Academic
While I enjoyed my bachelor’s degree program, I felt it wasn’t specialized enough when I entered the professional world. After a couple of years getting used to my career field and better understanding what I was actually interested in, I decided to go back to school. The Digital Innovation in Marketing program appealed to me since it covered many of the topics I found interesting and valuable in marketing and advertising; big data, analytics, modern digital strategies, and many of the tools needed to best leverage digital content.
Professional
I touched on it a bit above, but I find digital resources such as big data and AI driven insights to be the bees knees. I’m hoping to shift my current career path of account service into a more strategy/data driven role within the advertising industry. I think the wealth of knowledge we can gather from big data can drive better insights into consumers personalities, buying habits, and predict upcoming trends. I want to position myself professionally as an expert that understands the digital tools that drive insights and provide the foundation for decision-making.
Personal
When I’m not working or taking care of school stuff, I’m often in the kitchen cooking or in front of my TV watching a movie. I love to cook and bake. Making food makes me happy, and sharing it with others makes me even more happy. I spent the later half of my formative high school years working at a local video store and then a Gamestop. I love film, but have fallen out of gaming quite as much as I used to. Before you even ask, I have spent many, many years combating the stereotypical “film snob” and “gaming nerd” righteousness. Lets not yuck someone’s yum just to prove you know more.
Funny you mention film snobs, ‘cuz I recently realized that while I more than often just turn my brain off when it comes to watching any sort of media (I just kind of want to be entertained, if I’m watching something)- I also really enjoy watching CinemaSins or random critiques that go further in depth of a movie’s history or “easter egg” details. I don’t think I’ve really watched any movies I’ve hated- because if I don’t like it going in I just end up not watching it.
I assure you that not all of my movie and media consumption is critical I’ve seen every Fast and the Furious film in theaters and love mid-night movies like The Room. I just love movies. I think the more you dig in and engage with something on an intellectual level, the more you can appreciate what’s being done on every level. Plus, some of the greatest movies of all times are just super fun watches even without a critical eye. It’s just too many people think the film is going to be homework when it’s quite the opposite.
Ben, I can totally relate to not feeling specialized enough after undergrad. I think our journeys leading up to this program may be quite similar. I started out as a database manager mainly because I wasn’t sure what I truly wanted to do so I just sort of fell into it. There I learned the importance of data. As a writer with an analytical mind, marketing/communications seemed like an excellent fit so I made a career shift. I’m hoping that this program can fill in some of the gaps for me as I’m a marketer who has never taken a marketing class. Now that I’ve found myself out of nonprofit and into a tech company doing digital marketing, the DIM program was a no-brainer.
I’ve always wondered if I could have come to the same conclusion about what I wanted to do as a career earlier in my life. Even though I’m happy with where I am and where I’m headed, it would have been great to be on this path at an earlier stage in my life. I’ve always been jealous of people that just knew what they wanted and headed for it. It just took a long time for things to click and me to understand what I wanted.
I feel that! But everyone has their own journey and their own pace.