This past Friday we had a guest in my Advanced Web Architecture class, Matt Franklin. He graduated from my school with the same degree I am about to earn by this spring. I admit, before attending SMCC I held a sort of stigma toward people who went to community colleges instead of “real” schools. This view has completely changed and I really appreciate and enjoy the opportunities this education has brought me, but I’m still concerned about my future with this degree. After all, it’s still an Associate’s, and I still feel limited without a Bachelor’s when I check out many job postings.

I have devised a plan of sorts which I have begun this fall. It is in three tiers: “ideal”, “back-up” and “if all else fails”. I have put a lot of time and thought into this since this past spring and really feel these are my best choices.

IDEAL: Transfer to Montserrat College of Art, a four-year institution in Beverly, Massachusetts and choose the self-designed major. My major would combine new media with the arts, somewhat like a triple major in technology, graphic design and illustration.

The school is in a great location, has my desired major and is the type of institution I really feel I can thrive in. I need to attend an open house before I can truly attest to its relevance to my needs, however. Will it be competitive and challenging enough to push me to my limits? Is the atmosphere something I feel comfortable with?

The biggest downside is cost, and considering I will ultimately depend on scholarships and Federal aid, the steep tuition (plus what I might pay for an apartment) may not be covered. In that case, I will fall back on…

BACK-UP: Transfer to University of Southern Maine, another four-year institution here in Portland, which also offers a self-designed major. I would do the same thing there as I would at Montserrat, but if I can avoid going to another school in this area I would (I have already attended two, between MECA and SMCC).

I feel the need to grow up a little away from home and experience new surroundings, so I would be reluctant to picture myself completing my education there – but who knows, maybe I could transfer again, or do a program where I could travel. I’m a bit afraid that because USM is a state school that I will lack the challenges I feel I need to really push myself, but I don’t want to talk down their art department until I go check it out myself. I plan on making an appointment sometime this fall.

USM is an excellent backup considering its partnership with the Maine Community College System and its reasonable price. I will still rely on scholarships to fund my education here, even if Stafford loans will cover most of it. I could still live at home, at least for the first leg, saving a great deal of money. If that somehow doesn’t work out…

IF ALL ELSE FAILS: I will go out into the world with my Associate’s in New Media and see how I manage. There is a fairly regular amount of decent job postings I am eligible for between the North Shore and Portland on Craig’s List alone, so I feel confident I could get some sort of job relevant to my degree.

While I am doing this I may consider attending Harvard Extension School, the college from which my mother graduated. She was in a similar situation to mine, where she dropped out of school when she was young and decided later on to finish. At that point she had a family, though, so she chose to attend night classes. Harvard Extension School, of all places, accommodated her the best.

The Extension School offers ALBs (fancy Harvardian for Bachelor’s) in various concentrations, one of which is studio arts and film, which is right up my alley. If I join the Phi Theta Kappa honors society I would even be eligible for a scholarship that would cover my three preliminary classes that determine acceptance and eligibility for other financial aid. In spite of Ivy League schools’ pretentiousness, they do have some of the most excellent aid available considering their massive endowments, and that could work to my advantage. (Applying to their regular undergraduate college is out, however; they will not be accepting transfer students for quite some time.)

Choosing where I go next is going to be the biggest life-changing decision I have ever made. If I go to USM almost nothing concerning my current life will change. I will probably continue to live with my parents and work the same day jobs I have had for three years.

However, if I decide to make the leap and go for Montserrat or Harvard, chances are I will be obliged to move closer to Boston and make my first step as an independent young adult. I am at an age where I can’t expect to live as easily as straight out of high school students, so moving down there would consist of having to find a new job(s), an apartment and giving up the security blanket of having my parents’ support.

So stressful!

I have received an assignment to redesign my college’s website according to the smarts of this guy here:

There is nothing in the basic website design I believe he would find offensive that I can really show with a quick mockup. The Southern Maine Community College site’s main problem is in its functionality; links lead to dead ends, the search engine doesn’t work properly, etc. The only usability tip Mr. Nielson gives that SMCC could benefit from, aside fixing basic things like that, would be to use the “breadcrumb” method of organizing subpages instead of using cluttered sidebars on both sides of the page.

Because those issues would be difficult to solve with a simple “Photoshop sketch” I have opted to simply redesign the home page, take out anything I find unnecessary or obtrusive and replace with my own ideas.

(Full version here.)

It’s difficult to do this properly without content for the example, but the main changes were in simplifying everything. I found the left sidebar to be unattractive and poorly organized, the “quick links” not relevant enough to most browsers that I would keep them. The slideshow is gone, along with its silly comments, and would do well replaced by a simple banner or tasteful image portraying students enjoying their education. I kept the three news boxes at the bottom because I found they could be put to good use, for example announcing open houses, upcoming events and student activities.

My boyfriend had his own suggestions, too.

He has some valid points, I think.

Our first assignment from Advanced Web Architecture (my wonderfully early Friday morning web design class) is to review three blogs: one pertaining to media, another technology, another entertainment.

"Each day, Cartoon Brew brings the latest news and trends in animation to over 10,000 different artists, entertainment execs and cartoon aficionados." - CartoonBrew.com

I have chosen to review Cartoon Brew as my “media blog”. At first glance it may seem to fall more into the entertainment category but their handle on relevant current events and sharing the history of the medium makes this blog well-rounded and intelligent, setting it apart from many that only concentrate on upcoming attractions and fandoms.

One example of this is a recent article, Luxo sues Pixar/Disney. They were also quick to share the controversial news of Disney’s purchase of Marvel Comics, spurring an amusing collection of commentary artwork. Here’s an interesting article that takes a look at an overlooked part Disney’s history: Disney artists write home during WWII. Also shared are fine art events, such as times and places of particularly interesting exhibitions.

They utilize a two-column design with a simple theme that is clean enough to feel official, yet just stylized enough that it has an appropriately cartoony atmosphere. The tag cloud at the top right of the page brings good balance to the basic header and often colorful content on the left.

The right sidebar has quite a bit of information but is well-organized, containing only relevant tidbits such as well-placed advertising, networking links and plugs for other sites. The navigation is kept easy and efficient with minimal extra pages and a clean design.

Well-organized and always interesting, that blog will always have a place in my RSS feed.

Now that I’ve written about a site I absolutely love, now I’m going to choose one I am not so keen on. I don’t keep up with any techie-type blogs (except maybe Comicpress updates) so I had to do a Google search.

I guess the logo's kind of cute...

Out of the top results I found when I Googled “gadget blog”, Ubergizmo is the one I felt the least inclined to spend more than ten or so seconds reading… and then I realized that, after such a glowing review of CB, I should perhaps take something I can dissect with a more critical eye.

The content of the website itself is nothing to crap on too much, it’s actually written pretty well and seems to be informative… at least from the bits and pieces I’ve picked up. I had little interest in exploring the content because the design of the site failed to draw me in, but what I read concerning a review of the OneShot Camera concept was intriguing enough.

A common mistake I see in blogs is the failure to really utilize the customizability of blog themes and arrange thing in an organized, attractive manner. It seems unfinished in a lot of ways. The sidebar content isn’t aligned and the bottom of the page kind of drifts off into nothingness. Navigation has been tossed in seemingly randomly in a place I kind of had to search for, and by the time I found the “About” page I had lost interest.

Another trend I noticed specifically in techie blogs is the emphasis on utility-based designs; no non-sense, they tend to be plain and efficient in every way. This works very well for some, but I think Ubergizmo loses that with its hard-to-read lime green on white text and haphazardly added sidebar content and ads.

This site has decent content, a cute logo and a lot of potential. Its design just needs some tweaking, some simple organization would do wonders for them. Kudos for making it in the top five sites on my Google search, though, apparently they’re doing something right!

The last blog I’m going to review is Gorilla Artfare, probably the #1 entry in my RSS feed that I am always excited to check. I’ll throw it in the entertainment category as it’s an artists collective, and many of them do concept art for games and movies and other projects you’d hear about on more general entertainment sites as well.

It’s really hard to find anything critical to say about this blog, but that may also be because I’m biased. Generally it is simple yet tasteful, the focus completely on the art. The sidebar contains little content, only some links to networking sites, the featured artists and friends being of interest. I almost expect more, though I appreciate that they make the effort to exclude advertising.

Some of its best points are also those that I am unsure about upon further consideration. The neutral background color is advantageous for the display of many types of art, but it also manages to turn everything but the content into a sort of beige mush when I’m not concentrating on the design itself. The simplicity of the blog is refreshing, but at the same time I find myself wishing there was some more content somewhere, or some treasure to be unburied like with many art sites.

My only real complaint is the fact that the graphic-intensive entries make for very low loading times at some points and has, on many occasions, caused a bit of impatience. It was worth the wait in the end, but for new readers or people skimming through, that could hurt its draw.

The content is pretty amazing, though, so even if it is slow to load and the design overall not too interesting, I’ll always look forward to the next update.