Well I work full-time right now and have a mortgage so I can't just do a summer internship and stop my full-time employment. Maybe I should have clarified a little but I'm married and 26, I'm not an 18 year old kid straight out of high school. Just always loved technology and computers in general and have always been naturally good with them so I wanted to pursue it as a career.
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Going to college in a couple of years, need some help from you guys.
- Thread starter jtvd78
- Start date
Start reading as much as you can about jobs in IT. Sign up for job alerts and follow things on Monster, Indeed and etc. Start tinkering with things at home even if it's setting up a firewall on an old tower PC. See people talking about VDI? Google that to figure out what the heck it is and how it works. College isn't totally useless.. I had professors who worked in the field and still did consulting on the side. The program stayed pretty modern to what the latest tech was. However every school is different. Look into local community colleges. They are affordable and to be perfectly honest you don't need a ton of school training to start.. most of what you'll learn will be on the job. College can help one, show that you can commit to a goal, two, help you get started with the basic education and three, help you network with fellow students, professors and local companies that stay in touch with the college.
Start reading as much as you can about jobs in IT. Sign up for job alerts and follow things on Monster, Indeed and etc. Start tinkering with things at home even if it's setting up a firewall on an old tower PC. See people talking about VDI? Google that to figure out what the heck it is and how it works. College isn't totally useless.. I had professors who worked in the field and still did consulting on the side. The program stayed pretty modern to what the latest tech was. However every school is different. Look into local community colleges. They are affordable and to be perfectly honest you don't need a ton of school training to start.. most of what you'll learn will be on the job. College can help one, show that you can commit to a goal, two, help you get started with the basic education and three, help you network with fellow students, professors and local companies that stay in touch with the college.
This is how the college is that I am attending. One of the professors is actually the IT administrator at the school, and most of them actually work in the field and teach at night. I think this school will be good for the real world training and insight.
Maybe I should have clarified a little but I'm married and 26, I'm not an 18 year old kid straight out of high school.
Yeah, that's some pretty important information there. you would have gotten different responses that would make more sense if we had known that since the original OP is only 15.
Next time don't thread jack.
1. It'll confuse the OP in the answers he sees (trying to filter what applies to his specific questions
2. you'll confuse responders who don't read the entire thread. I actually thought you were the original OP since the name seemed similar by just glancing at it. :/
artbird309
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2012
- Messages
- 100
I'll put in my two cents from the view of a student in college right now.
I am currently in my third year of college at a small regional campus of a large University. I am pursuing a BS in Informatics (the only cs style degree here) I never heard of Informatics before coming here but I am told it is like a CS degree. Up till this year I have not learned anything in my class. This year I started the programming class which I finally started to learn new things in. I have never really done much with programming mostly system administration and desktop support.
Only one of the two professors in the department is active in the IT field, the other senior one hasn't work in IT for fifteen years and when he did it was as a salesman.
I have learned all my skills from reading on the internet, play/doing my self at home, or on the job training.
I started getting servers and networking gear at home in high school, I had a fully working AD environment and vlan's setup at home before I graduated. Along with working at a few small computer shops in town and doing consulting. After high school I went to college and started working for the helpdesk at my school and reading a lot on the internet.
After a year and a half I applied for the tier 2 opening and got that. We are a very small campus so our IT staff is small and the tier 2 is made up of student workers, we support most issue on campus from both students and staff. I have learned a lot from this job, I am doing those things on a daily bases from basic computer issue to helping other staff move most of our core server to virtual server in a data center 50 miles away at the main campus.
If there are things I want to learn and don't do much or not at all at work. I have built a up resources at home to test them and figure it out. I have a ESXi server, switches, site to site link with my parents house.
I think the degree is just a piece of that means you might know how to learn things but not that you have learned them. Now day it is something to get you in the door but cert, work experience, or both are what they are looking at in higher end jobs.
That is just my two cents from what I have learned so far in college and with the jobs I have had.
I am currently in my third year of college at a small regional campus of a large University. I am pursuing a BS in Informatics (the only cs style degree here) I never heard of Informatics before coming here but I am told it is like a CS degree. Up till this year I have not learned anything in my class. This year I started the programming class which I finally started to learn new things in. I have never really done much with programming mostly system administration and desktop support.
Only one of the two professors in the department is active in the IT field, the other senior one hasn't work in IT for fifteen years and when he did it was as a salesman.
I have learned all my skills from reading on the internet, play/doing my self at home, or on the job training.
I started getting servers and networking gear at home in high school, I had a fully working AD environment and vlan's setup at home before I graduated. Along with working at a few small computer shops in town and doing consulting. After high school I went to college and started working for the helpdesk at my school and reading a lot on the internet.
After a year and a half I applied for the tier 2 opening and got that. We are a very small campus so our IT staff is small and the tier 2 is made up of student workers, we support most issue on campus from both students and staff. I have learned a lot from this job, I am doing those things on a daily bases from basic computer issue to helping other staff move most of our core server to virtual server in a data center 50 miles away at the main campus.
If there are things I want to learn and don't do much or not at all at work. I have built a up resources at home to test them and figure it out. I have a ESXi server, switches, site to site link with my parents house.
I think the degree is just a piece of that means you might know how to learn things but not that you have learned them. Now day it is something to get you in the door but cert, work experience, or both are what they are looking at in higher end jobs.
That is just my two cents from what I have learned so far in college and with the jobs I have had.
Yeah, that's some pretty important information there. you would have gotten different responses that would make more sense if we had known that since the original OP is only 15.
Next time don't thread jack.
1. It'll confuse the OP in the answers he sees (trying to filter what applies to his specific questions
2. you'll confuse responders who don't read the entire thread. I actually thought you were the original OP since the name seemed similar by just glancing at it. :/
Well I apologize, as I already said I did not mean to thread jack and I didn't realize until reading some of the responses that they would be different.