Good news, everyone! I’ve learned how to embed a WordPress blog into my main page! Yes, this was a new concept for me — actual web development isn’t my proficiency. I’m a designer, you see. Now I can blog without updating an HTML file, thus empowering me to do it more often. Isn’t PHP magical?
Anyhow, if you don’t follow me on deviantART (and you totally should) then you wouldn’t know what I’ve been up to lately. To put it simply: a lot. Contests, internships, competitions, and scholarships. Everywhere. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been so busy I’ve forgotten that I still go to normal high school until June 7th.
I can’t remember exactly what order everything’s happened in, so I’ll start from the most relevant to adult life: I got a job. A paid internship, actually, at a local web design firm called Oozle Media. Now, these guys are pretty cool. Not only do they build websites for Utah companies (and some much, much farther away), but they also manage their clients’ Facebook pages and promotions. This is what I’ve incidentally fallen into: Social Media Management. When they first brought me in back in February, I was a coding fiend. Slicing up pages and whatnot. Then, somehow, they got me into designing Facebook tabs which isn’t actually that bad. Anyhow, they soon hired my partner Rico, and we’ll both go full-time employees once we graduate.
In March, Rico and I competed in Skills USA for web design. We took regionals (competing against kids from our class and several from other schools) with this page and moved on to state. State was a bit more intense; there were kids from other counties, some as far as Davis, as well as another team from our school. We took first place in that, too, with this page. We’re still not sure if there was any bias, as our employers — Oozle — and their client were the judges of the whole thing. But hey, we didn’t complain. We now have the opportunity to travel to Kansas City, Missouri on June 20th where we’ll be competing on a national level.
Later on, our class submitted some of our work from the year into the Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) art show. I’m not sure how prestigious this is, but an art show is an art show. I was in. We were all able to submit four pieces, my new portfolio (the main page) was among my four. By some strange chance, it won the web design portion, which, by the way, came with a $50 cash prize. Not big money, it got me a tank of gas, but it was a cool experience and that’s what I’m after.
At the end of March, our class (both AM and PM) was to submit three pieces to the Utah Media Arts Festival that were voted, by all of us, to be the best representation of our year-long work. Two of the three were my designs (the main page and Thanksgiving Point), the third was Erica Bradford’s portfolio, which is cool. At the actual festival on May 3rd, there was a ridiculous amount of other high school students. Once again, Rico and I bumped paths with the kids we competed against in Skills. After a fairly lengthy guest speech and awards ceremony, one of Davis high school’s pages took second (technically third) place in web design, Rico took credit for Thanksgiving Point and was awarded first (second) and my portfolio took Best in Show (first), which came with a wooden plaque. We got some free stuff from the whole ordeal, like a t-shirt and some goofy sunglasses, saw Utah Valley University in all its Wolverine glory and had a generally enjoyable time!