I've been planning to do something in the PC field for quite some time, But really haven't figured anything yet. My question is, am I taking the correct courses to prepare me, and based on what I am taking now, what should I do for a career. Also I'm not quite sure what to do for Co-Op, so anyone experienced with it, any advice? Current Course Selection/Enrollment: Intro To Computers (HTML etc. Was required) - Freshman Advanced Computers (Javascript, also required) - Freshman Java 1 - Sophomore Java 2 - Sophomore AP Computer Science - Junior Electronics and Computer Technology 1 (WeMoCo) - Junior Electronics and Computer Technology 2 (WeMoCo) - Senior Digital Electronics - Senior Design Drawing For Production (AutoDesk Inventor, Excel) - Freshman Architecture - Sophomore Digital Electronics and AP Computer Science, can be switched (Junior/Senior) Considering I'm no longer a Freshman and on my way through my Sophomore year, anything with sophomore and Freshman appended to the end, cant be change, since I've already taken them
Based on the courses you're taking you're looking at a straight IT career. What other interests do you have? What type of career goals do you have? Are you mostly interested in software or hardware? If you have any interest in Business you should look into something like being an Manager of Information Systems. It has to do with computers but you're not the IT guy that gets called when someone can't get excel to work correctly. It's almost impossible to say what career you should do since there are some many different options to look at. I'd recommend taking a MBTI test if you're unfamiliar with some of your personality traits (Intro/Extrovert, Thinking/Feeling, etc) and then find out what types of jobs fit your personality best. For instance if you know you're not a people person you'd probably want to consider a job besides IT consulting which requires a lot of face time and interaction to be successful. Since you mention an AP course I gather you're still in high school. With that being said co-oping at this point in your education is going to require quite a bit of footwork to find a company that is willing to accept a high school student. Most co-ops are through a university that has a pre-existing relation with a corporation that you co-op with. The classes that you're planning to take and have taken will serve as a good foundation for any degree having to deal with technology and computers. AP computer science is a good class as I've taken it myself and proved valuable when taking college classes. I'd recommended an excel class if they offer one (as long as it's not below your current abilities). If you know excel and how to fully exploit it you'll become invaluable to a company once they learn what you know how to do (set up pivot tables, descriptive statistics, modeling, etc).
