Dusting Off Old Skills
When I was a young boy, my mother sent my brother and I on many scavenger hunts. Sometimes we had to find something in the store, Easter eggs on the lawn or even just find a bunch of stuff she hid across our massive backyard as a summertime activity.
The hunts were always fun, and I never gave up until I found what I was sent out to find.
Maybe that is why I enjoy journalism so much, because I never quit until I have the truth. It could also be why I like web development.
The problem with web development is unless you have hours to set aside to create a site or a page, it is difficult to get into. I find, at times, that when I am coding, I block everything out, including family. But once you are in the rhythm, it is difficult to stop, because if you do, you’ll need to spend the first couple of hours getting back into that rhythm when you start back up.
This semester – which will come to a close as soon as I hit the submit button of this post – has been a re-awakening that reminded me how much I enjoy creating things on my computer, whether it’s photos to plug into a site, or even the creating of the website itself.
I’ve experienced such a tumultuous series of events in my personal life that getting away and sitting at a computer to complete assignments for ICM 505 – a class I am taking as part of my graduate studies at Quinnipiac University – was a bit of relief. I only wish I had spent more time on some assignments.
When I look back at everything I accomplished and learned this semester, the biggest thing was a site for my final project. The assignment required that I use a template on W3 Schools and make it my own – it was an assignment that allowed me to show off some of the things that I learned.
It is easy to say that was the biggest thing that I accomplished because it is so fresh. Something else I did this semester for class was clean up my master’s blog, www.gregorywehner.com. Before modifying the site, it was setup as a running string of blog posts that were created as assignments during the first half of my education at Quinnipiac.
I have since organized the top navigation bar and created categories to assign to each story to appear under one of the navigation bar items. I also worked with a slider on the homepage, embedded a video to show off some of my skills, and added a twitter feed – now I just need to use Twitter a bit more.
The design process was something I really began to see in terms of web development, once again. It has been more than 10 years since I worked with a tech startup that made websites, so getting involved with development and some of the newer technology was beneficial.
I hope to one day be able to use these skills professionally, again, because I would hate to lose them once more. When some skills are not used over time, they can quickly come back to a person like riding a bike after not being on one for 20 years – it just comes naturally.
My fear is that technology is evolving so fast, and if I do not use these web development skills on a regular basis, I will be left in the dust.
The first degree I ever earned was an Associate’s in Applied Science in Electronics Engineering. Talk about an evolving field. I learned about resistors, transistors, capacitors, diodes, and small microchips. The math surrounding this field of expertise was through the roof. But I did not use the skills often and to this day struggle to remember what the colored lines on resistors stand for, or even Ohm’s Law.
I would much rather continue using the web development skills to some capacity, even if it is just on my two websites: a professional portfolio and master’s blog.