Upgrading Skills

Like many students, I attended college immediately after high school. Thankfully, I was able to earn my Associate's in Information Technology in 2003. A few years later, I returned to school to try to get my Bachelor of Science, but had to stop about halfway through the program due to health needs. I briefly tried online college, but quickly learned it wasn't worth the effort.

Therefore, it has been around 15 years since I have done anything in the formal education. I have done several online courses in creation science and read about upgrades for web technology, but not much. A few months ago, I received a message from my cell phone provider that I could get 60 days of free courses through a program called Upskillset. I looked through the course offerings and didn't find any that sounded interesting except one, graphic design. It's no secret that I am more of a web programmer than designer, so I thought I would give it a try.

Word Art

Since March 30, I have been trying to take 2-3 classes per week in graphic design. The program covered three programs from Adobe: Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. I knew the very basics of Photoshop, nothing of Illustrator, and haven't touched InDesign (or its predecessor) in over 20 years. For the most part, I would say it has been a fun exercise in learning the programs and thinking a little differently than I normally do.

The course has you watch a video for 45-60 minutes that shows different techniques and make different projects. You can either follow along, or make your own project after the lesson. I mainly worked along with the video and did a fair amount of pausing and restarting. After completing 16 lessons, I created word art, flyers, a magazine cover, a magazine, mood boards, and a few other items. Unfortunately, some of the lessons required A LOT of clicking to produce an item (such as artwork) I never foresee needing. I mainly just watched those for information and tried to learn new techniques.

A test/assignment was available after every two classes. I was studying more to learn programs than tests, but didn't do as bad on them as I expected. Now that my free time is complete, I don't plan to pay a hefty fee to continue through the remaining 16 lessons. However, it has been a fun challenge and time to learn.

On this Memorial Day weekend, I'm thankful for those that have given me, and others, the freedom to do things such as take classes and work independently. I'm also thankful that God continues to use me and allow me to learn and see this world He has given in new perspectives.