Where Am I, and How Did I Get Here? - Part 2

The first thing we were ever asked to do on the course was to write a blog. This blog was entitled Where Am I, and How Did I Get Here?. This blog outlined where we were in our skills and most importantly where we wanted to be in 2 years time. That 2 years is now almost up and now is the time to look back at this initial blog and reflect on where we are now and how we got here from that moment 2 years ago. In this initial blog I wrote

"My main reason for joining the course is to have fun and enjoy it, but I am also hoping to use it as a stepping stone, either to a job, or a full degree at university."

Throughout the course I have had nothing but fun and it has being very enjoyable but more important about this statement was I was hoping to use the course as a stepping stone and the course has allowed me to do this.

In the past few weeks I have managed to gain a job working as an ICT technician for a local school. Although this job is not strictly design based I feel that without the course I would not have being able to get it.

This is because the job requires a very mixed and broad knowledge of IT skills. These skills include web design and programming skills (such as PHP and Javascript) but also the transferable skills which we have learnt throughout the course such as time management and team skills.

These skills I feel are as important, if not more so than the core skills I learnt on the course. This is because the transferable skills I have learnt can be applied to almost any job situation in one way or another, where as obviously the core skills I learnt are specific to certain jobs.

I also wrote in my initial blog

"Presently, all the skills I have learnt about web design, graphic design, etc. have been self taught skills. Something of which I am sure a lot of employers could do without. For this reason, I hope that from the course, I will gain the necessary experience and qualifications to further my career and advance to the next step."

As I have already said, I have learnt skills on this course which have aided me to getting a job which is a testament to the course.

One of the biggest choices I have had to make on the course however was whether to attend a third year at university or not. My reasoning for not doing this option and getting a job is because I feel the course has taught me as much (and more) as I would learn in a third year at university.

Speaking to friends who are at/have being to university in the past it sounds like they are throwing a lot of money away to learn absolutely nothing and so I decided that I would rather put the skills I have learnt so far to work. As they say, you don't really begin to learn properly until you're out there doing it.

Finally one of the last things I said in my initial blog was

"Now, I’m no stranger to hard work, but I know that to get to where I want to be in 2 years will take a lot of hard work, probably a lot more than I’ve experienced before. But at the end of it, when I’ve gotten the right qualifications to get the job I want, I’ll be able to look back, and know it was all worth it."

There is no doubt in my mind that the past 2 years have being the most testing of my educational life so far but as I said in my initial blog I was expecting it. I can definitely say that the past 2 years was worth it too and would recommend the course to anyone who was even considering getting into the industry.

Evaluation of the Last Semester

This past semester has been somewhat...different.

To begin the semester was our CSS beauty assignment. This required us to not only learn CSS but also learn about the history of it too. I found this one of the most difficult assignments to date mainly down to the fact that I had never used CSS before, only once previously for our summer assignment. Although I found the assignment very difficult I also found it to be very enjoyable as CSS is a very valuable tool to use in making websites.

At the same time as this assignment was going on we were also given our team project assignment. This is perhaps one of the strangest assignments we have had as we were not really given a brief. This is because we were expected to go out and find our own client and build a commercial website for them. Although the assignment is a huge task, and one that we couldn't afford to do wrong it has been the best assignment to date. Along with Craig and Mirhad I think we had a fantastic group and all gelled well together to get the tasks done. Throughout this assignment I have also learnt a lot more than I first thought I would have. Before starting this assignment I had never used PHP before or a content management system but I now feel relatively confident with both and hope to use them both again soon in future projects.

This assignment has also given us the chance to work in a more 'industry standard' way. We set ourselves the task of building a website in a day which, although ended up being planned quite late (for reasons outside our control) went exceptionally well and I was very pleased as to how it turned out. In the end we completed the site (or as much as we could have done at the time) in the allotted time and I'm exceptionally proud of what we did. If anyone get's the chance to do this sort of thing (1st years spring to mind straight away) then do take it, it will be one of the closest experiences you will get to 'the real world' in an educational enviroment you can get.

Our latest assignment (A12 - Culture Vulture) has got to be the strangest assignment to date though as it has involved a backwards design process. This basically meant that we had to design for a product which was unknown to us at the time. I really struggled with this assignment right from the word go as not only did I completely mess up my presentation but also I struggled to 'let myself go' and be diverse in the creation of my ideas. As the weeks progressed I felt that I managed to be a bit more creative but I still feel like I could have done more.

One of the highlights of the A12 assignment has being the creation of our own compilation CD's, though trying to make them as diverse as possible was quite a challenge. It made a change to listen to music that we would not normally have listened to, and although I didn't like all of it, I think it served it's purpose of inspiring me and influencing me in ways I perhaps would not have been otherwise.

At present I am in the process of making my trexi designs digital which is a huge task in it's self and I am feeling quite nervous towards the looming deadline as I still have a lot of work left to do (for both assignments). I still have to complete the digitisation of my designs, complete my website to upload them to, create a collectors card and write an evaluation - plus everything else for A11.

Once the deadline is over I will be happy to have a few weeks off and enjoy the Christmas break, clear my mind and be ready to come back to work ready for the final semester.

The new semester will definitely be the hardest yet, with 3 huge projects to undertake including learning a new piece of software, creating my own portfolio and partaking in the dreaded presentations. But the end is almost in sight and it's no time to let my standards slip, as Steve has said many a time now, do we want to go out with a whimper or a bang, and I definitely want to go out with a bang.

A New Year, A New Semester...

A few months ago, we were asked to write our first blog entry about ourselves, our backgrounds, and our futures. Now that our first semester is over, it's time to see how far on to achieving my goal at the end of the two years.

The first semester has been, dare I say it, easier than I first imagined. This is not to say that the first semester has been easy, I think that I had just prepared myself for something a lot harder. I'm not planning on slacking off mind, as I know that the next semester, and the whole of the next year, will just get harder, more assignments, more to do, possibly less peers to keep up moral, who knows.

The class will already seem much emptier on a Wednesday, now that Chris has decided to drop down to the HNC. It will be interesting to see how this affects the minds of some people on the course, after Steve has mentioned about the 'domino effect' in previous years.

My main goal of the course is still to use it as a stepping stone, either to a job or a full degree, however where as a few months ago I was dead set on just a job, and not really considering a degree course, the news that Steve is applying for a third year at Thornes has made me think otherwise.

So far I seem to have learnt more on the course than my brother has in 3 years of university. All be it he is on an entirely different course to me, but from what I hear about his lectures and lessons (what little of them he has) not much learning seems to go on. Also, speaking to others doing similar courses at universities seem to be able to do very little work and turn up to very few lectures, and still manage to pull off a decent grade. It makes me wonder how employable they will be after their course, with or without a degree.

At the present time I am still trying to work out what I would like me end career to be. Up until know I have know that I would like to work in some kind of design or computing job (ignoring my journalism instincts for the time being), but have not sat down and worked out exactly what. This was probably something I should of done a long time ago, but I never really saw it as important. Working out what career path I wish to take at the end of the course will then help me decide on whether or not I need a full degree or not.

Whatever I decide to do at the end of the course, the first semester has helped me greatly. I have gained valuable experience in new software and theory, of which I can now put into practice in future assignments, to adapt and build upon my new found skills further. Because I have had very little experience working with web and graphic design, it is good to have more experienced members in the group and to use them as a sort of goal, and to try and improve my own work so that it is to their standards, and then try and improve further.

I think the next few months will be the most important yet, as we are using more advanced software (such as Dreamweaver) which we will be using quite a lot through out the rest of the course, and so getting used to it and learning it well will be my next key goal when returning to the second semester.

I look forward to seeing what new challenges the next semester brings up, and eagerly await my results from my previous assignment.