We just finished the first two weeks of classes. I am having a lot of fun in my classes this semester. There are many things I am going to learn and am looking forward to learning. One project we have started is creating an app. We are hardly done with the project but so far we have done a lot I have never done before.
We are not going to code the app, but we are going to design it. So far, I have come up with a name for the app, the theme and color scheme it will have, decided what needs it will address, the target audience, and what functions it will provide. I have also created a survey to collect data for the app. The survey will help design the app for the target audience. Because they would be the ones who will interact with the app. Our next step in this assignment is combining our data from the survey into two to three different “User Personas” that describe the target audience.
Some data from my “Organizational App Survey”
It has been a blast so far creating this app. I hope I can learn from It and improve my skills. I have a little experience in designing websites, flyers, and things like that. But this is my first time designing an app. It is very similar to everything else thus far, but at the same time is very different. I have never taken this approach to designing something. It has always been what I thought would be the best design for the target audience or viewers. But this assignment went above and beyond to make an app that was tailored to actual people and their opinions. At the moment the app is not done, but I hope to use this experience to help me make other projects.
Summer was a blast, classes are just getting started, these are the the things I look forward to. But one thing I look forward to most is the State Fair. I love the State Fair it has and brings so many memories and I always enjoy all the sights, sounds, and tastes it brings. I have never failed to go to the State Fair ever since I moved to South Dakota when I was four. I enjoy everything there is about it and the best part is that it’s in my hometown of Huron, South Dakota.
This year, I was able to go with one of my best friends from high school and one of my sisters. To get started we ate together at a couple of the many food stands. My friend had a big fair corn dog and my sister and I shared some Asian cuisine. After that, we went to get a funnel cake and cotton candy for dessert. After we finished the food we went to where all the rides were. I didn’t ride rides anymore ever since I started to get motion sickness when I went on certain rides. But my friend convinced me to try a couple that we thought wouldn’t be too bad. I am glad I did because I got to have so much fun with her. To end off the rides we went on the Ferris Wheel and took a picture from the top. We decided that would be a good place to stop for the night so we got some smoothies and ice cream for the road and walked to our cars together.
A picture from the top of the Ferris Wheel
The State Fair has always been fun to me and I am glad that I could enjoy it with the people I love and care about. I was glad I was about to hang out with my best friend and my sister before classes got too busy for me in this second year of college. I hope you enjoy the State Fair just as much as I do and if you have never been there. It may not be the biggest fair in South Dakota but it has a lot to offer that other fairs don’t have! So I hope you give it a try.
I can’t believe I made it this far already. It seems like just yesterday, I graduated from high school, moved into my dorm, and started my first semester of college. I have learned and grown so much this past year. If you had asked me three years ago what I wanted to do with my life after I graduated high school, I would have said that I didn’t know and that I was still trying to figure it out. And to think that Now I’m in my second year of college already and I am on my way to graduate soon and that I will have to figure out what I want to do when I graduate college now. It’s crazy how fast time can pass.
What do I want to do? That is the question. What do I want to do? There is so much I want to do. I don’t know if I want to code, work in design, or be a photographer. I don’t know how one goes about finding their “calling in life.” There is so much more to it than just picking. I want to enjoy it, I don’t want to tell myself I picked the wrong career path, and then have to go back to the drawing board of what I want to do. I want to find something I will enjoy and love doing every day, something I won’t get bored of, and something financially stable. And money is a whole ‘nother thing. Should you pick a job that pays better than something you will enjoy doing for the rest of your life?
Question illustration. Free public domain CC0 image.
I have learned many things during my time at Southeast Technical College. I have learned how to video edit, how to edit photos, how to create ads, how to properly design, learn more about coding, how to properly take pictures, and much much more. And this year I am going to learn more! There is so much compiled in two years and I will probably learn more along the way.
I know I am probably stressing myself out over nothing, but the future can be scary. It’s unpredictable and mysterious and I know there will be many twists and turns along the way. But I also know there straight paths that I will follow and If one door closes another will open. All I can do now is do my best and not worry about the future because it’s in the future. I am going to choose to focus on the here and now. And that now is to get through my first semester of this new school year.
So if you are also wondering what you should do and are worrying about the future or maybe aren’t happy with where you are now. See where your path in life takes you and trust that doors will always open. Always remember that change can be good!
I am so relieved I got through my first year of college without any major problems. I am so ready for summer vacation and to have a long-deserved break from school. One thing I am most excited for is to be able to catch up with so many people I couldn’t during the school year. I missed all of my family and friends back home and hope we can hang out lot over this break.
There is so much I want to do during this little time frame. I hope I can do most if not all of it. I have never been a warm-weather type of person. I prefer colder weather where you can bundle up and wear boots. But summertime is always a good time no matter the weather. Theirs just something about summertime activities that you can’t do in any other season. For example you can swim in other season, an inside pool or outside pool. But for some reason swimming during the summer time is just automatically way better.
My plan for the summer is to go back home and work a summer job and earn money for the next school year. I know what to expect in my second year and I’m going to be much more prepared! I am getting to know a better spending habit, with lots of trial and error. And I know what I can do to improve myself for next year. I want to be able to be prepared for what there is to come later in my life and the only way I can get experience for it is now. And the things I don’t learn now, I will have to learn as I go.
Looking towards my future is very intimidating. I am going to be graduating in 2025, Its crazy how close that is. I am actually out on my own and working a real full-time job with a degree I worked for. I never thought I could ever get to this point in my life and it’s crazy how fast time can fly. I have always been a dependent person in my life, but never this much. Thinking about what I will have to do and prepare for my future puts a lot of stress on my shoulders. I don’t know if everyone else ever though this way when they were my age but its so crazy to think about. Thinking of getting a solid job that will support me financially, getting my own place to live, and were I even want to live. Its a lot to take in.
Wow, I never thought I would like coding that much. I mean I like doing it, but not actually enjoying doing it. I had only a little experience in coding in high school before I took an entire class on it in college. Coding can be hard at times and depending on the person can vary on whether someone likes to do it or not. But if you are wondering if you want to start coding or if you want to and don’t know where to begin. You’ve come to the right place.
Here are three beginner HTML tags I think you should know to help you get started and to help your website look clean and organized. The three I will talk about are headings, paragraphs, and lists. These three tags will help you go a long way in organizing, arranging, and help clean up your website’s look. Without these three basic tags your website will look all the same and people visiting your website won’t be able to follow very well and will most likely not visit it.
Heading Tag
The heading tag is an essential part of any website. It differentiate the headings (<h1>) and sub-headings (<h2>-<h6>) of a page from the rest of the content. Even with headers, if your text is all the same size, it will still be a big hassle and annoyance to any reader if they don’t know when information for one section ends and another starts. The image below is an example of code that is the same size.
When looking at these two examples the second header is easier to read and you know were it is. Even in the first example if you can tell were the header is. Not everyone is the same, for example, an older person may not be able to see as well as a younger person. So using the heading tag cleans up the look and makes the size larger. Depending on the tag you use the heading will get bigger or smaller. The heading tag varies with <h1></h1> being the largest, and <h6></h6> being the smallest. The image below shows the difference in size between all six tags.
Paragraph Tags
Next up will be paragraph tags. Paragraph tags help organize the content on your website. The paragraph tag defines a paragraph in your code. Also, browsers automatically add a single blank line before and after each <p> element. Even without a paragraph tag, you will be able to put content down on your web page. But you cannot customize it in your styles tag or CSS styles page. For without the <p> tag you cannot assign anything, like font style or size to it, at least that I saw. The paragraph tag also organizing you content, so that you know it is a paragraph and not something else and change it on accident. The paragraph tag is <p> with a closing tag of </p>. The image below is an example in how using a paragraph tag can help you organize your content.
Comparing the two examples you can see that the top one is harder to read because there are no breaks in the paragraph. Using multiple paragraph tags can help you ease the reader’s eyes when reading on your website. This also offers a clean and nice overall look to your website as well.
List Tags
Lastly, there is the list tag. The list tag can be categorized as an ordered list (<ol>) or an unordered list (<ul>). The list tag is used to group a set of related items in lists. This makes things easier to read compared to being in one long sentence. An ordered list uses numbers and is used for things that involve steps to be followed in a certain order. An unordered list uses, shapes like bullet points or squares, and is used to organize and emphasize information quickly and effectively. The images below is an example of a list in a sentence verses used in a bulleted list.
As you can see, in the top example it can be very hard to keep track of where you are, especially if you are in that situation. Lists just help keep everything together in a simple way so that you don’t forget or miss the important things.
These are just three of the many tags you can use to make your website look organized and clean. There are lots of different codes out there, not just for text, but for the design, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can do so much with coding and I hope I could help you and that you were able to learn something from this. Happy Coding!
I love all of my classes at STC. They are all so very fun and I enjoy every second of them. But one class in particular has been so much fun that I am considering doing it for work when I graduate college.
To start, I have never really known what I wanted to do when I graduate STC with my degree. The reason I went into the field is because I knew it was very broad and you could do a lot with it. So I took it up so that I wouldn’t be stuck with one thing and get bored of my job in the future. I was just going to wait it out and do whatever job came to me first because I enjoyed everything equally and didn’t care what I got. But then I found something that stuck out, Photography!
I have lots of fun and favorite assignments in this class but my all-time favorite assignments in this class would probably have to be the Water Splash photography. I want to share with you what I learned and some tips if you want to do it for yourself.
One thing I learned in this assignment is that light flash freezes motion. I never actually thought of it before until I saw it for myself. I was very surprised when my instructor showed us how to use a water drop. Another thing I learned is that the outcome of the image depends entirely on timing and patience, how you drop it, and how high you drop it from makes a big difference in the picture. It differs from the normal way you would take a picture. When you take pictures of something that stays still it is easy and everyone can do it. But with splash photography, it takes time and many different attempts. And without experience, you probably won’t get it on your first try. Which makes it fun!
The water splash assignment was very fun to do because, if done right, the ending photos look cool. We took pictures of our products in a glass fish tank that we filled up maybe a little bit over two-thirds of the way. We hooked up a transmitter so that the flash would go off when we took our picture. My camera settings were f8 for aperture, my shutter speed was at 1/100, and my IOS was at 200. To get the splash in your image you need to time you’re dropping your item in the water with pressing down your camera’s button.
This is the raw picture I took of the product, It was a little dirty, bright, and I didn’t like the background so I edited it in Photoshop a little by cleaning up the spots, turning down the saturation, and making the blurred and darkening the background.This is the final product after I cleaned it up in Photoshop. I used this image to then create an ad for my assignment.
My tips to you
have a flash, so you can freeze the motion and get a nice clear shot
timing matters, don’t drop it too soon or too late
clean your tank, so you don’t have to edit and clean up spots later
I have learned so much in my photography class. The class made me become more passionate about photography and enjoy doing it. Since I took the class I can always envision myself as a photographer, and being happy with it. My sister even said she might take up a type of business degree so we can start a photography business together. I am really excited to see what life has in store for me!
My first year of college has been a very fun experience. I honestly never thought I would ever get here. Moving away from my little bubble back home and being on my own was probably the biggest step I have ever taken by myself toward being a full-fledged adult without my family being right there helping me out.
I remember the first day I moved into my dorm. I had some help from two of my siblings. They helped me get all moved in and when we were all done they left and I remember entering my room after saying goodbye to them and thinking to myself. I’m not going back home and I live here now.
I started missing my hometown and started having mixed feelings. I have been going to the same small school my entire life and after thirteen years I had to leave it all behind. So of course I would be a little sad to go away from it all. Then again I was very excited to finally get away. After thirteen years of the same walls and hallways, I was ready to experience something new.
But in the end, all the new things became my new normal and I have been loving my entire college experience thus far. I have learned many new things and have meet so many fun and cool people. But I also learned not to be afraid of the unknown and new things. But embrace it and enjoy every moment.
