Hi everyone! My name is Alyssa Kata and I am a
first-year MSI student. I also work as
an Information Mentor, meaning I get the opportunity to communicate with a lot
of prospective and incoming students and answer their questions about what it
is like to be a student at UMSI. I
thought it would be helpful to write a blog post to answer a few of the
questions I get asked most frequently. So,
here they are:
What's Ann Arbor like?
I should preface this answer by saying there
will be another blog post coming on the topic of living in Ann Arbor later in
the semester. But from my prospective,
Ann Arbor is a great place to live.
There always seems to be something going on at the University, at UMSI,
or in the downtown area and there are many great restaurants, bars, coffee
shops, etc., as well as other cultural pursuits for students to enjoy. For those who have never been to Ann Arbor,
here is a quick video from the Pure Michigan Campaign (puremichigan.org) featuring
the city: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejZjzgPoVUk.
What are some ways students can get involved outside of the
classroom in student organizations/extracurricular events?
There are many ways UMSI students can get
involved and pursue their interests outside of the classroom, including joining
student organizations, seeing guest speakers, and attending and/or helping to
plan special events. For example, an
annual event that I participated in this past January was the UMSI Day of
Service, where students, staff, and faculty all volunteered to help local
organizations either by using some of their “information skills” or by doing
things like painting, sorting food, or helping clean up a park. The group I volunteered with went to the Ann
Arbor Ecology Center and we helped their staff with several tasks like
performing heuristics evaluations of their websites, improving their database, and
updating their YouTube page. Some of the other popular events that UMSI
students have participated in and helped organize recently include the A2 Data
Dive (http://a2datadive.org/),
World Information Architecture Day (worldiaday.org), and Quasi-Con (http://quasicon2012.wordpress.com/). On a personal note, I attended World IA Day
and this is an event that is held in several cities around the world, so it was
very cool to see UMSI’s involvement in a larger global community of information
professionals, as well as meet some of them on our campus in Ann Arbor.
If you are interested in the types of talks or presentations
held at UMSI on a weekly basis, I would recommend checking out the UMSI Events calendar,
a resource I find helpful: http://www.si.umich.edu/newsandevents/calendar?tid=51. On another note, you will notice that many of
these events are scheduled around lunchtime, which I have found to be very
convenient when I have some time to spare between classes.
What are your favorite things about UMSI?
My favorite thing about UMSI and one of the
biggest reasons I chose to come to school here is the people. I mention this to a lot of the prospective
students I speak with but I have found the faculty, staff, and even other
students to be very helpful, welcoming, and engaged in the issues that are
important to us as future information professionals. There is definitely a sense of community
surrounding UMSI. I have also
appreciated the resources available to MSI students within the larger
university and at the School of Information itself. UMSI has its own Career Development Office,
academic advisor, meeting rooms that students can book for group project work,
a student lounge, and even an information studies librarian who holds weekly
office hours for students. The building
where the School of Information is located, North Quad, in itself is a pretty
great advantage of being an UMSI student.
If you haven’t had the chance to visit it yet, I would recommend
checking out this page:http://si.umich.edu/node/231.
What is the typical class size?
Another question that comes up a lot is how
many students are in typically enrolled in each course. From my experience, the classes required for
all first-year students are the largest.
There are usually two parts to those classes- a large lecture section
and smaller discussion sections. So
while my lecture sections have had 100+ students in them, my discussion
sections have had about 20 students each, meaning you are able to have much
more personalized interaction with the teaching staff. Other classes I have been in have had
anywhere from 25-60 students in them, depending on many factors, including if
the course is required for a certain specialization, what time and day it is
held, if students from other departments or schools are interested in taking
it, etc. Overall, I feel like even in my larger classes there are opportunities
for asking questions and for active student participation in discussion of
class topics.
What's the MSI student population like?
I was really worried about coming to grad
school with only one year of work experience and a limited programming
background. I felt like I might not be
able to keep up with some of my more experienced classmates. However, this fear dissipated quickly as soon
as I arrived and began meeting my classmates at orientation. I realized that there were people with all
different levels of experience and from many different backgrounds and
undergraduate majors. You will do a lot
of group work in your classes at UMSI and the great part of this diversity is
that everyone has something unique to bring to the table.
How is the workload for a full-time student?
In my experience, being a full-time student is
basically like having a full-time job. Most full-time students will take about 12
credit hours each semester (some semesters possibly less if you earn credits
through an internship). I think the general rule is that for every credit hour
a class is, you should expect to spend 3 hours working on it outside of class
and this rule seems pretty accurate in my experience. Of course, this is just an estimate so some
classes may be more and some may be less time-consuming. My group project classes seem to be the most
time-consuming, especially those that involve real-world clients because of the
effort it takes to coordinate everyone’s schedules. However, these classes have
been especially rewarding to me once I was able to reflect on all of the
experience and skills I gained. Also,
even with a full-time course load most students, myself included, are able to
hold a part-time job to make some extra money and gain relevant skills.
Although all of this sounds a little daunting, there is no need to fear, I have
still had time to enjoy the awesome city of Ann Arbor!
I know this likely doesn’t cover all of your
burning questions, so please feel free to e-mail me at akata@umich.edu with any others you may have.
As always, I would also encourage you to check out our website at
si.umich.edu - there really is a lot of helpful information there as well. And continue to use the Facebook group for
prospective students (or join if you haven’t already): umsi.info/Fall13Facebook to ask questions of current students and
staff. Chances are if you have a
question, someone else is thinking about it too!
-Alyssa
