Portfolio and Flickr Updates

After spending nearly a year of significantly gaining more experience in Web Design and Photography, I finally found time to redesign my Portfolio and update my Flickr Account:

My Portfolio: http://www.elizabethhossain.com

My Flickr Account: http://www.flickr.com/elizanngray

Hope Studio 310

After a brief absence from updates, I have returned with a website I recently redesigned:

www.HopeStudio310.com

Hope Studio 310 LLC is a company that began with one product -- The Character Connection Game™ -- and grew as founder and Life Coach Susannah Spanton created specialized products (based on the game) and began offering workshops in addition to her Life Coaching services.

I will keep you posted as I continue to update the site. In the mean time, you can stay-up-to date with Susannah's Twitter account:

http://twitter.com/Susannah310

My Experience of Learning Design. . . yet another year later

The process of learning design – both in the sense of learning to arrange professional art and learning to construct programs – is an extra suitcase I will always carry behind my laptop. Just when I think I have leaped ten steps ahead of my skills level by learning how to achieve another editing task in Photoshop or another coding miracle in programming, I find myself starting a project with a client (or, in a recent project, with an employer) with the expectation that I am going to finally learn one new programming technique and instead learn 3 (or more) new techniques.

I am about to embark on another journey in my field. Having completed a website with over 100 pages over the past nine months and more features than I ever expected, I am ready to move forward with larger projects.

I am not certain if anyone has read this blog besides my college professors, but I have reached a point where I will no longer be discussing the skills I have learned (or perfected), only the projects I have completed. I can call myself a Web Developer who is skilled in XYZ languages until the job title becomes my trademark, but unless I can provide samples of completed projects, who is going to take me seriously?

I have recently redesigned and updated my portfolio: www.elizabethanngray.com. It now includes the 100+ page website I worked on (and maintained) since last May. I had been given permission to add it to my portfolio, so I posted the site within my domain as it looked the last time I worked on it (not including links to the company's database, which have all been disabled).

Nearly one year has passed. . .

Nearly one year has passed since I graduated from a four-year-university with a BA Degree in Digital Media. While I have not obtained a permanent, hourly-paid position yet, I have completed four internships as a Graphic Designer (two of which involved web design, one involving a paid freelance project), and I am now working on two more internships as an assisting programmer -- one which also involves graphic and web design. I am also about to begin a paid web design project while continuously inquiring about a part-time position as a Photographer/Graphic Designer/Web Developer that I was interviewed for. I am so unbelievably happy considering all the time and effort I have put into my career goals. On top of all this, I have a collection of personal projects that have been put on hold until I at least complete the first programming project. I have always been one to create projects towards the completion of all my life goals, and I enjoy doing it.

Current Music: "On My Balcony" by Flunk and "Rainy Monday" by Shiny Toy Guns

Progress and Setbacks

Not many of my long-term goals flow exactly according to plan.

I did not reach my December 1 deadline on learning all the necessary skills for Digital Media careers, which further proves how difficult it can be to learn everything on your own.

Plus, I have reached a dilemma: I have searched the Internet and books for the most simplistic, step-by-step tutorials for MySql. As far as I can tell, none exist.

The problem derives from the fact that the one of the best MySql tutorials I have come across teaches me how to run MySql from DOS, and I would like to learn how to run it from an offline server. Even worse is the fact that all of the other good tutorials seem to start teaching you how to build databases only to jump ahead 4 steps and expect you to have a specific database already built with specific data already added to it, then to take this non-existing data and code a PHP page to post the data. That is very frustrating. Therefore, I would rather meet with a tutor for about 2-3 hours one day and ask all the necessary questions until I am certain that I can work with MySql without anyone's help.

Which reminds me: I have been making a habit of making arrangements to meet with people one day for "X" amount of hours for anything I need to learn. Prior to meeting with these people, I brainstorm every single question I need an answer to (or think I need an answer to) so that I won't need to return to them for more answers anytime soon. The person may seem a little impatient when it turns out you have a huge list, but that is a natural reaction that you cannot avoid. As long as you approach the person professionally and with courtesy, they will not feel irritated because you are clearly reducing the questionnaire session into one meeting.

It's only if you contact them repeatedly with more questions that you irritate them, though there is a limit. You should be able to read each question consecutively in one minute. If not, then you do need to try to answer as many of those questions as possible without anyone's help and only ask the most challenging questions.

Also, if you had, say, 15 questions as you started learning a program/skill and 15 more after you finished teaching yourself, that is also acceptable because in the eyes of your teacher: You have taken the time to apply the answers they gave you and taught yourself how to use the program/skill, and now, you're only having trouble understanding some of the advanced skills. That is to be expected, and teachers appreciate it when you can take the time to do the work before you return with more questions because: 1. Enough time will have passed since the last meeting for the teacher to not feel burdened by your request to meet again. 2. You have proved to the teacher that their efforts to help you were not a waste of their time.

As a tutor, I understand how frustrating it can be to spend sixty minutes of my valuable time teaching a program to someone only to see at our next meeting that the person has not applied those skills. I admit, I am guilty of the same habit, but I broke that habit after disappointing my mentor during my last term in college. No matter how busy my life becomes, I always make sure to meet all deadlines for projects, that I never overburden someone else with my problems, that I never waste someone's time when I need help, and that the people that help me do not devote time to me in vain.

Now, with everything I have learned so far, I am finalizing my resumé and portfolio. I have no idea when I will be finally ready to begin the job search, but I will definitely not begin until I know I am qualified. My only obstacle will be to work around the 3-5 year experience requirement, since I only have less than a year of internship experience.

In the meantime, February 1 will be a checkpoint for me. I hope that by then, my resume and portfolio will be ready to go, even if I am lacking one or two skills.

I begin my future

Back before I graduated from a four-year university, I spent my last term completing senior projects, one of which involved learning all the skills employers need from college graduates in my field. . . Digital Media.

The courses I took in order to gain that degree were a toss of the coin -- either an extremely difficult and tedious subject that I will never apply to my future career (in other words, a "necessary" prerequisite for the classes I needed) or an extremely exciting subject that taught me everything I needed to know in one skill or computer program (or both).

The internship experience I gained from the Digital Media program is lacking. The first internship I was accepted into lasted exactly one month, and I was never allowed to do anything productive. The second one was not well organized. I was never given an adequate amount of time or instructions on my assignments. As a full-time college student, I had the right to time management. I should have been given a schedule based on my class schedule.

I think the concept of an "internship" has been thrown out the window for many employers. Companies that seek free labor or fully-trained, fully-experienced employees need to look elsewhere. Now, if they are truly seeking an intern, they are seeking an individual who has spent the last 4+ years with their free time consumed by tedious, infinite projects and needs to know how to apply the knowledge from these projects. These individuals need a demonstration on how a logo, brochure, magazine layout, and website are all designed. If they are like me, they need to be first redirected to a mentor who can teach them all the software and techniques that they were not taught in their college program. They also need time to learn. Forcing an intern to RUSH RUSH RUSH through a program that they are just learning (for any job project) is self-defeating. College gave them time to learn; the internship should be no different.

There is a difference between being fast-paced in computer programs/skills you have full experience with and ones you have barely used in your life. Nothing will ever be learned if the student must rush through the training. I know this first-hand from my first internship.

I was lucky enough to have a mentor during my last term in college. Unfortunately, I still have not learned EVERYTHING and need to hurry up and do so. Time is running short, and I need to have a career started by December 1.

Fortunately, I was hired as an intern for a friend's business as the Web and Graphic Designer of the company, soon to be the complete Web Developer. I am training myself in web programming during office hours, and as a true intern, I have this luxury.

I am also leaving myself open to any design opportunities. I am currently the Supervisor for a Business Student's financial project. I designed her logo and brochure cover, and I am available to review the work of her other designers at her discretion.

I will become fully educated in my field. I will become what these companies have been searching for.