lost kidney stone; her experience in the diet kitchen was as fascinating as the salt-free cream of wheat she created there; she laughed, loved, griped, and cried a little — so the year passed. The next twelve months were filled with moving days and specialized affiliations. At the Children ' s Medical Center, she observed some of the most advanced methods of pediatrics, and read Gesell and Mother Goose while eating arrowroot cookies in the linen closet. The maternal instinct which had known healthy activity at Childten ' s received considerable kicking around at the Lying In. It became hyperactive in the nursery, slightly stifled on the post partum floors, and went into complete hibernation in the labor room. She raved about the food, griped about the bath tubs and fell in love with a premie. Rolling acres, spacious brick buildings, and a golf course gave McLean the appearance of a country club. What country club is equipped with flying eggnogs and a shock unit? After losing her initial fear of the psychiatric patient, she found that many of them were interesting and likable people. Through study of and association with various stages of ab- normal personality, she came to better understand herself and the vagaries of the so-called normal individual. In her fifth year, she returns to Simmons, more black coffee, concentrated doses of sanitation, ad- ministration, education, and — at last — graduation. Stay a moment! Mark her well! The changes in program (the student spends three full years at the college and the last two years in clinical work) doom her species to extinction within another year. Nevertheless, the end product will be essentially the same — a nurse sufficiently sttong in ideals and suffi- ciently flexible in ideas to play the important role as future Florence Nightingale. {29}