How I Got To Neumont: If I stay there will be trouble…if i go it will be double
Posted on February 19, 2008 - Filed Under Neumont
This will be the final part of this, so here goes!
Somewhere around quarter 3, Is when gaming in school started. At first it was a healthy thing, I didn’t play in class ever. Not flash games, not solitare, nothing. I would be on the internet sure, but I never played games. I did play games during lunch though, and it was a social thing. This was when Cohort 9 got the motto fo a cohort that games together stays together. We played all sorts of games mostly it was DotA, but other games as well such as a small stint of D2, occasonial CS, Soldat, savage, C&C3, Guitar Hero, and various other games.
This was really what got me to start enjoying Neumont, Playing games got me to meet other people beyond those that simply sat next to me. My circle of friends grew, and I started to actually feel like I belonged here, at least socially. A group of friends and myself requested to share the same apartment at student housing. Projects were going well, classes were going okay but not as well as when I first started. Essentially, I passed the point of no return, I’d invested already 20k in tutition and I was stuck staying here. I’m still not certain today if this was the right decision. I do enjoy the problem solving of programming, but the majority of the other things I don’t. I still feel my calling ultimately lands me somewhere away from a computer, but for now it’s going to have to be good enough.
Now back to Neumont some where around quarter 5 or 6 is when things began going down hill fast. As this is when I began gaming during class. When I started Neumont I was getting A’s in everything, then it dropped to B’s. Nothing was alarming, it was just the change form knowing most everything going into the class to actually learning during the class. After gaming though, grades dropped to C’s and D’s. Certainlly not something I was okay with, nor proud of. However, sitting next to my former friend lesser Ryan, eventually lead to me playing games with him. He had started playing games in class prior to me, but for a while I was able to avoid temptation. However once Java 1 came around, that all fell apart. By the end of the quarter I spend nearly as much time in class playing games as I was paying any level of attention to the class. My grades continued to stay low, and ultimately have lead to me needing to stay an extra quarter then I need to, so i can take enterprise projects.
Well there we go, a written account of my time so far at Neumont. Things started of well and continued to drop as my dedication to programming being my life calling faded, but stuck here do to high tuition cost. We’ll see if things spark back up once I’m being paid for my time. We’ll see how it turns out.
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3 Responses to “How I Got To Neumont: If I stay there will be trouble…if i go it will be double”
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I came across your blog today, while looking for an old friend.
I graduated from Nuemont University with the 3rd cohort, and it was interesting to read of your experience, which started roughly around the time I left.
Y’know, I think I’ll just send you an e-mail… which you’ve proabbly already read by the time you read this comment.
h’ok…. I couldn’t find an e-mail to send it to. My Sleuths use of Outlook couldn’t even tell me if your last name was Graening, Gromer, Murray or Vrooman.
Here’s what I would have written, had I found it. (It’d start with text from the previous comment, and then…)
You’re far enough in now that it really is in your best intrest to stay the course, get those good marks and land a good job. I had some good friends that were in a very similar situation as you. Starting out stellar, due to their general awesomeness, but somewhere in the middle hearing the call of the Game. (Its some of those friends I’m trying to track down, actually: Al Rasmussen, A.J. Burt, Joseph King..)
I came out ahead - I landed a job at EDS with a hefty starting pay, and started work approximately 72 hours after my last class got out.
You might already know this, but the apartments in the area near the school are WAY more expensive than the ones a short bus ride away. The Sterling apartments are, the most expensive per square foot in the whole frikkin’ valley. I’d recommend doing what I did: arrange to have that little bit extra on your loan, “Living Expenses”, and get an apartment somewhere near the TRAX. (I was in Midvale, with a $450/mo rent) Sure, it means waking up a little earlier in the morning, but that’s a Good Thing. For me, it kept me away from roomates that pressured me to play WoW, and other distractions.
You should also figure out what kind of things you like doing. Myself, I really enjoyed the courses taught by Terry Halpin: Logic, Information Modelling, etc. I ended up getting a job as a Data Modeller. Get a taste of everything there - coding in C#/java/.net.. Project Management… Software Development stuff.. Data modelling.. and see what you like the most.
If at all possible, get a job with the school grading assignments. I was grading the Information modelling courses, and I can directly attribute success at my job to the experience I gained looking through and evaluating peoples messed-up models. (My job involves a good bit of looking through and evaluating people’s messed-up models. :O)
And a bit of a warning: The hardest part is yet to come! Once you start getting into the ‘enterprise project’ stuff, the difficulty scale goes up quite a bit! Not that the actual WORK gets any harder, but that you get first-hand experience with working with (or leading!) a project team. You’ve probably had some experience with it in other classes, like the first-semester TiSD but those Enterprise projects… I was on one that flat-out failed. Even so, it was a great boost to my overall ability to get hired.
Keep on going, all the way to the end. Don’t let up on the effort - keep working like you did the first few semesters. Find what you like, and see if you can get to be a grader for it. You’ll come out of it with a mountainload of debt, and a job that can pay it off. GET OUT OF SALLIE MAE - the %^#$%^s charged my 15% interest rates. Find out what you’re paying in interest and get that thing reconsolidated to something with a lower interest rate early!
Don’t end up with a partial degree, some 30k-a-year-if-you’re-lucky consulting job and debt for the next 30 years. Go for the full degree, 60k-a-year company job and debt for the next t/ten/ years.
and.. uh… write me back! Once I get your e-mail, I’ll send you some questions I’ve got ’bout Neumont these days.
Ya, i’m defiantly sticking it out, I’ve got one final quarter left. I was living out of housing(by 72 next to trax, maybe thats where u lived :O), but am back in student housing for the last couple of quarters.
I’ll def take note of sallie mae and look to re consolidate with someone else once i can. I tried being a grader earlier at Neumont ,but i didn’t have a SS card so they didnt want to pay me. By now i’d rather have my free time knowing after next quarter i’ll be working 40+ hours a week. I’m looking forward to Enterprise and hoping I get an enjoyable experience from it.
and if you want to email me DDshizn@gmail or yahoo.com both work. Thanks for the comments and encouragement ^.^