IST 601

My weekend in Syracuse was great! Any time you can spend two nearly eight hour days, on the weekend, in class, and not notice the time, is a success. Complicated sentence, basic sentiment.

The class was very tight in its focus. Two days covering a wide range of topics would have been disjointed and left us confused, I would imagine. The focus was Innovation and Change, about taking ownership of the direction and path of change. The practical application being that we will be able to apply the things we learn in school in our professional lives. As the introductory class, it was also nice to cover the topics of effective presentations – essential in most any career, especially when petitioning for approval or funding – and scholarly writing. Rethinking scholarly writing may have come a bit late for me, since I already wrote so many things for my 511 class! It appears I used my creative writing “voice,” because I was thinking in terms of blog posting and such, and not my scholarly voice. This should be fairly obvious reading what is posted here on this blog. But I digress…

IST 601 was a great experience for me, it makes me feel like I am indeed in a Master’s program now, and that is something different and more challenging than my undergraduate degree. Except I totally did academic writing in my undergrad as well.