October 9, 2015,
So I finally got around to reading the article on The New Yorker titled, “Social Animal”. The first couple of paragraphs had me smiling, it almost felt like the author was poking fun at the “Composure Class” the author was writing about. That was until I got to the meat and potatoes of the article, the reason why it was written in the first place. The more I read of the article the more I got to understand what it was trying to convey with it’s story of Harold. Tangible accomplishments were all well in good, but the intangible accomplishments should not be left to the side. If anything nurturing the social aspects of your life regarding your friends and peers is also a great quality to have.
And once again it got me to think. When we leave college and begin working in the field of our choosing, it won’t only be our ability to finish a task on time that helps us to keep our job. It will be our ability to navigate the social settings of our workplace. Our ability to interact with our boss and colleagues can make or break us. I’ve heard stories of people who have lost their jobs, not because they did bad work, from what I’ve heard they did good work. The reason why they lost their jobs was due to their behavior among their colleagues. A while ago my psychology professor told the class about a woman who had an I.Q. of 195, yet she had trouble finding work due to her attitude towards people.
I guess sometimes it’s not always about your ability to do your job, but also how you interact with others.

October 5, 2015,
I’ve been looking for any prospective internships while redoing my print portfolio, by this point I pretty much left my website portfolio to the side for a later date. In the back of my mind it’s coming well, deconstructing my old assignments and seeing how I did them. At times I would stop and look at the original and then the reconstruction realizing I finished much faster than when I first did it. Was it because I had learned what to do from my previous experiences? Or that it took me less time simply because I knew what I was going to do? Honestly, it was both, 30% experience and 70% knowing what to do. Anytime I received a project on a certain brand it would take me weeks to figure out what I wanted to do.

The first week I would spend researching a little, gathering symbols and at whatnot to get the sense of the company. The second week I would throw all of that in the garbage (figuratively speaking) and just look up tutorials for cool effects and just do them, just to see which one I liked. By the end of the second week, I didn’t care too much about the previous day’s work and that too would be in the garbage. By then I had some inkling of what it was that I wanted to convey, and it was then I started my work. I would like to say this has changed, but it hasn’t. It has always taken me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do. Only once did I have an idea that I liked that I ran with and even then I spent some time being intimidated by the blank Photoshop file. Did that mean I hated critiques? No, personally I was never afraid of critiques as a matter of fact, I welcomed them. Mostly because I never really had a project that I liked beyond reason.

Which raises the question, was there ever a project that I loved doing? The answer to that is a resounding no.

September 25, 2015,
The most wonderful thing happened today, I have no internet. Well, that is not completely true. Word of warning, if you are planning to return a few cable boxes to Time Warner Cable, expect some downtime with your internet service. While the remaining cable boxes worked fine, internet service was almost non-existent. It would come on for about two to five minutes before turning off. After one hour of this I got on the phone with Time Warner Cable’s customer service, and scheduled for a technician to arrive on September 29th, it was the only time slot that was available. In either case, this happening wasn’t so bad. Despite the fact I was unable to finish my portfolio website (or look at cute videos of kittens on YouTube), I had to find something to do. So I started working on the print/pdf version of my portfolio and that got me to realize I did not have enough websites to call myself a web designer. I had far more print projects than I did websites. and the websites I did have were either unfinished or completely down. So I begun deconstructing the print projects I had down over the years and wrote detailed information on how I did them. About three hours later after the initial call I got my internet service back. By then I had already realized what I had to do, continue fixing up my print portfolio while contemplating what cool things I would be doing as an electrician.

September 21, 2015 Once again I am unsure of what to write about, but I will try my best. The last time I wrote, it was about my redesigning my website so it can be more responsive. Currently the design that I have in mind seems a little bit too restrictive at the moment. However, thankfully it was something that could be fixed with a few angled adjustments, so it was not a big deal. As to my resume and pdf portfolio there was some pieces I decided to take out due to them either being incomplete or generally not up to par. I decided to add a lot more print pieces to it since I have more of those pieces than I do for web design. Which is frankly kind of sad, since I once preferred web design to graphic design I still do I suppose, but one must do with what they have. In between redesigns and coding, I look for web design/graphic design internships and bookmark them for later use. When I get tired of coding, I usually go through my pdf portfolio and see what can be done there instead of relaxing for a bit. I see that some of my business cards need some updating and so does some of the graphics in the portfolio. Since the portfolio cover is based on the old design I once had for it, I decided to bring in the design from my website to tie the two pieces together. Becoming an electrician is starting to look really good at the moment.

Today is September 17, 2015 I finally started writing my journal but I am honestly not sure what to say. A few weeks ago I got some advice about my portfolio and resume, they need some touching up before I should arrange any interviews for my internship. I have decided to start on my website portfolio due to it being my one of the ways I will be showing my portfolio. I started off by thinking if whether my website would be responsive or unresponsive. I decided to go down the responsive route since I was not sure when and how the website would be viewed. So far I have finished designing the homepage, about, resume, and portfolio page all that is left is the coding. Along the way I was debating on whether I wanted the website to be one page or just a regular website, currently I am leaning more towards a regular website. However, halfway through I had to stop and take a break, while on that break I begun to think about my future, my career. “Did I want to keep doing this until I was 50? Do I even love Web Design anymore? I liked coding websites, but that was it.” The more I started thinking about it the more I realized that I probably do not like Web Design anymore. Maybe when I’m done with college and my internships I should take a break from it for a while, maybe I will fall back in love with it…Or maybe I’ll just become an electrician or plumber.