Howdy, readers!
I wanted to write a brief post about last week’s blog topic, choosing a major.
I had first approached this problem from the “Well, what subject do you like best in school?” angle, and that had initially led me to history. I figured I could teach high school with it, and all would be well. That was the plan – until I took “Intro to Classroom Teaching.” I realized that as much as I like to think of myself as a patient person, I simply don’t have the attention span being a teacher requires. That helped me realize I need a job that can keep me on my feet and moving around.
Up to this point, I had been working in the IT department at my high school (Rosati-Kain, if you’re curious). When people asked where I worked, I would tell them and then bashfully add, “It doesn’t even feel like a job.” And I was serious. At first, I thought it didn’t feel like a job because I really liked my co-workers and former teachers, and I felt comfortable there, which certainly wouldn’t happen in my limited perception of a job. After failing at being a teacher, though, I rethought things. I realized that my part-time job doesn’t feel like a job because I genuinely enjoy what I do when I’m at work – fixing printers, crawling under desks to plug Ethernet cables back into their switches, rearranging wires in the server cabinet, installing wireless access points here and there, maintaining existing equipment, I could go on and on. The variety of tasks that I get presented with every day I go in keeps me interested and there’s a huge element of challenge that comes with the job.
So, to figure out what I need to major in in order to have get a job in an IT department, I looked at job-openings results on different Saint Louis companies’ websites to see what institutions look at when they’re hiring IT people. Generally, it’s some kind of computer-science or information-management degree, and I decided to go with computer science. I’m getting into some upper level classes now, and I really like what I’m learning.
My advice: Experiment to figure out what you like and what you don’t like. I was lucky enough to have taken that teacher course relatively early on in my time at Fontbonne, and it was a real wake-up call that I was headed in the wrong direction by pursuing teaching as a career. Experimenting as a worker in the IT department at my high school was a another message, one that helped me know I’m on the path to what I think will be an enjoyable career.
So, with that, I wish you good luck in picking a major!
Tagged as:
choosing a major,
computer science,
information technology,
IT
I’ve only had three days of classes so far (my schedule works out so that I don’t have any classes on Fridays!), but I’m exhausted by school already, and the (admittedly weak) enthusiasm with which I came into the new term is swiftly dimming. (Geek-out time: if you graphed on a Cartesian plane the change in my enthusiasm this week, it would look like the graph of y = 1/x. You know, a curve that starts up close to the y-axis, then curves downward until it hits its horizontal asymptote and basically gets closer and closer to zero? That’s exactly what it’s like. I’m sure you either love me or hate me right now.)
My new course schedule is chock-full of computer science classes- a math class (Algebraic Structures), a programming class, a compiling theory class I’m affectionately calling “Dragon Studies” because of the drawing of a knight fighting a dragon on the textbook cover (plus, compiling theory seems like it’s going to be a… dragon), and an intro to server technology class. My only non-C.S.-related classes are American National Government and Newspaper Workshop, and they only meet once per week. I’ve got a lot of gaps between classes every day, but I have a feeling it won’t be long until all that time won’t seem like enough in which to finish my homework every day.
Actually, I think the classes I’m taking are going to challenge me to be more disciplined in my study habits. I’ve kind of leaned heavily on math classes in the past semesters for credit hours, and although I had homework every night, there wasn’t any memorizing of terms to do. Not to say that my classes have been easy (because they really, really haven’t), but there wasn’t the same amount of studying involved outside of homework – you do the problems every night, you get a good idea of what you’ll be doing on the test. The computer science classes I’m in currently are different – they’re heavy on theory and vocabulary, and I’m going to have to get into the habit of sitting down and memorizing my notes every night.
Honestly, I don’t have much hope for myself on this front – I hate studying, even though memorizing things isn’t that difficult for me. It’s imperative that I at least try, though – I’d hate for a bout of laziness to be what brings me down this semester.
We’ll see how this all goes, and you, dear reader, will most certainly be kept in the loop about it.
So tell me, are your classes a switch-up from last semester?
Tagged as:
computer science,
math,
new semester,
new year,
studying
