Second week completed, eight left!

Completed my second week of a ten week course then last Thursday, as the Level 2 course of Web Page Design continued.

A tougher week this week, following all the initial learning last week, this week was a lot more challenging, although the same does apply as before in that you are just making your way through a workbook, the challenge is trying to learn what you are actually doing, other than just reading a book and telling you what to do.

This week, from the off none of the awkwardness about starting a new class and meeting new people, that was all in the past after week 1, no it was a case of just getting on with as soon as you were in.

Anyway, what did I learn this week?

Well, this week it was all about Linking Pages, Linking exercises, and Image Maps, may not seem a lot but the exercises were fairly lengthy, and that's exactly what I want, as the more exercises there are, the better I'll remember how to do them without looking at a piece of paper.

Next week, it looks as though we're learning about Lists, Tables, and possibly Frames depending on how things progress during the night.

So, the second week is over, and already I'm finding it more than useful taking this course, which for anyone reading is for a City & Guilds Qualification.

First night done & dusted!

Well the first night has been completed!

The early nerves I had quickly drained away, although when pulling up in the motor outside the college, I did think, "here we go, back to the good old days", but then rather cautiously walked over to the entrance.

As soon as I was inside, the memories came flooding back, noticing cracks in the wall thinking "ah yes, this is where the government funding isn't happening" - it was like walking through an old hospital, with the blue-ish coloured walls crying out "education, education, education" to me!

In fact I'm sure I heard a Pink Floyd track playing in the distance somewhere!

But then I thought hold on, I'm not back in school, it's college, and from that point I was directed up the stairs to the long corridor where my room was situated, and outside it, a gathering of people who were all waiting for the door to be opened by the tutor who hadn't arrived at that stage.

What followed was the typical 'looks at the watch' whilst looking around, trying not to look someone straight in the face knowing that as soon as they'd look at you, your head and in particular eyes would shift somewhere else rather quickly, but also rather obviously!

Anyway, bang on time the tutor came along, and let us all in, the first problem....not enough computers for everyone - oh dear, was this the sign of things to come!

Thankfully I was okay, I'd got a computer, but then what followed was an hour of listening to what experience everyone had of websites, and PC work in general, plus how they had found the course to enrol on, errr, I phoned up - simples.

Then during the same hour, which quickly turned into 90 minutes, we had to go down and get our photos taken for the much wanted student card - you know, the one that gives you discounts in shops & restaurants - here we go, this is what we're waiting for!

Even then there was a problem, as there was a delay in getting that done, so back up to the room we went, and eventually logged in, and from that point, I started to enjoy what I was learning.

For the record, the subjects covered in the first week in this ten week course were:

Intro to HTML & background colour
Text formatting
Headings, paragraphs, breaks & horizontal rules
Background images
Inserting images
Positioning images, transparent Gif
Linking Pages

That's where I got up to as the first session came to a close, which was three and a half hours, but two hours of learning basically.

There are plenty of subjects still to be covered, but I felt confident that I'd learned something on my first evening, so went home happy.

A bit of homework to take back also, maybe I am back at school after all!!!

Anyway, I'll update my blog when I've done that, but for now, well, that's it!

Yep, I'm going back, wish me luck!

As a 36 year old male, going back to College for night school represents some challenges to me...

Have I made the right decision?

I am about to go back into Education for the first time in 18 years, is this a big mistake, or will it prove to be just what I need?

I am in a full time job right now, but wanted to do something extra that floats my boat, and that is website design - I really like the idea of setting up my own websites, which I have done via another easy to set up site, which you can see here - www.chestercitytv.co.uk, this is based on my favourite football (soccer) club.

I'm looking though to be able to produce better quality sites in the future, but don't really know where to start if I was to be honest, it's just these ready made sites are quite handy to start on, and get off the mark with.

It will present a challenge not least because my current job can be challenging at times, and I'm pretty tired come the end of the day when I get home from work, but feel that I must try and get through the tiredness, and succeed in this.

It will also be weird as I went to this very college 18 years ago as well, so it will be quite familiar, but I'm sure all those teaching faces will have changed.

I also want to do this just in case the unemployment situation worsens in the UK, and I end up being made redundant at some point, then at least I'll have some knowledge in this field, and try to make something of it.

I'm also hoping that at some stage, I'll be able to get into affiliate marketing - although my head is telling me that I should have done this about 10 years ago to make a real impact here.

I just want to be able to turn round and say, see that site, I did that, yep, me!

Hopefully the course will go well for me, and I'll be able to pick it up as I go along, I have been a little brave as I've decided to enter at level 2, following a discussion with a college tutor, so I'm trusting his word that I won't need to complete Level 1 first, as it really is for beginners.

Hmmm, every time I think of that conversation now, I think, maybe I should have gone for Level 1 first - see there comes the doubt, which hopefully will be dispelled after my first session tonight.

Wish me luck everyone, I think I'm gonna need it!

Banksy (Chester)