1. I started school with the intention of becoming a web developer and I have been here a year so far working for a degree in Web Technologies. My grades have been good and the subject does continue to hold an interest for me.

2. Almost a year into it I take my first psychology class and practically fall in love with it. Research and writing for the class gets me good grades and I’m happy to see that I can actually do some good work in it. Then I get the idea that it would be fulfilling to become a substance abuse counselor. I already have some knowledge on the subject and could enjoy helping others with recovery. Sounds good, anyway.

3. After interviewing the two people already working as substance abuse counselors, I discovered it was not for me. Anywhere from 2/3 to ¾ of their time is devoted to doing paperwork and there is often not enough time to get it done. Time spent actually helping people is very limited. Depending who you work for, you might find yourself dong a lot of that paperwork without getting paid for it while sacrificing quality time in your own life. You will also get more clients than you can possibly handle. The pay can be tolerable, but it sounds ultimately unfulfilling and frustrating.

4. Actually, I have come to realize that my true interest lies in Social Psychology, but in order to function in that respect would require at least a Master’s Degree and there simply is not time for all that. “Functioning” meaning using the education to actually earn a paycheck. I can write well so one possibility might be to continue my education in that direction while working on a degree in Journalism. Unfortunately, if I were a journalist, the only way I could be happy with it is if I were writing about the truth and, these days, the truth does not pay. Also, not having the Master’s or PhD degree would mean that my articles would carry very little weight and prevent any significant recognition by publishers. The things that I have mentioned wanting to do can be interests to pursue with the possibility of actually working in them to some small degree.

5. This brings me back to being a Web Developer. I began Web Technologies at Forsyth Tech with an image of myself designing websites for small businesses and others on a freelance basis and making lots of money working from home!!! Something like that can be possible, but it’s not a very practical goal for someone just starting out and it is becoming less likely someone will be able to make a good living at it. Small businesses and individuals are increasingly being offered easier methods to build websites on their own and those types of jobs are becoming extinct. A small business can choose from thousands of templates then just drag and drop their content, publish and have the completed site hosted and never have to take a Web Technologies class at Forsyth Tech. To be successful in that respect, you would get a job with a company that is already building and maintaining websites for a variety of clients. There, you can build on your skills and at some point, begin building a client base by doing some work at home. It could take quite a while to reach the point of becoming a successful freelancer and by that time, the clients will need more sophisticated services than Mom & Pop.

6. The successful Web Developer is not just going to be composing cool looking websites with Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop. A good Web Developer is more like a computer programmer that creates web applications. What are web applications? The application resides on the web server and you interact with it from your browser… and lots of people can do it at the same time. Some examples are online stores, online file converting and editing, an online job applications, online video chatting, online TV viewing, online music streaming, online financial managers, most anything that accesses a database and/or allows you to enter information to be stored into a database, and, yes, online website builders…. BOOOO. There is practically no end the sorts of things that can be created and served on a web page as an application.

7. So… even though composing a nice website in Dreamweaver can be part of the job, I will likely spend much more time developing and writing code for web applications using much more than the HTML code that describes the structure of a web page to a web browser. I will need to learn HTML… of course, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, a way to apply styles to elements on multiple… even thousands of web pages then simply changing the style sheet changes those elements on all the pages at once), JavaScript (“an object- oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.” Whole websites might be built with JavaScript or the applications that show up in them.), SQL - Structured Query Language (the programming language for databases), PHP or ASP (competing ways for building dynamic websites), XML, API, APPml, VBScript, XSLT, RSS, XQuery, JQuery, and there are more. I don’t think I get into C+ or C++. I’m not so sure what some of those really are, but pretty soon I’ll be able to write in ten different languages that only web developers can understand. I’m not so sure that I will be an expert in all that a year from now so I just might go for that Bachelor’s degree.

8. It looks like my work is cut out for me and it will be quite a challenge. By the time I get an Associate’s degree, I might just know enough to become employed and really start learning. For this type of job, the learning never ends.