Current Issues.
Topic One: Into the Job Market
Just like all other second semester seniors, I dreamed of having everything lined up for me after graduation: job, nice housing situation, increasing 401k, having the purchasing power to acquire all of the my wants and needs. Despite my common sense of life after graduation, I fell into the hands of reality.
Out of college I was guaranteed one thing...debt. And my drive to get out of debt. Being honest, I don't have $200k of debt - thank you financial aid, but nonetheless I owe a financial institution a sum of money that I can't pay in one pay check. Let me tell you though, I tried the working more than one job to pay bills thing, and it's not anywhere near ideal. I would recommend against that at all costs - unless it is doing two things that you love to do or if you like all of older siblings and ran up the credit card bills. Working one job provides me a steady stream of things to do, since I work on campus and still connected to the what's going on. But I've landed the job and it's beautiful.
Topic Two: Leisure
Being outside of college makes you really appreciate the leisure time that you have. As someone who is hourly, I have the ability to go home without having project 'x' being finished (until tomorrow) and can spend the rest of my waking hours doing whatever I find delight in.
A Lesson Well Learned
By Aron Anderson
Being professional sometimes means listening to your gut. 9 times out of 10, I have found that my reasoning and that my senses have not betrayed me and were making me aware of something up ahead that I could've avoided. Needless to say, I don't always follow my gut instincts.
As a side independent graphic designer and print artist I believe in quality and timeliness in production. My customers not only look to the quality of artwork, but for the ease of use of my procedures and systems that I have set up. The only part of the process that may (and has) fallen through is the printing. I don't own my own print shop, so I don't have control over their systems - and this is where it can all go down hill.
One of my customers wanted to have a handbill ready for a program they were doing on Valentine's Day. I was called a few days prior to have something ready. I completed the design work in less than an hour (including edits). It was a nice handbill too, if you don't mind me tooting my own horn. I had everything ready to go and was willing to have these printed out and then I would collect payment on delivery. My customer on the other hand chose the option to get it printed themselves, which is perfectly fine. I had never done this type of printing before so I was unsure about the outcome. I cautioned my customer to check with the suggested print shop to make sure everything was aligned correctly and what not. Three hours later, and $40 into the hole, the print shop makes 100 copies of a flawed file! They then proceeded to say that the designer of the file, didn't clean up the text before finishing. Correction! I know it was during the export of the file from Photoshop to PDF and converting it to a size that is easily transported via email that possibly made the text fuzzy. Whatever the case may be, I believed that the print shop should've checked this as a courtesy to the customer before printing 100 copies of a flawed document.
BUT! Being a growing professional, I should've gone with my gut feeling and better served my customer by getting them printed myself and DOUBLE-CHECKING the print work. I know that now, and it is a lesson well learned.
Special thanks to Damarcus Johnson, pastor of Newlife at ChapelHill for the experience and today's lesson.