Let me fill you in...

Boy, it has been a loooong while since I have posted. Let me give you a whirlwind update of my professional life. I got a job selling furniture at a retail store. It was not what I was looking for, but it offered a paycheck (something I was temporally missing) and some skills about sales. While working that job, I went to an IIDA event and met some awesome people from the furniture and design industry. We exchanged business cards, etc. etc., and now I am working at Color Art Integrated Interiors as the Customer Experience Manager. I am doing some sales, some design, managing the resource library, and meeting and event planning. It is really fun, and very fast paced. I am learning so much, it is hard to believe that I actually went to school before this. Some advice to current Interior Design students: there is so much they don't teach you in school. Well, rather, they can't teach you in school. Like how to deal with snotty clients, or how to work within a budget. Those kinds of things are too hypothetical, it would just be hard to make a realistic lesson.

I am very grateful to have this position, and to work for this company. I have met so many people that have been my champions, and I know they will continue to help me grow.

Lindsey Pollak's "Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World"

So I recently joined the professional networking website www.gurunation.com and from there, I found the profile of Ms. Lindsey Pollak. In her profile she listed the book she had written "Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World". I was interested in the book, so I ordered it off of Amazon. I started reading it tonight and so far it is really great! It is a very easy read, and everything is broken down into small sections. I think I might carry this book around with me everywhere I go. If I just have a free minute or two I could do a little reading here and there. I also think it is really great that she has all 90 of her tips listed in the Table of Contents, so you can easily go back and find a tip to refer to it.

One of the tips she talked about is figuring out what you look like online, including, but not limited to Facebook. She recommends that you Google yourself and see what comes up. She says "...if you don't exist in Google, you don't exist at all." Well, I just Googled myself, and apparently I have a fairly popular name. I am a lawyer, I play lots of different male college-level sports, and I have various other jobs too (haha). This blog didn't show up until page 5 of the Google results. I feel like that is not very good "Googleability" for me, although, from reading the page titles of the other Jordan Becker's in the world, they might be hard to beat. Pollak suggests getting profiles on several networking websites other than Facebook, so I will work on that. She also suggests writing reviews for books or short papers and submitting them to professional organizations you are involved in, for me, that would be ASID.

I feel like I have a lot of work to do, but atleast this blog is a step in the right direction! I exist on Google, just not until page 5.

Job Opportunities in this Tough Economy

I keep in touch with one of my friends from our Interior Design program who just recently graduated. She is having a really hard time finding jobs, which makes me very nervous for this upcoming May, when I will be job searching as well.

I am putting my portfolio together this semester and it really has made it "hit home". Graduation is just a few short months away and I don't know if I am ready! I am ready to get out of the dorms, but I am not sure how ready I am to be job hunting.

I also have become interested in working for Disney World (doing design work). Boy, their website is hard to figure out! I found the section that talks about the design work they do, but in order to see if there are job listings, you have to create an entire profile, and to be honest, I didn't understand all of the questions the job profile application was asking.

Hopefully my classes this semester will help me get ready for the real world. And if not, I always have my wonderful Professors to back me up!

IDEC Design Competition

It's the start of a new semester, and my last semester (as an undergrad)!!

Before the semester had a chance to get busy, I chose to do a design competition outside of class for the chance to win a little extra cash. The competition was sponsored by the Interior Designers Educators Council (IDEC) and was a group project that was time-sensitive. You only had 14 days from start to finish and the project had to be recieved to Regionals by February 1st. It was a busy two weeks...

I chose to do this project with two of my good friends (and classmates) Rachel and Ashley. The project was to design a learning commons (about 4000 s.f.) for a university. We were supposed to combine technology with sustainability.

This was a really great project for me to do for several reasons. 1) We have not done any projects concerning educational spaces, and won't do any before I graduate and put my portfolio together. 2) It was a learning experience! My team interviewed two of the Library Professionals that work at my University's library and I learned so much about our library! I can text message and Instant Message my library and they will answer questions for you! (How cool is that?!) 3) This project really helped me get familiar with systems furniture (particularly Herman Miller) which is perfect timing because one of my classes for this semester is Corporate & Institutional Design and we have to use systems furniture for our project.

We sent in our project last Friday. We don't find out if we go to Nationals until the end of February. It is going to be a long wait!

This is the last day of the semester...

Mr. Babcock is talking about how we should be keeping up with our blogs, so I figured I should post a new blog. To be honest, this blog has gotten pushed off because of other projects and homework...

This is the last day of the semester so my Intro to Graphic Design and Illustration class is over officially. I have learned a lot from this class. I am very happy that I decided to go ahead and take this class for an elective.

This class has made me significantly more comfortable with Photoshop and Illustrator. I definitely feel much more prepared to create my portfolio next semester; which is the goal I had when I signed up for this class.

Some of the projects that we did I did not enjoy as much as some of the other projects. The zine was definitely my least favorite project. The zine was a project that was supposed to be a how-to mini-magazine that would be fairly easily reproduced. I chose to do "How to Make the Perfect Deviled Eggs". I really enjoy making deviled eggs and my family and friends always talk about how good they are, so I liked my topic a lot. The project itself just was not very entertaining and interesting to me. It was the first project we used Adobe InDesign. I like the way InDesign is set up, but I feel the zine project did not let us learn very many things about InDesign. I feel like there are probably a lot of things that I don't know about InDesign.

I am really excited about creating my portfolio next year. I hope this class proves to be as helpful as I suspect it will be.

Thanks for a great semester!