About Me!

 Hello! My name is Alex Umsted, and this is my third semester in the program. I am from Aiken, SC, and I have moved back to my hometown after years if being away. If you had asked me in college if I would ever move back home, I would have scoffed at you, but I have really enjoyed being back home and seeing the town through a different lens.  I am a gamecock through and through. I earned my undergraduate degree in English back in 2014 and also earned a Master’s in Teaching in 2015. When I decided to go back to school, I was ecstatic to learn about this MLIS program at USC and have loved every minute of it thus far. I started this program in the spring of 2020, and I also took a few summer classes. I was a high school English teacher for four years, and I am a first year high school media specialist this year. On a whim, my school had an unexpected opening at the end of last year, and I was able to complete the amount of credit hours needed to pertain a media specialist permit. I am VERY excited about entering this new profession and being able to put everything into practice that we get to study in the SLIS program of study. My goal at the end of the program was to become a high school media specialist, so I am very excited to get to enter into the profession early and really put what I am learning into practice. When I have any free time, I enjoy traveling (when it’s allowed again), reading, writing, listening to podcast (stole this hobby from Dr. Green’s list) and working on my home. I bought a home for the first time last August; it’s a fixer upper and keeps me very busy. I also have a very lovable pup named Boyd.

If I had to pick a song to play every time you entered a room, it would probably be the theme song from “The Office.” I’m not sure if a show’s theme song counts, but I often find ways to use quotes from the show to relate to everyday life and feel like the energy of the song gives me a sense of comfort. If it doesn’t count, I would have to say Taylor’s Swifts “Shake it Off” is also a great song for me because we often have to just shake things off in education, and I feel like flexibility will definitely be key this year.