Nearly there...

In August 2009, I began a two-year technical communication program. Now, I am a week shy from finishing classes and two weeks shy of having all my assignments done.

In the two short years, I learned a lot of various skills to help me pursue a fascinating career as well as a lot of stuff I did not know about myself.

At this point, I am honestly confused about how I feel about the program. I will never regret taking the course, but there were always places I could improve myself or could have done a better job. I cannot let the confusion get the best of me; I need to start the next phase of my life… my career. (120

Proofreading Required

Proofreading is not one of my favourite activities, but I am trying to work on it to improve both my writing and proofing skills.

In high school and university, I would often ask my father to proof my work since he had more experience and knowledge in English grammar. And by the end of my second year of university, I rarely had time to get him to look over the papers since it seemed like I had more and more due each month.

Now, I do most of my own proofing, and I always seem to miss something here and there. But, I am going to start a new “routine” once I am done classes this year. On my computer, I have digital copies of most of my assignments since first year university which I will go through one a week to help me learn to proofread my own work. (150)

Thank Goodness, it's Friday!

I am not usually the type of person that spends the week looking forward to Friday because I currently go to class full time and work a part time job in the evenings and weekends so there is little free time in my schedule. However, this Friday was the day of the oral presentation for my graduating project which made the morning more stressful than normal.

I will say I am glad it is over, and I was told by many in the audience that I did a good job. I now feel confident that I can finish the year, and maybe take a little break sometime soon. (108)

A case of déjà-vu

Over the summer, my classmate and I created a large electronic manual for a database. We figured it would be effective solution that would be easily delivered to the team members spread throughout the city.

I took some time to teach myself the software at home so I knew what kind of product would be the most functional. However, when we tried to compile the project into a Microsoft HTML Help (.chm file) project at the office, it did not work properly (the table of contents was complete, but the content section was filled with an error message).

After a few tries and hours of research, we found a likely explanation. There have been some reports of Windows operating systems not wanting to properly open the .chm file from a network drive and its contents, but there was a solution available by making a small patch to the Windows registry. To test our new theory, we had to copy the file from the network drive, paste in on the desktop, and try to open the file... And it worked!

Recently, we had to create a .chm tutorial for one of our classes. When my classmate compiled her file, it had the full table of contents, but an error displaying in the content section. I turned to her and asked what drive she was using. The second she said she was using her network drive, I knew problem and contacted the IT department at school to see if they could come up with a solution for the current version of Windows. (260)

Creating websites

In the course of my studies at Red River College, I have learned how to write websites using hard coding or what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) software. I am by no means an expert with either method, but do find it is very handy to understand how to use both.

One of my current projects is a website for a dog park. The current webmaster of the site taught himself how to hand code sites with the help of numerous books on the subject, and even though he has started to use a WYSIWYG application, he finds it easier to do some things my hand. Therefore I have had to come up with a creative solution to make a photo gallery. We wanted to create a photo gallery where we can highlight the different areas of the park in all four seasons and show dogs and their owners enjoying the outdoors. There are numerous ways to build a photo gallery, but since both the webmaster and I are volunteers, we wanted to find a low/no-cost method that does not require any additional software. So we found a CSS photo gallery that requires hard coding of the animation and images. (202)

The importance of "brain farts"

“Brain farts” are those random moments of clarity or insight that happen throughout your life. They are often unpredictable and usually unrelated to your current actions or projects, but nonetheless, they are extremely helpful and useful. And I will admit that they have saved me from failing numerous assignments and exams during the course of my life (kind of like calculus starting to make sense hours before the exam).

For the most part, they tend to come in the most inconvenient times so it is always important to some way of taking notes which is only a part of the reason I make to bring paper, pens, or iPod with me. (111)

One bite at a time

The last few weeks of any school year is always rough, and this year is my worse one yet. There are always so many assignments, and what seems like too little time.

When I get so frustrated that I find it increasingly harder to get anything done, I get asked “how do you eat an elephant?” by instructors and friends. The answer is actually simple, one bite at a time.

So I make myself another cup of tea and sit down to take another bite of my work load. (89)