Goodbye, Junior Year

My time as a junior is coming to a quick end. As I'm writing this, it is my last day being a junior. Though it has been an entire year, it feels as though I just became a junior for the first time, and now I'm already done. My how life zooms by. I'm going to go ahead and do a bit of a reflection on the year as a whole.

What I Learned

Over the course of the year, I've worked hard at advancing my skills in web design in order to better myself. At the beginning of the year, I was making very basic completely html websites with some css. Quickly, though, I instead worked on Wordpress based websites and setting up networks in order to set up things like log-ins and databases. Of course, I also worked hard at those html websites, and furthered my skills in that area as well. I diversified what I was able to do and made myself better in all of those ways. 

How I learned It

The way I was able to learn these are through a variety of ways. For Wordpress sites, we worked on guided lessens from my amazing teacher, Mr. Olson, in order to set up websites. Shortly after that we instead started working on our own in order to gain more independence in what we could do. With html websites, though, worked more with things like tutorials and doing personal research in order to find new tricks and tips in order to become better. 

Why Is It Important?

Web design is one of the most important things that you can do in the modern world. It is always growing and always expanding, and is something that needs to be worked on. The way humans work anymore is through the internet, and people need to make those websites. There is a great need for web designers in the world today, and there is also a growing job market for designers, as well.

Strengths/Weaknesses

For what I'm good at, that is very much my ability to work and critique with other people. Getting another eye on something that I think is great can really be what makes the website/design better, and I love not only being that eye, but having others look at mine with a similar mindset. For weakness, however, is taking the things that I had learned from previous projects and putting them to use in future projects. I'm working on this by looking back at the code for my old projects and realizing what I can make my designs better.

What To Do

As of now, I already have people that have picked me up as a client, and as such I will use my web design capabilities in order to work for them. There is a possibility that I can find freelance work while still in high school, while also improving my web design skills. I am excited to use what I've learned in school to have a real world application that I use often. It's going to feel very rewarding to see myself grow. 

Conclusion

This has been quite a year, to say the least. I understand a lot about web design, especially compared to what I knew last year. Not only from a technological level, I've grown as a person. At the beginning of the class there was a divide of people, and we all went into our own small groups. This changed over the year, however, and we all learned to come together and became one big web design family. Web design has been an utter joy, and I'm excited to come back and do it all again next year.