It Has Been a Long Week…

I am going to be very honest in this post. I came into this class the first day pretty nervous because I did not know anything about design, and I was scared that I would be the only one. Of course, I soon found out that was not the case, but it did not really make me feel that much better.

Last week when we started learning about InDesign, I was excited because I have wanted to learn how to use these programs for a while. However, I was also nervous about not being able to pick it up as quickly as my peers. When I started working with the program during class, I felt very lost very quickly. For one thing, I am less familiar with Macs because I have a PC, so sometimes it takes me a little bit longer to adjust. Add that to already being nervous about being really bad at InDesign, I was already setting myself up for failure.

At the end of Thursday’s class I left feeling defeated, and knowing that I had a lot of work to do did not help that feeling. As a result, I pushed off starting the work until the following Tuesday and then realized I had made a big mistake. (Oops!)

When I came back to the typesetting assignment I began in class last Thursday, I did not find it as difficult to work with. In fact, I was able to figure things out pretty easily. (Of course, this is not to say that I think my newsletter was great because I know I have so much more to learn!)

I think I can attribute this to watching the step-by-step videos on Lynda.com. I really like how I can go at my own speed and if I make a mistake I can just go back and listen to the narrator to figure out what I should have done. One of the things that was frustrating me in class last week was that I would watch the professor show me how to do something and be okay with it in that moment, but as soon as I had to do it on my own it was like I had already forgotten everything I had just learned. I intend to watch these videos again to study them more and make myself more comfortable with the programs I am learning about in class.

So, at the end of the week I am feeling much better than I did at the beginning. I am not going to lie, I still am a little afraid of Photoshop and InDesign, but I am becoming more confident in my abilities. I know how important these skills I am learning will be to my future job, and that is why I intend to try my hardest to learn about them (even if it means making a ton of mistakes first).