To add, Devac - Young whelps with an interest in more than email, snapchat and Office are useful in colleges because the college IT department undoubtedly has work study and that work study is full of people who can use you at no cost to themselves. You can learn a lot from them but more importantly you can see deployments much larger than you would ordinarily see. If you show proficiency you will end up with more responsibility than you should probably have. This is a useful "nerf" environment where you can make mistakes, learn stuff and gain recommendations from people who actually have clout. You can also experience what users are actually using, what they wish they were using, and what they're likely to be asking for two years from now so you can get ahead of the curve. Being young and informed and willing to learn will serve you a great deal of benefit even if IT does not end up serving your purposes. Many small, agile organizations often rely on multitasking. Having a, say, Maths grad who also happens to know networking automatically puts you ahead of every other Maths grad they're interviewing. My wife took exactly one class in MS Access in her spare time for free and it was the impetus needed for the special projects team within her multinational accounting firm to snatch her out of bookkeeping and turn her into a software architect. People who work in IT rarely have the time or impetus to explore the fringes. As a young inquisitive kid you can explore the bejeesus out of the fringes which makes you informed and appealing.
Much appreciated, thank you! :D That's actually a rare practice here, at least on my university. Job at uni IT is closer to actual work time-wise and it's mostly for people during their senior year as most science departments are organised so that fifth year (we have ETCS here: 3 years for BS, 2 years for MS) is almost exclusively for doing your thesis. That way students can get some extra work experience while still having ample amount of time to do their projects. While it's a neat solution in general, it also means that it's nearly impossible for an undergrad to 'beat' a senior grad student's resume. For instance, they already have a college degree. ;) That said, I'll look around. Uni IT wasn't really on my radar for the above reason, but I know that there are various options. As always: ideas, tips and pointers are appreciated, but our respective countries have certain idiosyncrasies that could make them less applicable.college IT department undoubtedly has work study