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So. The deed is done.
I dropped CSCI 145 Intro to Programming II (Ada).
Which also means that I am dropping out of the Computer Science major, as this class is a required class for that major.
I talked to academic advising before doing the deed, and asked what major would be appropriate for me. She told me about the College of Business' majors in Management Information Systems, the IT training track. (Turns out it's where a lot of the "can't cut it in CompSci" folks end up going.) I met with the head of the MIS department this week, and we both agreed it would be a good fit. With possible career tracks in Systems Analysis, Database Management and Website Development, it's a logical fit for me. Employers like Microsoft, Boeing, Safeco all recruit from the department. (Not that I would *ever* work for Microsoft. Probably.)
And there's a growing job market, bouncing back from the dot.com boom and bust of a few years ago. The time is right.
I'm feeling good about this decision.
But I never would have thought in a million years I would be getting a business degree!
I dropped CSCI 145 Intro to Programming II (Ada).
Which also means that I am dropping out of the Computer Science major, as this class is a required class for that major.
I talked to academic advising before doing the deed, and asked what major would be appropriate for me. She told me about the College of Business' majors in Management Information Systems, the IT training track. (Turns out it's where a lot of the "can't cut it in CompSci" folks end up going.) I met with the head of the MIS department this week, and we both agreed it would be a good fit. With possible career tracks in Systems Analysis, Database Management and Website Development, it's a logical fit for me. Employers like Microsoft, Boeing, Safeco all recruit from the department. (Not that I would *ever* work for Microsoft. Probably.)
And there's a growing job market, bouncing back from the dot.com boom and bust of a few years ago. The time is right.
I'm feeling good about this decision.
But I never would have thought in a million years I would be getting a business degree!
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From:
no subject
Overused but true.
It also sounds like you were not the only person who has gone through this before.
Good luck.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
The following advice might be unwanted or simply the obvious depending on how your school runs their program, but here it is:
- MIS is a fine discipline to get into. However, it can vary all over the place from glorified janitor (sysadmin) to architect of business services for a large company.
- Librarian skills are far more valuable than you might presume, especially if you get into DBA stuff.
- Learn to be a good generalist and found yourself in the basics. Most business problems, even those involving computers, tend to be ones that have occurred before.
- Pick up some good business oriented skills to track your IS/IT career. Accounting, clerical, etc. Good MIS people who can deal with accountants are often worth their weight in gold, even if they're forced to program occasionally in COBOL or RPG/400.
- Speaking of, if you can learn AS/400 stuff while in school, do it. The skills are almost always immediately applicable to jobs right out of school. That said, those jobs are weird dead-ends with limited room to grow.
- Pick at least one infrastructure area to master. This can be databases, a given operating system (unix, OS/400), job pipelining for large interconnected systems or networking.
- Pick one resume applicable skill set to master. Browse dice.com or monster.com to know what people are looking for. Right out of school you're immediately doomed by buzzword bingo. Hell, I'm doomed that way. I can't program asp.net on IIS for M$-SQL server and visual basic. I expect that I'd pick it up in about two weeks. That still won't get me a job and I'm pretty clued otherwise.