"Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking"

Already half way through the first term of the second year and it seems like only yesterday I was struggling to remember every one's names and resorted to 'Dave'. It's hard to believe it's been 7 weeks.

Coming back to the second year I knew it was going to be hard, the work level had increased, the requirements to pass assignments had increased and the tight nit group had dramatically decreased. Sitting back in the classroom for the first time, I was nervous about what to expect. The John started discussing the new assignment. At first I was shocked, perhaps expecting something similar to the first year where we were gently eased into an assignment, then I realised I was being stupid and began to hurriedly take down notes about CSS, web standards, and all the other geeky elements to web design programming brings.

After a day of lectures regarding what to me at the time was pure gibberish I knew Steve was right when he had previously said the second year would be much, much harder. Much harder than I had expected in fact.

My thoughts then turned to the assignment we would be receiving the following day, our team assignment. This assignment perhaps filled me with the most fear as I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It wasn't an assignment that was easily researchable, especially when I had no idea of what role within the team I would be taking on. Almost as soon as these fears came they went however as I realised just how good a team we had, and still do have.

Due to the nature of the assignment we have been given, and the fact I was appointed developer of our team task, most of the work I have had to do has been very programming related. Although I don't mind coding too much, it is one of the areas I have less experience in and so I have had to work very hard to keep up with some other members of the group.

Attempting to learn PHP has been one of my biggest tasks I have had to undertake over the past 2 months and at the same time the most enjoyable. Learning PHP in such a small time was a huge task to undertake, especially with no real tuition or lectures to guide me and for this reason as a group we chose to abandon creating our own CMS for our team project and to use a pre-developed system. When this was first decided I was slightly frustrated, not because I thought all my time and effort had been wasted, but because I didn't want to take the easy way out. After speaking to Steve afterwards however, he too agreed that we had made a good decision in using a pre-developed system which made me feel a bit better.

Learning CSS has also being a enjoyable and difficult task, though as John said at the beginning of the year, it just needs to 'click' and I think for me it has. Although I'll be the first to admit my CSS design for the assignment perhaps wasn't the best in the class, I'm proud with how far I have come from the summer assignment which was very basic and unimaginative.

All in all I think the past 2 months has being the best 2 months of the course so far, despite my initial worries. I'm looking forward to what the next 2 months bring and also the rest of the course. We've still got lots to do, including the completion of a team project for a live client (one of my favourite assignments to date) as well as yet more presentations to practice etc.

My goal for the next set of assignment hand ins is to get a merit (at least) and so it will be interesting to see what comes of them. Now, off to read up on usability testing...