Informational
Interview of Mike Splane by Stephen Long November
22, 2011
I saw that you had gotten an award for
MIS, so I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that major?
It was a bad occupational-related choice
for me and for the friends I took classes with. None of us worked in
MIS-related jobs after graduation. I probably would have been happier with a
marketing degree; I like working with people. I also might have been more
suited for a management degree, since I wanted to be a decision maker and not a
follower.
For some people MIS is the perfect fit and I know people who love that kind of
work. Employers pay more to college graduates with MIS degrees than they do for
people with degrees in the other business concentrations.
I don't know what I want to do in the
future. Do you have any advice? I would suggest that getting any degree is
the most important thing. Too many doors are closed to you without one. If you
don't like the field you chose for your major you can always go back to school
later in life, or work in a field outside of your major.
What
made you want to become a teacher? About twenty years ago I decided I
wanted to get out of accounting, for a lot of reasons. I didn't really know
what to do instead, so I asked myself, what can I do better than most
other people? I thought I was good at breaking down complex subjects and
explaining them in simple language that other people could easily understand. I
thought of four fields where this would be useful: being a lawyer, a financial
advisor, a college professor, or working as
a corporate trainer. I probably would have been happy in any one
of those choices but first I had to go back to school. After I became a student
I found myself doing more and more tutoring of other students and it felt fun
and natural.
From
your story, you were given that opportunity, but if you did not get it, what
did you plan on doing? After I graduated with my BS degree I planned to go to
Did
you ever see yourself as a teacher in the past? Not in a
K-12 setting. I'm not good at working with children and teens, I'm just
too impatient. As a manager I was frequently training new
employees and I enjoyed that part of the job very much, so I did want to
teach, but only in a college or corporate environment.
Do
you have any personal pros and cons of being a teacher? I love what I
am doing and I don't know many people who can honestly say that. I have a
lot of free time when I’m not teaching. Nobody tells me what to do and I like having
that independence. I like creating my own material to use in the
classroom, and experimenting with different methods to see what works best. And
talking with people of many different generations and cultures is
fascinating. I like the students and they seem to like me.
There are a few things I don't
like. The pay is a LOT less than what I would have made if I'd stayed in my
first career. Grading homework is tedious. And I get
upset when students are being needlessly or thoughtlessly harmed by
other people in ways I am powerless to stop.