Tag: web design

Futile things 

~ Mia ~ Leave a comment
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I dislike it when I do a lot of hard work, but in the end, they are futile anyway. It’s a waste of energy, so I prefer doing things with a meaning. Sometimes, when I write a blog post that doesn’t get much attention, I feel I should have done something else instead of writing. I had this feeling when I started to blog quite a lot. Today I still feel like that, but I accept all posts won’t interest people. I write to myself anyway. I would write even if I felt it was futile. If you don’t write, you won’t get better at it. My job is done if I can get at least one person to like what I write. It’s not a competition about how many likes a post receives. This is my 9th year of having this blog which is an excellent achievement for a person who gives up too quickly. I’ve learned to be more persistent. If I only would be one when it comes to other things in life.

I could have done so much more if I hadn’t given up, but you can’t turn back. You just need to look forward and learn from the past. It’s never too late to become better as a person or in whatever you do professionally. Things can feel futile but finding at least one positive thing makes you feel it wasn’t all that bad. I’ve studied photography because I thought I wanted to become a photographer. But that’s wasn’t meant to be. I’ve studied web design because I wanted to become a web designer, but that wasn’t meant to be either. Then came graphic design. All that studying haven’t got me very far. I still feel like I’m a rookie, but it doesn’t feel they’ve been futile. I can do all of those things and more. If I get bored with one thing, I can do something else. I always wanted to do different things. I can combine the things I’ve studied with each other. E.g. photography and graphic design. If I had learned about subjects I wasn’t interested in, things would have felt even more futile. My first education after compulsory school was health care, but I’ve learned how to make a bed, so the bed cheat stays in place. I also learned about psychology at the school, so it’s wasn’t entirely wasted. Maybe I have been persistent in other things in life too. It takes a lot to find what you want to do with your life. It takes longer for some, but it’s not about getting there before anyone else. It’s about the journey. Life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. I’m only half of the way.

Bloganuary: Write about a challenge you faced and overcame

~ Mia ~ 3 Comments
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Day 14. I’ve had a lot of challenges in my life. Most of them are about education. I have studied things I wanted to. The challenge has been how to stay motivated. I always preferred short educations. The longest has been 2 years. Before I applied, I thought it felt long. In fact, it went pretty quickly. Finding friends has never been an easy task for me. That is a challenge in its self. I have a hard time fitting in. Feeling a part of a group and then trying to stay motivated on the education, that is hard. I’ve noticed through the years that being part of something helps to get through a challenge. I overcame the challenge with help from the teachers and the school psychologist I went to. Without that, I probably wouldn’t have passed the education.

I take you back to 2009, when school started. It was a basic examination in graphic design. Photography was also part of it which is the reason I applied. It was in another city, so I lived in a dorm. I didn’t like to live there. There were too many noisy people. I didn’t have any friends to spend the evenings with. My classmates lived at home. I made my own entertainment. I went outside for walks and so on. The problem with my classmates was that most of them were smokers. It’s a bit unfair for those who don’t. Smokers bond, and they get to know each other that way. Smoking is an awful habit, and I would never start to get friends. All I had in common was education. In time, I get to know them. I’m still in contact with one of them on Facebook. They were friendly people, and we did get along fine. I wished they would have been someone who didn’t smoke. Who knows what they talked about on the breaks. The second year was a little better. There were times I thought about quitting because I felt left out. I wasn’t sure I wanted to study the subject after all. But luckily, I did. There were things I wouldn’t have experienced if I had quit. I got an internship in a local newspaper, and we also learned about portfolios. In 2011 the school was over, but I didn’t continue with graphic design until 2018. I was into photography which was the reason why I studied it in the first place. The education was useful in the future.

I’ve had another challenge that I overcame, but it wasn’t as hard as the one above. In 2016, I studied web design. It was for a year. The challenge in that was when the job learning started. We had one in the Autumn and one in the Spring. We had to find clients by ourselves. I thought I wouldn’t have found anyone, but then I did. The first job learning was complex, but the client was very understanding. Coding was complicated for me. I didn’t know if I could finish the project. Even the start was a challenge. The first one wasn’t crucial. It was only practice. The 2nd job learning was more important. We had to have at least 3 clients. I found two in the end. It would be our last assignment which we would present in front of three evaluators. I was really nervous. I don’t like to do presentations. I don’t know how I got through it, but I did. I passed the course, and I didn’t have to do the presentation again. I had experience with clients and project work, so at least I have something to give. It’s a great feeling when you know you faced a challenge and overcame it. You can be proud of yourself, and the next challenge will feel easier.

From school assignments to the real world

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When you study something, you might think the real world is as easy. But in school, you get assignments made up by someone else. In real life, you have to make them up yourself. That’s the hard part. Especially when you only starting out you don’t have much to show. Only an assignment you had in school. I doubt you can get hired by only having those. If it was, I would probably have something already. Or maybe not. Who knows really.

Soon it’s been 2 years since I studied graphic design and 4 since web design. Not very impressive since I haven’t done much since then. Especially web design. When you see job adverts for web design jobs, it’s always something technical which is something we didn’t have that much of. It’s quite wrong to be called web designer when it’s actually called web developer. That’s something they didn’t teach in school. Even in school, I didn’t like coding. It’s like Math which is my weakest subject. It just requires too much difficult kind of thinking. I can do things with free themes, but I can’t do a whole website from scratch. I tried in school, but it was too stressful. I’ve thought about only having graphic design and photography in my services. It would mostly be about digital content. At first, I thought I would also have web design with WordPress but apparently making sites from finished themes are not recommended. It’s understandable because themes are updated, and then the job has gone to waste. It’s also a turn-off when employers only search for experienced designers, and they should know a lot about coding. And then it’s web developers and not web designers.

They should teach kids in school that the real world is different. You don’t know what you want to be when you grow up at 16. You can change your mind later. Maybe the profession you chose in your youth is not the right one for you, but you only realize it when you’re getting older. You can change careers any time you want. Today there are no jobs where you are for 30 years and then retire. When I was younger, I thought you needed to educate yourself to one profession and stick with it. But it wasn’t so at all. I don’t want to be one of those who stay in one profession and then, later on, discover you didn’t want to do it after all. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I have studied so many different things. Some might have had jobs during their education, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to concentrate on my studies and have some free time too. So now I only have internships on my resume, and that’s apparently not good enough. At least I have something and too bad it’s not appreciated among others. Luckily there are other ways to get a job. It’s just a matter of courage to get things started. That is an assignment to do next.