What I Want to Learn Part III

When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher. I thought I would graduate in May 1992, start a new teaching job in August 1992, and then, I would be an English teacher for the next 40 years. I'd retire when I was 62, and that would be that. Instead,

1. I despised student teaching
2. I was not a consistently awesome teacher
3. I did not have have students who wanted to learn. 

Thus, I graduated from college in May 1992 without a job and, eventually, found a position at ACT in Iowa City doing data entry for FAFSA (financial aid) forms. Eventually, I transitioned to a software tester position within ACT, which gave me the credentials to be hired at my first technical writing job, which I will address in Part IV - stay tuned!

I believe that if I would have known then what I know now, I would have been a Computer Science minor, despite my hatred, and well-documented on this blog, for math. If I would not have chosen Computer Science because of my hatred for math, I hope that I would have chosen to earn a Business minor. The reason I would like to take those two classes in Part I and Part II of this series is because I have had to learn a lot about "business" in a trial-by-fire manner. I have had to learn that there are many aspects to a business, many of which I *still* don't comprehend entirely.

I am jealous of the education Alex is getting at UNI as a MIS major. His major is a cross-section of business and computer science. I don't believe a MIS major existed when I began college in Fall 1988 and, frankly, even if it did, I would not have chosen it because I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher - that was my path forward into a long and rewarding career. If I could do my career all over again, I would have been a MIS / English double major with a minor in Computer Science.

When I saw those two courses in Part I and Part II, I felt a familiar twinge of lost opportunities that I never would have done anyways, but I still feel the twinge. Sometimes twinges are marked by an anniversary.