Student Reflection
By Lars Black
lablack@lc.edu

There are hundreds of students that go to Lewis and Clark Community College, but what do other students do? Well, I am a current student of Lewis and Clark Community College working my way to getting my Associate’s Degree in Web Design. I will be writing about when I began as a student of Lewis and Clark community college, how I got through my first years as a Lewis and Clark Community College student, and what programs I use during my class and why I still use them today. And, finally, my thoughts as a student of Lewis and Clark community college.

Students go through so many different courses at Lewis and Clark community college, so let’s explore mine!

The Beginning

When I started college back in 2019, I was nervous like everyone else. College was a big undertaking, especially for someone fresh out of high school. But I must say, my first two years were a lot, and I mean a lot of fun. I took transition classes as I was way too intimidated to take main course stuff immediately. These transition classes were a lot of fun and taught me how college worked, as well as gave me a deeper understanding of college.

Then, I started a few of the classes that I had to do for my degree, on top of the transition classes. The first of my classes for my degree was a little rough, which was understandable as I never really got deep into programming before. But programming was not the tough part of my first few classes: The hardest part of the beginning classes was the math classes. Math has never been a strong point for me. However, it wasn’t very hard as the teachers and instructors I had for those classes were very helpful.

But the most fun parts of the first year were the classes, especially when I started to learn how to program. The first few classes in programming I had helped me learn how much I enjoy working on programming and building websites from scratch. The first programming I did was not that great in my opinion; being a poorly made resume website. But it was my first step in building websites, and throughout that class, my programming skills improved greatly.

This also made my appreciation of websites greater than ever before. But my second and third year is truly the beginning of my college career.

During my second and third years of classes is where I started using a lot of Adobe applications and Visual Studio Code. I never really used any Adobe applications before, but after using some of these programs, I really can’t do stuff without them. The Adobe application I have possibly used the most is Adobe PhotoShop. During these years, I used mainly Adobe applications, but to program a website you need more specific tools… So what tools did I use?

The Programs I Used.

There is a lot of programming and designing involved with building a website from scratch, from the actual code to all the artwork that will add to the content of the website. Throughout programming the website, you’ll make use of coding apps like Visual Studio Code and Adobe Dreamweaver. Then, for the visual stuff like pictures and videos, I used apps like PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Animate. All of these apps greatly help in completing the classes I had to do for my degree. But how did these apps help me in my personal life, and how did I use them to achieve success in my classes?

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is an amazing app that I used to build my first few websites and learn a lot of my coding with. The main parts I used Visual Studio Code were for learning the actual coding languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I loved learning HTML and CSS, but for JavaScript, not so much. Visual Studio Code is a simple app that allows you to build website code and lets you test said code. You can technically fully develop a website on this app, however, there are better applications you can use.

Adobe Dream Weaver

I love Adobe Dreamweaver. It takes everything from Visual Studio Code and simplifies it. You can build a website full of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using the tools in Adobe Dreamweaver. It is much faster than Visual Studio Code, and you can focus more on the design of the website to make it look better. And, if you have a server available, you can even host your website from Dreamweaver. You could host it with Visual Studio Code, too, but it’s a much more complicated method overall.

Adobe Photoshop

Another app I love from Adobe is Adobe PhotoShop, an app I feel like everyone should have. Adobe PhotoShop has helped me with so many of my classes it is insane thinking about not having this. This useful little app is a photo editor that has many functions, some of which I am still learning how to use even today. This app completely beats all other photo editing apps I have used. This will lead to the next app, but if you’re a fan of PhotoShop, you probably will not like Illustrator.

Adobe Illustrator 

One, if not the only Adobe application I outright refuse to use, is Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Illustrator is another photo editor, but an application that also focuses on design. The problem I have with Illustrator is that it is far too complicated when comparing what Photo Shop offers. It is often said by people that if one likes Photoshop, you probably will dislike Illustrator. Although being more complicated than PhotoShop, you can do a lot more complicated design on Illustrator than on Photoshop. But both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop can help in other applications like Adobe Animate.

Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate was one of the more fun Adobe applications to learn during my time as a student at Lewis and Clark Community College. Adobe Animate is rather self-explanatory, but it has a lot of cool features. When I learned Adobe Animate, I discovered how to make my animations. I also learned how to animate for Virtual Reality and how to include stuff from PhotoShop and Illustrator. Overall, Adobe has so many applications for anything you need, and I’m surprised it isn’t included on computers all over the world.

Overall, I have loved my time as a student at Lewis and Clark community college, and this has been a life-changing experience for me. There were times when I thought I couldn’t do it in a class or that I would fail, but the amazing instructors here and the drive to finish college have gotten me through all of it.

It is sad knowing that I will be graduating here soon as I have made so many memories here at Lewis and Clark, and it will hurt to see them all end. Other than the great experiences I have had at Lewis and Clark community college, did you have a positive experience like I had?