Choosing a college major may be one of the most stressful aspects of joining a college. For you to understand life as an MIS student, this blog will walk you through a day in the life of an MIS student and an instructor in MIS.
I First interviewed Ed Weber, a Clinical Instructor of MIS, and my academic advisor. He has already been my instructor for 3 classes now: Business Analytics, Intro to Information systems, and System Analysis and Design. Ed Weber is also the owner of Weber Enterprises, a computer consulting firm.
Ed Weber explains how teaching MIS for him is to take all the tasks he does in his own business and assign them to his classes. That way, he can bring all his experience into his classes, and give students “a glimpse of what is in their future”. He explained how the pandemic didn’t change a lot in his life because he was already introduced to video conferencing, and remote accessing tools in the 90s. He and his colleague were joking about the fact that the world was “finally catching up!” when we all had to work from home.
When asked about things to consider before joining MIS, he said “The main thing is to understand just how broad the industry is, working in MIS doesn’t narrow you down to one specific thing. There are so many different avenues you can take, you can get into Application development, network and protocols, security of assets, audit, and many more.”
I then interviewed Yves Izabe, a Senior in the Tabor School of Business majoring in MIS. Yves and I are also friends outside of school and also members of the African Student Organization. Yves wants to be an operations research analyst and MIS qualifies him to do so.
When asked about how a typical day for him is, Yves said that he attends classes in the morning and spends most of his afternoons at work. For Yves, being an MIS student means spending a lot of time on projects, especially coding assignments, and that is what he does of his evenings while also giving some time for his other assignments.
Yves also explains how working remotely didn’t change a lot in his working/studying behavior as MIS doesn’t require much time with the professor, but with his computer where he tries to learn new codes that come out.
When asked about what he thinks one should know before joining MIS, he said they should be ready to learn and update themselves as the digital world changes every day. He added, “In MIS, we deal with various programming languages, and those languages are updated almost every year, so as an MIS student, you are required to be updated with them on a daily basis”.
MIS is such a broad major that anyone can be able to find a place in it. The most important aspect of it is that you must be ready to learn new things because MIS evolves every single day.