Ready, Aim, Fire!

The second year officially started today and with it many changes. The first being having 5 less people in the group, the second being our 'blogs now being called 'Online Learning Journals' and being 'themed'. Lucky for me then that the first week's theme is on targets both the next 6 months and the next few years.

The next 6 months or so is easy enough. Come February time we will be onto our 5th assignment of the year, with 3 handed in. Looking back to a previous blog I set my self 4 main goals for the year as a whole.

• Get onto the second year

• Get at least a pass on every assignment first time

• Obtain at least 4 merits on assignments

• Improve on my design process (Design more than 6/7 thumbnails)

Now, one of those is already met, so that only leaves me with three to go. Improving on my design process will be the easiest goal for me to meet, as it is something I can do on every single assignment (starting now) and is something I will really concentrate on this year. Getting a pass on every assignment first time will hopefully be relatively easy too (so far so good anyway) but meeting my goal of 4 merits will be the most difficult. Out of the assignments we will have done in 6 months I will hopefully have gained 3 out of 3 merits for them. If I complete this goal then that means I am well on track to get at least 4 merits this year, if not 5.

With Steve's new Merit/Distinction criteria sheets this should be even better, as first impressions seem to be that they are a lot better than last year, and on the whole a lot more obvious as to what we have to do to achieve the higher marks.

This of course then leads me onto my mid-range targets. In 2 or 3 years time, what do I want to be doing. Now I have never made any attempt to hide the fact that my career prospects are all over the place, and even after completing the first year and getting onto the second year I am still unclear about what I really want to be doing. For this reason this is perhaps one of the hardest 'Online Learning Journals' I have had to do so far, and probably will have to do. I have learnt so many skills in such a little time on the course that by the end of this year I will hopefully have enough skills to be able to go into whatever career path I choose.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that if the second year goes anywhere near as quick as the first year then my time to decide is quickly running out. The best response I can give is that if I do decide to go into teaching (or any other random career that comes into my head) then no doubt in two years I will still be studying (be it for another HE level course or to get a top up to a full degree), if I decide to go into the web design career route then hopefully in two years I will be in the industry working. Who knows...

Like with real targets the wind affects the direction the arrow travels in, and at this moment in time the arrow is still being blown in different directions whilst traveling towards it's final point.