How I Discovered Web Design through a Library Pamphlet

During the summer of 2019, I was unemployed and open-minded. I was living by the motto of I’ll try anything once. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do professionally or how I wanted to spend my time, and as a result, I was in a period of fully indulging my curiosity. If it piqued my interest, it was worth exploring, and if I didn’t enjoy it, well, I could always walk away.

One day, I was leaving my local library after spending a couple hours writing my novel, when something caught my eye. By my library’s door is a table filled with resource pamphlets. Usually, I walk right past it, but my open schedule and open mind had me curious, so I decided to check it out. On that table, I found a pamphlet advertising a year-long, free web design and development program through the state university.

I like free stuff, and I had enjoyed building out my blogging site, so I sent an email to the contact on the pamphlet.

Apparently, I signed up just in the nick of time. The career center said they received funding from the state to support more computer science training to Mainers as a way to develop the local tech industries. They had a few different options, including more generalized information technology training, but this year would be the last offering for the web design and development program.

Thus, I began my journey learning html, css, php, and even gifs. I took the classes part-time, while I was working full-time as an education researcher. 

A lot of website platforms like Wix (which I previously used) and Squarespace (which I currently use) will do most, if not all, of the coding work for me, but the program introduced me to important ideas that I still utilize, like how to effectively draw a person’s attention to specific content on a web page or what to put on a navigation bar. I think the part that excited me the most was being able to merge my written creativity with visual creativity. 

I spent around maybe 60 hours over the last few months transferring my blog over to this website, and there’s still more I want to do behind the scenes, like update hyperlinks and improve my site’s search engine optimization. Though it was a slog to get through it all, I did it because I wanted to. I’m really happy with how this website is coming together, and it feels so good to be able to say that I’ve done it all by myself.

A couple weeks ago, I was asked to write a short article for college freshmen about why they should look into their campus libraries. This story didn’t quite fit into it, but I wanted to take a moment to share it here. My life would look different without libraries and my website would too.