Thanks!

I am 34, I have a wife, 3 kids, and a lot of bills to pay. I am currently in an online college for web design. My problem is that I do not have time to spend learning the ‘college stuff’ because I am surpassing the lessons with my own studies.

I freelance web design, and what we have learned so far is not worth the time and effort away from my family and learning what I need to learn to get more work…

Thanks for your inspirational post.

Though the online system works well with my schedule, it does not provide the social interaction that a traditional campus delivers.

With an AA in IT and a little over a year to go for my BS in Web Design, I find myself asking this very question, is the piece of paper worth it?

I spend a good amount of time self-learning from blogs and various FREE websites. My struggle is making the time to do my school work in subjects unrelated to my career, and of course those that are related are a few (sometimes more) years behind.

I have to turn potential clients away simply because I do not have the time so I can complete my homework. It is very frustrating to think that I could be making money, building my portfolio, adding to my design / dev experience but can’t because I have to devote hours and hours to reading text books, writing papers, and the most frustrating part: building sites and apps that are outdated so they meet the requirements of the assignment!

I am considering dropping out of school so that I can pursue more work and have the time spent on school to spend on self teaching new trends and technology (and spending with the family).

I go to college online, so I will not miss out on the social aspect; I am middle-aged with lots of experiences, I need to jump-start my new career, not waste time learning outdated information.

Tineye.com shows the original of the picture to be http://www.sxc.hu/photo/541790 , where another commenter has asked if it’s the MC too. He’s got another picture that looks a lot like the DC building and I can’t identify the other room… And he’s from Canada… But he never explicitly states Waterloo. So I’d guess it’s probably MC.

I worked some time after hours for free in an NGO and they taught me some Photoshop, they needed a webpage and also only knew some basic HTML working with tables and taught me that too. Until then I worked in construction but had to leave because of backpains. So I started teaching myself basic design with tutorial sites (this one didn’t exist, yet). And I had to re-learn HTML, ditching tables and using CSS instead.

Honestly, I get the job done, but I always have the feeling that I suck. Tutorial sites like this one are good, but they teach you just techniques, new trends, specific methods. What they are lacking are the basics, like the principles of typography, color theory, spacing, whitespace, those things. You could maybe read a SHORT article about these things, or even buy a book about these things, but they always lack cohesion between multiple topics and just don’t go to much into details. Only the general idea is given.

That’s the design part, now the coding part is even worse. I get HTML and CSS, but PHP or javascript I lack the motivation to learn them on my own. If I where in a building with a teacher and other students I had to learn, but in the comfort of my home this gets tedious. Yes, I can copy some pre-made PHP code here and there, figure my way around jQuery or even create a basic theme for Wordpress. But write my own code? Big no no, for now. I hope this changes in the future.

I just recently started forcing myself to learn PHP and MySQL. For this purpose I bought a book. I feel it’s easier to force yourself to do something if you payed for it, although that hasn’t worked before. For now I am doing fine and I have the feeling this time it will work.

The core elements of computer science (the computer science degrees that aren’t just a programming crash-course) haven’t changed much in a decade, we all still learn the theory and it can still be applied today.

A module or two on web development I can understand, such as in HTML & CSS, PHP or another scripting language. A degree in “Web Development” is a waste of time and money and it’s something that is very much self-taught.

Also, learning web development is just a click away, The one with the highest enthusiasm and the most creative mind stands out.

The only reason why I might consider going to design school is only to meet other people with the same interests that I could share/get techniques from (although blogging could be a substitute), Talking with real people at real time is still the most effective way of learning.

Can you build a commercial airplane without going to aviation school ?

Can you set up network server including software and hardware for fairly big social network without going to school ? (only few talents can do this without going to school. This is also IT, right?)

Can you build a small bridge with capacity of just 3 cars without going to construction school ?

Albeit, on the internet there is pretty much information about everything you ever need to archive anything you could ever imagine. But There is job which to be done you needed to have hands on experience. A person who wants to be a doctor even if he learns all medicine and surgery techniques on the net he still needs a body to practice with, but a web developer just need to have computer. That’s half of my point.

And Since web development tutorial is so easy to find not just because Google power, its also because the people who do web development are internet SAVVY, most of them have their own website and probably a blog,
they work closely with computer 24/7 (if he’s a hardcore developer), it’s a few clicks away to publish their knowledge or latest technique they just find out. Whilst a doctor work with patients most of the time and medical knowledge is hard to give away for free even the doctor want to give it away he needs investing time in writing a safe comprehensive medical advice. In the case web developer giving away their knowledge is also due to promoting themselves in IT world not just for helping or for fun, so it true that you can do web development without going to school, but its only true with web development.