Pre-Deadline Nerves? Not for me thanks.

It is a day before the deadline. I feel I should be worried, yet surprisingly I'm not. No nerves. No mad state of panic. Nothing. This is why I am writing my blog entry for the week less than 24 hours before the deadline.

Saying this however, the weeks not been all calm. Tuesday was quite a hectic day, making sure that all my work was printed, putting everything into plastic wallets, making sure that everything was filled in etc. This was probably the worst day in the whole of the assignment, which is why I chose to do it at home, where I may not get distracted as easily, and might find it calmer than panicking at college. I've also began to design and create my own portfolio website which gave me a welcome break from worrying about the assignment.

The best thing about the week so far has been the satisfaction of knowing that my assignment is pretty much done and knowing that Thursday will not be a blind panic for me, arriving at college at around 8am. I have based my thoughts around a quote that Steve gave to us a few weeks ago in a lecture. This being:

"Time only seems to matter when it's running out" - Peter Strup

Which is why I have tried to get my work finished slightly early, so that instead I feel confident enough that I can arrive at college at around 10.30am and spend half an hour just double checking over my work before dropping it in at around 11am.

The worst thing about the week so far has had to be the amount of tedious checking over of work that I've had to do as well though. However, saying this, I realise that this is a necessary part of the course and that without checking over my work many times I would never pass the course. I'm also quite glad that I did check my work over a few times as every time I found something that was wrong, even tiny things such as a double space or a missing capital letter.

All in all, I've had a very positive week. Probably my most positive yet. I don't feel like anything extremely negative has happened this week for me to worry about, and I am looking forward to the weeks break of half term where I can continue to develop and create my portfolio website and not have to worry about an imminent deadline looming.

For once I do not think that there is much I could have done differently this week. Perhaps if I had taken a little more time and care over some parts of my assignment then I would not be sat here typing up a blog, but it all comes down to my results of the assignment. If when I get my results back from Steve, and I have failed my course then I will wish that I had spent today adapting my assignment further, however, if I get my assignment results back and I have passed (or even received a merit or distinction) then I will be happy knowing that I have put extra hours in throughout the week into my self study time so that my final week before the deadline was not spent rushing the assignment to get it finished on time in a flurry of nerves.

Hours until deadline: 23

"And Our Time Is Running Out"

Life seems to be imitating art this week as Matt Bellamy (Lead vocalist of Muse) can be heard echoing in my ears with 'Time Is Running Out'. After all, time really is running out for us at this moment in time in the course. It's now less than a week before our first deadline which means I'm thinking more in terms of days rather than weeks. Luckily however, I've managed to get the majority of my work done which has now given me the week to spend time checking over every word, nay letter, of my assignment.

It has definitely been one of the most stressful weeks of the course so far. The sheer mountain of work that has had to be done, on top of the knowledge that we had until Thursday to have our work to 'Submission Standard' has meant that it's been pretty much non-stop working since last Thursday. Over the course of the week I've redrawn my screen designs in my sketch book, which now look a lot neater and more accurate, as well as then re-creating them digitally in PageMaker. I've also written my evaluation, corrected most of the mistakes in my assignment work, and put it all into the correct format.

All this work did firstly mean that starting the week I was quite nervous. Scared even. But from the word go on Wednesday I immediately began to feel slightly more relaxed. We had a lecture from John about our blog’s which was quite useful as well as interesting as it gave us the chance to see other peoples blog’s and see what other people where doing wrong, which coincidentally also happened to be what we were doing wrong. In the afternoon Diane came round to speak to a few of us again which gave me an opportunity to finish off my screen designs and once again create them digitally which was one of my major worries as I thought it would take a lot longer than it did.

Thursday contained another lecture, this time from Steve, who went through the PageMaker template with us, which I was very pleased about. Even though my assignment was already in PageMaker, some of the thing's I had not done, such as using the style formats. Instead I had simply manually altered the fonts of the text which I found out was incorrect. The rest of the morning was spent changing my assignment to make it to, what I thought was, submission standard. This took a lot of the pressure from me, because I knew that we were the first group into our feedback meetings. This meant that anything that required changing I had most of the afternoon to continue changing things.

As I said before now all I have left to do is check through my work and make sure that no corrections are needed. All my work is hopefully correct so it is just a case of me looking for spelling and grammar mistakes, double spaces, double line breaks, etc.

Next week should be a relatively easy week for me. Just again checking through my work and printing off what needs to be printed off. On Thursday I'm hoping to get into college quite early and hand my work in early enough before the deadline to avoid anything going wrong (such as today's fire alarm).

Days Until First Deadline: 7

Time Fly's When Your Having Fun

Well, another week over already. Time seems to be flying at the moment. Once more I’m unsure if that’s a good thing. Half term is only 2 weeks away, but so is our first deadline, looming over us growing closer every day. No, time flying is definitely not a good thing.

With just one week until our assignments have to be up to submission standard, it’s been yet another manic week, importing all the work into PageMaker, beginning putting in our references, and getting vast amounts of feedback about our designs.

A week without any lectures was relief due to the amount of work we have to do. It was good to have Wednesday and Thursday morning’s free to simply work on our assignment’s and actually feel like I was getting somewhere. The scariest thing at the moment funnily enough isn’t our ‘Great Briton’ assignment. It’s actually thinking about our next two assignments. It will take serious time management to concentrate on two assignments at once, which is something I’ll really have to work on. But that’s a few weeks away yet.

As I already said, a lot of work has been done this week. It’s probably my most productive week yet. In fact I seem to be capable of doing more and more week each week. I don’t think it’s down to me trying any harder, though I’m sure if I get asked I won’t deny it, but I actually think it’s down to the fact that I’m getting into my stride a lot more and I’m now able to cope with the work better and not sit pondering over a question for 15 minutes. The only problem with the week really is, like I said before, time seems to be passing by so quickly that I fear the assignment won’t be ready in time. I can see serious self study at home this week.

Next week the assignment has to be up to submission standard, so next week I think will be spent changing things pointed out to me in our feedback groups, and tidying up loose ends. I will then no doubt have another feedback group where further things are found wrong with my assignment and I will then spend the majority of Thursday afternoon altering my assignment further ready for submission date.

Week until first deadline: 2 (Submission standard in 1)

"This week, I have mostly been learning..."

This week, most of Wednesday was spent learning PageMaker. Now, PageMaker may not be the most technological of tools – in fact in the industry it's laughable - but apparently it's a 'good learning tool'. So learn we did. For a change I found PageMaker extremely easy to use, and got a good grasp of it straight away. If that keeps up then I’ll have no problems learning all the other pieces of software we have to use over the next two years, although something tells me that’s not going to happen. The good thing to come out of finding PageMaker rather easy to use is the fact we have less than 2 weeks to get our assignments to submission standard. Every second seems to count at the moment, so I'm finding it quite difficult at times thinking I may fall behind due to college lectures both Wednesday and Thursday mornings.

It’s been a very productive week this week, despite having very little time on Wednesday to do any assignment work or on Thursday morning. I’ve somehow managed to get both my ‘neat’ screen designs done and drawn up in my sketch book (soon to be uploaded to my blog) and have even started work on my digital screen designs in page maker (again soon to be uploaded). My site map is finished, so I’m well on my way to achieving the target date for the assignment.

Next week I think will be rush, rush, and yet more rushing however. Luckily we don’t have Helen again until after half term, which gives us an extra couple of hours a week now to work further on our assignments, draw everything together, and get it up to submission standard. It’s scary to think we’re over half way through the assignment already.

Keep an eye out for my screen designs hopefully up on my blog sometime this week.

First Deadline: 3 Weeks (To be ready in 2)

Wanted

SCREEN designs. Five. Grainy, sketched, and annotated. Seek honest feedback from all readers. See below. Comments or E-Mail.


One:

Two:

Three:

Four:

Five:

Easy! Easy! Easy! .... I wish

Three weeks into the course and already the tone is set. We’ve already got two assignments, one of which we’re already a third of the way through. Yet despite all this it’s been a relatively easy week. After all, all we’ve had to really do is continuous work on the ‘That’s The Plan’ assignment throwing up question after question, problem after problem, and lecture after lecture. Ok, so maybe it’s not been an ‘easy’ week. But it’s the easiest we’ll get. Next week we’re half way through our first assignment. After only 3 weeks.

I must say though, I’m glad the weeks over. Not because it’s getting to the weekend, after all the work doesn’t stop when we leave on a Thursday afternoon, but because the worries that I had when I started the week have now gone. Starting the week I wasn’t too sure where I was meant to be in relation to the course. Was I meant to be up to my screen designs? Or was I meant to be simply still comparing similar sites? With this been the first assignment I just wasn’t sure what to expect. If anything though I think I’m now ahead in my work. Which again, I'm not sure if is a good thing or not. Hopefully if I am ahead, I’ll find out sooner rather than later and be able to go over things I may have ‘rushed’ or ‘skipped’.

In general though it’s been a very productive week after the initial stage of having enough questions to create my own game show that is. But since then it’s all gone quite well. Though most of the assignment so far has been ICT research, now I'm finally getting onto the art and design part of the assignment, again, a very good thing. Though it’s not all been fun and games this week. It’s been extremely difficult to break old habits. Habits such as not writing down sites visited and times of visit, writing notes from all lectures - though after 3 weeks this is beginning to get slightly easier. Though I think that’s the key, just to keep doing it, and in a few weeks, hopefully, it will be instinct for me to do it.

In general through the week it’s been very straight forward. I don’t think there’s much I could have done that I haven’t done. Which I suppose is good. But in a way it’s also bad. After all if I'm going to mess something up I think I’d rather mess up at the beginning of the course than half way through. Saying that, I think I’d rather not mess up at all.

Next week I’ve got loads to do. I'm hoping to get quite a lot of research done, on various things, like my costs of building the site, and my costs of maintaining the site, etc. though that’s not all. Hopefully I’ll have all my thumbnail sketches done too and scanned in so I can get feedback on them from all the avid readers of my blog. Currently standing at 1 as far as I'm aware.

Weeks until first deadline: 4

Week 2 - Assignments 1 and 2

We’re only the second week into the course and already 2 assignments. I'm starting to realise just what the definition of hard work is. The scary thing is it's probably going to get even harder.

The ‘Great Briton’ assignment is actually quite fun, in the fact it’s giving us a chance to research and plan a website based around our ‘Great Briton’. I was a bit sceptical about the idea at first, thinking ‘How am I supposed to design a website, with no images or text, about a ‘Great Briton’?’, but now it’s quite clear.

It’s quite an arty assignment, as apposed to an ICT assignment, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s going to be a good start to get our creative juices flowing before we have to combine them with the ICT part of the course as well.

Photoshop is the only software that we’ll really have to use for the assignment, which is a plus, as I've got quite a lot of experience using it so I'm hoping I can use that to my advantage with the assignment.

The worst thing about the assignment will be learning the new ‘Harvard reference’ system. Gone are the days where a bibliography at the back of the assignment will suffice. Saying that, gone are the days where assignments were spoon fed to you with a ‘check list’ of thing’s you had to do. Yes, there may be ‘check lists’ in the new assignments, but to get them we’ve got to make them ourselves.

The ‘Sketchblog’ assignment sounds relatively easy. Keep a weekly blog, and do work in our sketch book. Right, now if it were only that simple. The blog part of the assignment seems relatively easy, as long as I remember to update this weekly. I'm sure eventually I’ll get into the habit soon enough though. It’s the sketch book part that’s troubling me the most. For a whole year, every thing that goes into my sketch book will be marked. Notes, pictures, sketches, designs, even things I just liked the look of and decided to stick in. I guess again it’s all down to habit, getting into the routine of taking notes, and making my sketch book my first point of call for anything we do. That way I guess I can’t really go wrong.

Only time will tell.

First Deadline: 5 weeks.