However, in the past four to five weeks  I really haven’t made much progress at all, and have left myself with something like 10 days to learn a skill that I was given three months and 150 hours to learn.

The stress I felt was unbelievable, I really found it difficult to concentrate on anything. and seemed to have headache after headache, and even started to feel quite dizzy and ill.

I had come into college a couple of extra days and thankfully got the bulk of the coding and leg work out of the way, but to learn the PHP I found I needed absolute concentration which I couldn’t achieve in the classroom because of the noise and interruptions. Not that it was particularly noisy, I just needed complete silence to be able to concentrate.

I managed to get my site built and my PHP contact form created by studying several contact forms online, one which I had used before and one in the book I had bought. What I did was to de-construct the contact forms to see what each part actually did. I then built a couple of very simple examples before starting my own form.

My contact form was designed to send emails to my designated email address, obviously, but also to validate the content of the name and email boxes to help stop spam in my inbox.

It only took me about half a day to build the contact form, but then took me about another two and a half days debugging it. One of the main problems was my mis-typing. I had made several errors, and with a new code that I’m not yet very familiar with it took me ages to find the problems, a few were actually found by my classmates as I just couldn’t see them.

I used the websites from my learning contract, but actually decided on a different book, ‘PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites’ which I had recommended by a couple of my classmates, and I was given a video tutorial course by Lynda.com by a friend about half way through the module.

As I agreed in my learning contract I also took the PHP quiz at w3schools.com, achieving a score of 10 out of 20 before I began studying and a score of 15 out of 20 after. This doesn’t sound too great a learning surve, however on my first attempt at the quiz I believe I only answered 4 or 5 correctly that I knew, the rest I had lucky/educated guesses. On my second attempt I felt I knew at least 12 to 14 of the answers, even from a relatively small amount of study for such a big subject.

I need to look at myself closely after this experience. Whilst I had some difficulties during my study of PHP it became clear that there were things I could have done to make things much easier for myself.

For example, I could have borrowed a little money for the book I needed, I’m sure one of my family would have helped me with that, and because the server software wouldn’t work, I could have bought some hosting on a server, I need some now anyway.

The overall experience was not a good one. I feel I was not helped by the problems I had early on in the module, but confounded things by becoming quite down and lost my chain of thought, both when studying and how to study at all. I put things off while waiting for resources, but if I had been thinking clearly there were ample resources available to be going on with until I got everything I required.

To be quite honest my confidence is really starting to wane and it’s beginning to get me down. I feel completely out on my own at the moment and I’m struggling to concentrate on anything at the moment.

I also need the software for another module we are doing at the minute and I am really starting to feel overwhelmed.

That being said, I believe the real problem is my attitude and state of mind right now. I’m sure there are things I could be doing, but just can’t seem to think straight, and time is rapidly passing me by.

If I don’t get a move on I fear I won’t have anything to hand in come deadline, a fact that is now causing even more stress.

Obviously I will soldier on, but need to think seriously about my situation, and how much I am causing the stress myself. And of course I must pull my finger out and get some work done.

For my plan I’ve chosen introductory PHP 5.3.8 and MySQL databases, partly because we didn’t have much choice as we need to understand PHP for our WordPress module, but also because of its ease of use and functionality combined with HTML, apparently!

The first step in the process was to draw up our self learning contract, listing our proposed learning outcomes, the resources we would use, and the assessment criteria to show the level of information learned.

For my research I have chosen several websites with training courses and tutorials on PHP and will also buy a book to help with my studies.

Initially I plan to research the basic information on PHP and its uses, then before I actually start learning the actual code I will take the online quiz at w3schools website to estimate my current knowledge of PHP.

I will then work through my book and the online tutorials, following the examples provided, taking about 4-5 weeks, at which point I will retake the online quiz so as to measure my progress.

Then comes the acid test, building my own site and utilising the skills I have learned, allowing myself around 3-4 weeks for this process.

I need to push myself on this module, so I’ll be keeping time sheets and will keep you all updated as to my progress and set some accurate targets once I’ve gained a basic understanding of PHP.

If you’ve read my blogs you’ll know that I was struggling away on benefits before I started the course, due to illness. I tried to move back into work, selling websites, but had no training and had serious problems with virtually every site I sold.

I then started learning about search engine optimization (SEO) and Internet marketing, but realised I needed to learn much more about websites and the Internet. That’s when I found the course. It seemed just what I was looking for, obviously web design, but also design for many other types of media too. And even small units on marketing, branding and SEO, so I made the call.

When I first started I was very nervous, both with my anxiety, and of course I was completely new to all the software and skills I would be learning, not to mention a long time out of education. Once or twice through this first year I’ll admit I was a little overwhelmed and often felt like I was falling behind with my studies, only to find a few other students felt just the same.

However, I found I picked things up pretty quickly and in the first couple of months we had lots of helpful lectures on typography, design skills. And on our reflective learning skills for our personal and professional development using Kolb’s, Gibbs and John’s reflective learning systems. We were also introduced to Honey and Mumford, showing us what type of learner we are, and where we need to improve. In the first couple of months I think we really had our hands held, maybe to ease us into the course.

After Christmas though was whole different ball game. We had done several designs using InDesgn and even designed our first website. Now came the time to code the site to go on the web. Learning coding languages, the one thing that really frightened me. It wasn’t easy, I really had to concentrate and I’m still struggling, but I enjoyed it and was quite excited at the prospect of actually seeing my design up on the Internet.

At the same time we started learning PhotoShop, perhaps I should have been frightened of this more! It’s a massive program, I’m really only just starting to use some of it’s functions. To add to the pressure we were moving towards more self learning, we had two difficult units running at the same time, and were given all our digital imaging unit in one go, to finish for one big deadline instead of lots of smaller ones. I was beginning to struggle at this point.

I found myself starting to suffer with odd little illnesses. Maybe it was down to my stress or maybe a weak immune system because of all the all night working sessions to meet deadlines. Either way I got through it and feel stronger for it.

Looking at my work it’s obvious to see that my design skills have and are improving a great deal, which is the point of the course. With a greater understanding and knowledge of  the software I’m certain my designs will continue to improve once I know I have the capabilities to design and program what I want.

My use of the software, especially PhotoShop is becoming much more fluent, but still needs much more studying on my part, and as I said this will enable me to widen my scope of what I can design.

An area that really does require my attention is cascading Style Systems (CSS)2.1. I am still struggling with CSS and need to do lots of work on it. The obvious way is to design more websites.

A regret I do have from the first year is that I feel I could have applied myself much better to the work. I can use the excuse that I have a very stressful life at the moment, which I do. But so do others on the course, and I feel if I could manage my time better I could get much more out of the course, and a better mark at the end.

To improve on my first years performance I aim to build at least 2 or 3 websites over the summer to improve my CSS coding skills and I will start to learn PHP language. Perhaps just the basics, I would be happy if I could program a contact form by the end of summer. I feel this would allow me to go back to the course starting ahead of the game, instead of behind how I’ve felt many times this year.

For next year I need to plan my time much better. I’m hoping to be working part time by then which I feel will benefit me with less stress because of a lack of money, and because I will have less time I’ll have no option but to plan it better. I do have a tendency to produce better work when I’m under pressure, but if I could even do my basic designs and any research in good time this would cut down on my stress levels massively.

And finally, by doing this I will be able to make much more use of my classmates and former students to get feedback on my work. We have the forum and Google wave where my classmates, the second year students and even former students are happy to give their comments and suggestions. I must make better use of this, and of course give feedback to the new first years students.

Word Count: 973

A designer on the other hand has a reason to design. The designer may be designing a website or an ad, but this has a specific function. He/she will probably be working from a fairly strict brief, with content that must be included and can only be interpreted in one way. And also their work generally has to conform to current trends and even fashion.  

I would consider myself a designer, but would like to think in years to come I will produce work that someone deems worthy enough to be displayed in a gallery or museum. Once my work has fulfilled it’s purpose I would be thrilled to think others thought of it as art.  

Word count: 485 

Web development 1 is quite self explanatory, our first foray into actually building a website.

Digital Imaging was our first taste of using PhotoShop, one of the most integral tools for a web designer. And to add to that a new learning experience, instead of being given a task and a few ours or a week to complete it, we were given all our tasks together and it was up to us to plan our time for completing everything.

On the first day we started with ‘Hypertext Markup Language’ [HTML], which actually turned out to be quite easy. Very straight forward and logical. I seemed to be a little slower than most in the class, but when we came to check our code to W3C standards I always seemed to have very few errors, and often the few errors I had were simple omissions or spelling mistakes.

When it came to the ‘Cascading Style Sheets’ [CSS], it started to get a little more complicated. Again I always seemed to be behind the rest of the class, but always caught up when it came to validating our code.

I struggled to start with, but gradually began to understand why I was doing what I was doing. My website was built, everything seemed to work as it should, and again all my code validated with the W3C standards website.

Although basic it is now on the Internet and working just as I designed it. I’m now really looking forward to the next site, and feel confident enough to design a more complicated site. Obviously I’m not an expert yet, but quickly learning you can find out how to do anything just by Googling it.

The second thing I was contending with was a 3GB download allowance on my Internet connection, I was frightened to download anything or even freely surf the net because I kept reaching my download allowance.

Between Sky not being able to fit me a line and going back to Virgin Media it took me almost a month to get a new Internet connection.

By this time I was falling so far behind with my work and beginning to panic. The Web development was simple, the design was done and we just had to learn how to code it. But for Digital Imaging we had to be creative and I was really struggling.

On top of that I had barely even looked at PhotoShop and couldn’t even carry out the simplest tasks to put my creative ideas into practise.

Eventually I got my new Internet connection, our seminar group had a tutorial on animation in PhotoShop from Steve, and I went into college one Wednesday morning when the second year students were in. I learned just a couple of tricks from the second years, they’re always so helpful, and spent most of the week watching tutorials online.

Finally I was putting my ideas into design on PhotoShop, if I got stuck I just watched a tutorial on You-Tube, everything fell into place. I even changed one of my designs at the last minute, my lack of confidence had completely gone.

However, I was still playing catch up, and as the deadline approached spent yet another weekend working through the night. With a 4pm deadline I set off from home at 3.30pm and just made it in time, but at what cost. Looking back at my work I can see so much more I could have done, if only I’d given myself more time.

Inevitably I should have foreseen most of my problems, not illness of course, and planned for them, then I wouldn’t need to put so much pressure on myself to meet my deadlines, and could produce much better work.

Word count: 796

And yet here we were in the freezing wind and rain at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

The three sculptures we were asked to look at were ‘Flayed Stone’ II and III sculpted from granite in 1998 and ‘Sum of the Parts’ sculpted from granite in 2001.

To be quite honest I don’t have much of an idea about art, I’m a real Philistine. So when asked to write down how the sculptures made us feel I felt way out of my depth.

‘Sum of the Parts’ seemed like the shell of a turtle and on such a cold day was very cold and rough to the touch. But after studying it for quite a while I started to see and feel something more to the sculpture.

It seemed to have an egg or pod like quality and even though it was cold to the touch it looked warm. It almost felt as though it was protecting a new life with it’s tough exterior, and made me think of new life.

‘Flayed Stone’ II and III were a little larger and carved with continuous lines. Even though they were carved out of granite and rough to the touch, to look at them I felt they would be smooth.

I followed the lines carved into them, but they were never ending, no beginning and no end, as if carved by God himself. It was as if they had been there forever.

I don’t know exactly what feelings the sculptures were meant to provoke, if any, but even with the simplicity of the designs they were so much more than odd shaped lumps of rock, my initial thought.

Well, we’re a quarter of the way through the course, and just started again after the Christmas break. This might sound unlikely, but I’m looking forward to getting back into my work.

The workload so far has been hard, apart from the first module. Since then we always seem to have plenty to do and lots going on at the same time. I don’t think the workloads too much, I’m just coming from a point of view of not doing any work like this for a long long time.

I’ve virtually filled one notebook already, only half a douzen pages to go. But just going through my almost full notebook and I realise the vast amount of information that it now contains, much of which is lodged somewhere within my brain.

As I’ve said in my previous blog I feel like I have some direction in my future now, but if has still been a very emotional time. Sometimes I’ve felt so overwhelmed with the work I’ve had to do. Maybe not realising that I have been given the knowledge to do the work. And combine that with the deadlines, time just seems to go so fast, then the real panic sets in. I think whats still a problem with me is a lack of confidence, my classmaters might disagree, but when it comes to using the software and actually designing I still find it very daunting.

However, looking back over my work in the first quarter of the course, I am starting to see much improvement in my own work. Not to say I’m a great designer now and I can sit back, but I can see and feel a marked improvement in my work. Also, even after only a little use of the design software, I feel so much more comfortable using it and instaed of just asking for help I’m starting to find the solutions for myself.

Obviously it now helps that I have the software I need at home, but towards the end of the Autum term one of my projects was to design a ‘Type Trump’ card, a variation based on the game of ‘Top Trumps’, but using typefaces. *

A simple little thing like making the corners of my design round, instead of asking I looked at the software and found a corners function. It may sound simple, but often a lack of confidence will stop most people even looking.

Another example of this was a design for a coke bottle label, which I quite liked the design of, but couldn’t use it because due to not checking properly I had not set my letters to the correct colour specified, I was so angry with myself, I felt as though I had wasted my time because I could not submit the design.

The answer to this seems very easy, concentrate more, and spend more time on my studies. But it’s not quite that simple. I find myself struggling to concentrate sometimes, maybe because of my situation or maybe I just need to learn how to concentrate on my work and blank everything else out. I think the latter is the more likely.

I feel I put quite a lot of study time in, maybe not enough on some subjects, but need the study I do to count for more. Put simply I need to concentrate on what I’m doing and make sure it’s my priority. This should be much easier anyway this term as many of my previous problems have been sorted outand I already feel much more focused.

The next step now is to put these thoughts into action. I feel I need to make much more use of my notes, more use of the internet (ie, Twitter and the College Forum) and get as much design work as possible, be it for college or even work for myself. I have already downloaded some software to help me achieve this and already started to use it more.

 Word Count: 730