As some of you may know, I’m now in second year at university, and that was after spending some time at college prior to this. When I left school I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career, and due to circumstances at the time I went to work full-time in an office for 3 years, although that quickly got boring. Having had an interest in computers and web design since I was at school, I decided to leave full-time employment in order to pursue a career in this field, and I can honestly say I have no regrets about this decision at all.
I returned to education and learned a lot in that time, both from a technical viewpoint and those all important “life-skills”, as well as meeting some great people who I still keep in touch with. I was also lucky enough to gain some work experience abroad which confirmed that it was something I’d like to again in the future, and after college I moved on to university, to a web-design course. I’ve enjoyed the course so far but recently I’ve been giving it some serious consideration as to whether it is worth continuing much longer with it for a number of reasons, and I hate quitting anything.
Whilst I enjoyed the first year, some of the modules were a bit out-dated (our entire HTML module was either entirely wrong or out-dated), and other modules sole purpose was for us to talk to each other and work in groups. I finished first year happy and having enjoyed it, however part of me thought it was a waste as I felt that I picked up very little.
I returned to second year thinking that things would improve, and overall they are much better and relevant this year but it’s still not as good as it could be and my enthusiasm for the course is decreasing as time goes on. I’m not saying that there is nothing else to learn as that is clearly not the case and in this industry learning is something that has to be ongoing as technologies and techniques change, I’m just not sure staying at university is the best environment to progress. There will be many things that I’d learn if I completed my time here and I’m certainly not that big headed to think that I’ve learned all there is to know at this point, but another couple of years learning Flash just does not appeal and is something I don’t think I’d use that often to justify spending hours learning it from a lecturer who doesn’t know it herself and copies and pastes materials from the Adobe website!
Likewise the scripting module that we are currently undertaking, the lecturer doesn’t appear to have a clue and his main resource was an ancient JavaScript site which no longer existed, and I’ve learnt more from Jeremy Keith‘s DOM Scripting than he could ever teach me, and I’m paying for this privilege!
I’m beginning to feel that by working in the industry full-time and I’d pick up more and at a quicker rate, and it would be a more enjoyable experience to do this. I’m lucky enough to be able to work part-time whilst at university which is invaluable that I can pick up “real-world” experience as well as continuing with my studies, but I’m beginning to give serious thought to making it full-time work and no longer continuing with university. Web design is something I enjoy greatly and would continue to work on personal projects and attend industry events such as FOWD and the DIBI Conference to enhance my learning as well as working full-time.
I’m not going to make any rash decisions and I’ve certainly not made my mind up either on this one and will wait till the summer before weighing up my options fully before coming to a decision, I’m just a bit disillusioned with it at the moment.
