17
Feb
Hello Again Blog, Goodbye CIT 594
Topic: Family and Friends
I’m back to blogging more than a few times a month now. As I’ve mentioned before, I had to cut back mainly because of the programming class I was taking, which was absorbing all of my free time and then some. Last week I dropped the class, and at this point I don’t think I’m going to return to Penn’s MCIT program. It was a difficult decision, but there were three things that, taken together, destroyed my enthusiasm for the program:
- The professor for the course - the same guy I had last semester and the same guy I would have had again next Fall - was terrible. I complained about him before so I won’t repeat myself here.
- MCIT is a master’s program that is specifically advertised as career oriented. In reality, it is essentially the equivalent of an undergrad computer science academic degree, minus the typical undergrad general ed requirements. Academic exercises like writing your own programming language (like we were doing in the class I was taking) aren’t the sort of thing you’d ever do in an actual IT job. But I have to fault myself here for just reading the brochure page and not digging into the course information before signing up.
- I had expected to spend about 10 hours/week on homework, in addition to the time in class. But this semester’s assignments were demanding more like 20 hours/week. Trying to squeeze that in meant Maria had to take care of the kids almost all the time, which was unfair since she’s at a crucial point in her career (she’s tenure track at Villanova, so now is the time she has to shine in order to get tenure down the road). And of course, spending weekend after weekend sitting in front of a computer, with the door closed, isn’t where I want to be when there are two small children on the other side of the door who want me to come out and play.
I don’t have a really clear picture of where I want my career to go. I signed up for the program because I figured I’d stay in computing, since that’s what I’ve been doing for 10+ years and I like it, and I could get the degree for free, so why not? Before I make a final decision on whether to go back to the program later, or apply to a different one like Drexel’s MSIS program, I’ll need to first clarify my motivations, and think about exactly what I want to get out of it.
February 17th, 2006 at 8:42 am
I’ve been going through this same thing lately. With Terry finishing her program we will be moving back to DC after the summer and I’m trying to figure out what to do from here.
I’ve been thinking of getting some sort of CS degree since it looks like that’s what I’m going to be doing, but then I think I really want to get a design degree. I am much better at programing then design though even though I tend to enjoy design more.
And we should see each other at some point. Maybe once Eidan is a little more settled into a routine.