Right now my major is SIS with a concentration in Software Engineering, so that is my primary focus as far as career development goes. However, I am looking at getting an MS in Information Technology with a concentration in Information Privacy and Security. I feel like those two degrees could pair well together and make me a more suitable candidate when looking for careers in the future.
I realize that in order to stay abreast of current technologies, it is going to take a lot of time both in the workplace and at home. Fortunately, I have always had a great interest in technology and enjoy creating little projects at home to work on. I feel like projects such as running a website on a Linux server, practicing and learning programming languages, as well as building RetroPies can help me stay on top and make me more competitive.
Some of the challenges with working in a technology-related field is that technology is always changing. This constant state of flux forces people to either adapt to the new situation or be left behind. A couple great examples of companies that failed to adapt are Blockbuster and Sears. While they are both still around, the latter far more so than the former, they are no longer the powerhouses they once were.
While I am aware that at the end of the day, it is still a job, I hope to find one that I enjoy, that way it will motivate me to learn new things and succeed. By striving to learn new things, I hope to avoid one of the biggest traps in any job, which is becoming complacent. By becoming complacent, you stagnate and are no longer providing benefits to either yourself or your job. In the end, I hope to not only improve myself, but the company I choose to work for as well.
Technology has impacted me so much that I don’t even really stop to think about it. I remember growing up in the age of dial-up modems and the surge in popularity of email. While technology was present as a child and later as a teenager, it wasn’t as all-encompassing as it is now. On one hand, it makes me appreciate how difficult things used to be (researching with encyclopedias as opposed to Google), but it also makes me realize just how much easier things are to do now, like being able to contact anyone at any time.
A lot of technology could be considered a double-edged sword. For example, people can find almost anything they want because advances in technology put a world of information at our fingertips. Of course, this wealth of information also means we must sift through a lot of it to find what we need. Instant messaging and texting have been accused of causing students to not have the same level of writing skills that their predecessors had. By relying on acronyms and autocorrect, many people feel that teenagers produce more spelling and grammatical errors than they should. But texting also allows for rapid, concise communication which some could see as an advantage over the long and flowing style in past years.
Despite the inherent flaws in technology, I couldn’t imagine living without it. Technology has given me the opportunities I have today and is the reason that I am pursuing a degree involving software engineering. Without the level of technology today, I honestly have no idea what kind of job I would have or what kind of career path I would be working towards.