Technology Coordinator
MIS 3581 Final Project: Personal Internship Reflections
I didn’t walk into this role with a training manual or someone showing me how things were supposed to be done. My first week at Universal Creighton Charter School, a teacher’s smart board stopped working in the middle of a lesson and someone came to grab me like I already knew what the issue was. I didn’t, but I figured something out that worked, and that ended up being a pretty accurate preview of the job.
Most of what I started out doing was keeping things running. Laptops not turning on, printers disconnecting, random login issues, Wi-Fi dropping in certain rooms for no obvious reason. None of it sounds that serious on paper, but in the moment it always felt like it. If a teacher can’t take attendance or pull up a lesson, it throws everything off. Nobody really cares why it’s broken. They just need it fixed before the next class walks in.
Re-learning how to communicate was probably the biggest adjustment early on. I had to stop thinking like I was explaining things to someone technical. Saying, “It’s probably a network configuration issue.” Doesn’t actually help anyone in that situation. What actually helps is being clear and direct. “I’ll handle it” or, “Give me a few minutes.” I got a lot better at simplifying how I communicate and focusing on solving the problem instead of explaining it.
After a few weeks, I started noticing the same issues coming back. It was usually the same devices or the same parts of the building. At first I was just treating everything as separate problems, but pattern recognition kicks in quickly. Eventually I started paying more attention to patterns. What did these issues have in common? What might actually be causing them? That was the point where it felt like I wasn’t only reacting anymore. I was starting to think a little more like someone responsible for the whole system, not just individual silo’d pieces of it.
One thing I didn’t expect was how real the responsibility would feel. This wasn’t a structured internship where you’re working on a project in the background. If something didn’t work, people noticed immediately. Classrooms slowed down, teachers got frustrated, and it was obvious. That kind of environment forces you to be more organized and more honest with yourself. If I didn’t know something, I couldn’t just guess. I had to figure it out properly because it actually mattered.
A lot of what I’ve learned in MIS courses, especially MIS 2101, started to make more sense because of this. In class, you talk about how information systems support operations, but it’s easy to keep that at a surface level. Being in a school environment made it more concrete. When a system lags or fails, it’s no longer a simple bug that could be readdressed later, it affects how people do their jobs in real time. Seeing that made the connection between the coursework and actual work a lot clearer.
I don’t really have one big project or headline accomplishment from this experience. It was more cumulative than that. A lot of small issues, handled consistently, over time. But that’s also what made it useful. It gave me a more realistic picture of what working in technology looks like day-to-day. It’s not usually one big solution, it’s showing up, dealing with what’s in front of you, and gradually getting better at recognizing and solving problems before they repeat.