I'm sorry, HTMWhat?

From high school to now I have taken at least five computer courses that I can recall. And every single one has been different.

In my first class my wayward and slightly emotional teacher attempted to teach me how to write HTML code, needless to say the only reason I passed that one with flying colors was a good friend of mine dedicated a lot of time to assisting me. However being the dimwitted fourteen year old that I then was, I forgot it all a semester later. Senior year came around the bend and I found myself, oddly enough in another computer course. Computer design.

While this class let me be more artistic and creative there was just something about Flash that continually confused me. Not to mention everything I had learned in Freshmen year, whether I remembered it or not, had changed!

By the time I got to college I was pretty fed up, but alas someone had to teach us how to use all the Microsoft programs. I don’t know if you’ve realized this but now there’s a new Microsoft program since 2007, making what I learned three years ago outdated also.

Well a few courses of confusion and a very shifty website later I think I’ve had it. I’m just going to have to sit down at a computer for unnatural amounts of time and harness this strange talent people call web design.

When people say DreamWhat? I’d like to respond with a heart felt “DreamWeaver,” and another “Oh yes I do understand that program, actually.”

Remember when you learned something and you just knew it? Reading, writing and Arithmetic, you learned them and they were there to stay. If you struggled with any of them, well then you had the pleasure of knowing that once you mastered their trickiness you were going to have it for life.

Well things are differnet now. Now I sit down at a computer and stare at its monitor for hours only to be told that what I’m learning could be useless in a year, six months, tomorrow, whenever! It’s a hard pill to swallow, I’m not going to lie.

However, the internet is so important and understanding it, at a very basic level at the very least, is critical in the job market these days. I recently found out people no longer want written resumes, but rather a website designed by you and about you, showing that you can pull out all the stops when it comes to those crazy things people call websites. An online resume, try taking that one back in time and see the looks you get. Especially in a field like journalism staying up to date on different technologies is as important as staying up to date with the news itself.

Its not about just the writing any more, note the look of surprise on this print journalism and creative writing major’s face, its about so much more than that. Getting on this crazy journalism train is difficult and once you’ve jumped on there are about ten thousand people just waiting to push you off again, it’s not easy at all. In fact it’s very difficult. It is not a field for someone who wants to sit back, relax and enjoy a cocktail. It requires constant attention, dedication and aggression. The new technologies that pertain to journalism, after all, are only useful if they are understood.

So there you have it. It’s called HTML, and it stands for HyperText Markup Language – just incase you were wondering. Online here I come, maybe a little slowly, but surely...for sure!