SI Visiting Days!

It’s been over a week since my last post. Whoops. But if I couldn’t make it to yoga for a week, do you really expect me to blog? But, I did have a really good weekend.

This past weekend was Visiting Days for perspective admitted students to U of M’s School of Information, and it was really cool. I’ll admit, they are marketing masters, but even without all that, I am pretty pumped for the program. Here are a few highlights:

• I changed my intended concentration. I had been thinking Incentive-Centered Design, but after hearing current students talk about what they’re studying, I think I’ll go for Human–Computer Interaction. Of course, almost all of the concentrations seem interesting to one degree or another, and the opportunity to take classes outside SI excites me, too, so I’ll probably go in HCI, but ultimately change to some sort of tailored program. In addition to Social Computing and other concentrations within SI, I’d also like to take some classes in the Business School, and get a taste of other related fields like Cognitive Psychology and Sociology. Basically, I think two years will be too little time to really experience everything I’d like to.
• I met other prospective students, which was great not only because these are the people with whom I’ll be spending the next two years, but also because I found that they are a group of people with whom I can relate. They come from very diverse backgrounds, some of which were very similar to mine, and some of which were very different. The same goes for the future goals of my soon-to-be classmates: some are very different from mine, but there are some with whom I could see myself working beyond SI. (Yep, definitely jumping to conclusions here.) The discovery that SI is a common route for people like me who are trained as engineers but do not want to work as engineers was also very encouraging. And a lot of SI people are also musicians. Cool.
• I met current SI students. Dinner at Pizza House was really nice. I sat with a couple of current students, one of whom will be opening up a usability consulting company (a route I may go), and the other is going on to get her Ph.D. in Medical Informatics (also cool, but not my thing). The fact that SI prepares its students to do both of these things is really excellent. At expoSItion, where students show off their projects, I was encouraged by the fact that the students who did some of the coolest projects were first-years. It seems like they dive right in, which I like.
• I met faculty. Not only is their work interesting, but they’re very approachable. I lucked out and was seated at a table with one professor who moonlights as a consultant to start-up companies (and getting equity ownership for it!), and the professor who teaches the entrepreneurship class. Very cool.
• I had some really good conversations with recruiters at the Job Information Fair (which is different from a job fair because they’re not actually recruiting). I made some good contacts, and was encouraged by everything that’s going on.

All in all, Visiting Days was a great experience, and now I’m pumped for school to start.