Finally… I ended the online web design class on a great note:  100% on my final.  That is because the teacher was grading to a rubric and not on creativity.  What a relief!  I did not have time to mess with creativity and doing it on notepad takes some extra work.  I am told the ground class is allowed to use Dreamweaver and are able to spend more time on the creative aspects, but 5.5 weeks with a full class load does not allow for that.

The teacher told me she hoped I would continue with web design.  🙂  A great thing to hear when that is your major!  I fell in love with the whole idea of .css (style sheets) and clean code.  It fits perfectly with my technical writing training and my love for crisp business communications.  (I know…I know…I am not so crisp with personal communication, as this blog illustrates!  I do assure you that my business writing is very crisp – years working on government regulated documentation will do that to you!)   

I would call this a “thumbnail” version of my eventual website for Squangles, meaning it is a very, very roughed out idea.  Squangles is the business Charlotte and I are working on together.  It is in its beginning stages and we have big ideas, but I need to get through the next year or two of college.  I have much bigger plans for this site once I understand how to work tables, etc.  Here are a couple of pages:

The Poet

My online class this quarter is Introduction to the World Wide Web.  We will be learning basic html and creating our own site in Microsoft Notepad!  I was told by a web designer whose work I highly admire that this is nothing short of “masochistic”.  Nuff said!  At least the class only lasts 5.5 weeks; however, the homework is double (as if I were taking 2 classes.)

I am not sure what it is about starting a new quarter, but it gives me a nervous stomach! However, I was doing 2 new things this time… an online class on html and tutoring (work study!)

I thought…ooohhh…I can get a head start with this online class, so I spent about 4 hours on Friday (of my week off) and then some on Sat. and then again on Monday. On Monday I began working on my first homework due on Tues. when I began to realize I was in way over my head. (By then I was freaking out a bit!) With a little more investigation, calling my teacher (who seemed to think we were fine), and finding one little line that said I need a prerequisite, I winged off a panic filled email to my student advisor.

Tuesday I was at the school all day and dear Heather caught up with me… she did her own investigation and quickly enrolled me in the right course. However…that meant I had to catch up on everything that night so I could hit that evening’s deadline for the new class!

At that point I knew I was chasing a train for the week. 

On Wed. I began tutoring (teachers assistant) in the computer class (Microsoft Office) for 4 hours. Then in the evening I am in the student affairs office for 2 hours for one-on-one tutoring as needed by the students and monitoring the front desk as a pseudo receptionist when not tutoring.  After the first 2 weeks I began to realize this is a great way to get my face known around campus, if that had been my goal (it was not but it won’t hurt anything.)