Whenever you stick a group of graduating graphic design seniors into a room, it does not take long for the conversation to steer toward the program’s shortcomings. “They didn’t teach me this!” “They wasted so much time on this!” Over the last few months of ceaseless discussion about these problems, I have actually come to terms with what the program has offered.
When talking to a few friends about how much I help people with web development, it always comes up that this must be a major specific thing. “That would never happen in __________, everyone is out for themselves” they say. Their logic is that I’m crazy for helping so many people that I am in direct competition with in the graphic design world.
To them, I say: Screw it.
Did the program do an awful job of teaching the technologies we will be expected to know? Definitely. Is it the Universities fault that some students feel unprepared? Not at all. To help, I have been trying to get my fellow students over the “internet is too hard” bump and surprisingly, had moderate success.
Since most people do not know where to start, I began by giving out a promotional code for Dreamhost accounts. This promocode gives students an enormous discount on a .com and their first year of hosting from one of the best solutions out there. Hopefully, this becomes the kick in the pants that gets them really motivated to go out and learn something new. At this point I offer a basic run down of what they have gotten themselves into as well as some helpful information for getting their portfolio off the ground. This entire process ranges from a basic explanation of how FTP works, to a full blown tutorial of how HTML & CSS work and interact with each other.
Essentially, all I want to do is help people get over the admittedly daunting first wall of information into web development. Being available to answer the simple questions like “How do I upload files”, to longer discussions about the minutia of CSS has become immensely gratifying.
Over the last year I have learned two things:
- Starting communities is easier than I thought it would be.
- I’m probably crazy.
Notes
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