William Thomas

Good afternoon, everybody! My name is William Thomas. I am a 3rd-year senior here at the University studying MIS. I am from Atlanta, Georgia, and went to a small high school just outside the perimeter of Atlanta. 

I am extremely excited about this class. This will be a change of pace from a lot of classes I have taken here thus far. I believe that the highly interactive style of class will help keep me engaged in the discussions as well as with the homework. One thing that I am particularly excited about is the writing portion; but here is the thing, I don’t like writing. I am not what I would consider a good writer, following in my sister’s footsteps who is an English major with a side hustle of writing plays. This is why I am excited about this class. This will allow me to write on things that I am passionate and excited about in a more professional setting to continue to polish my writing and possibly get some tips along the way while diving deeper into emerging technologies and entrepreneurship. This is a part of business that I wish was emphasized more. Writing and communicating play a vital role in day-to-day business functions and having strong communication skills would help immensely across the board.

Now for a bit about me. I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, at Rex Hospital, where my 3 other siblings were also born. So, I am the youngest of 4. With an older brother, two older sisters, and two brothers-in-law. We moved to Atlanta when I was around 7 and that is when I began baseball. I have been known as Will the thrill or the red ninja because of my bright red catcher’s gear. Baseball played a huge part in my life but I got burned out at high school and found a few other passions such as tennis, football, swimming, and cross country. I love to stay active whenever I get the chance. 

In middle school, I picked up audio and visual production for musicals, churches, festivals, and conferences and did this till my senior year of high school. It has become much more of a side hustle now. However, I still get to enjoy these things thanks to my passion for music. I play guitar and piano, I love to sing (rarely in public) and spend much of my time listening to music, so definitely send me playlists of any of your favorite music. New or old. Any genre, throw it my way. 

I spend most of my time here at the University either giving tours as a Tour Leader. You should ask me about my favorite tour story that I have in class, it’s a treat. I also absolutely love cheering on the Dawgs. I am a die-hard UGA fan (probably to a fault but I keep it tame), so luckily this year has started on the right foot with another championship. Speaking of good news, my oldest sister, Avery, just had her first kiddo, Palmer Katherine (or as I call her PK because of sports… again) so I am an uncle now, which is just wild. Also, my other sister, Brendan, got married over the summer, so it has been a time of celebration within my family 🙂

Post graduation in May, I am planning to work for Cognizant. I will be working as a Business Analyst Consultant based out of Atlanta. They specialize in IT solutions, development, and implementation and have become one of the largest (if not the largest) IT firms in the world. I expect many of the technologies that we dive into in this class to be things that I work with on a day-to-day basis shortly and I am excited about what that experience may hold. 

All of that being said, I am excited about this class and the many discussions to come from it. I hope to leave this class with skills that will help me stay up to date with the ever-changing landscape that is today’s technology environment.

Go Dawgs.