Going to College to be a Webmaster

Paintballdude13, welcome to WMF.

Some of your questions are hard to answer. My recommendations are always to go with something that you like doing as long as you can make enough money for you to survive. What do you you like doing? Is it the design part of website, the programming side or do you like to build computers?

If you like the programming part, then you should probably take courses in that. Start with something like C and stay away from VB. If you learn good programming techniques, then you can easily program in any language. I think that I would just try a mix of things so that you can find one that you really like.

As far as the foreign languages goes, I had Latin and French in HS and German in College but don't use any now. Still most college degrees require it.

It seems like most people in the web design world, tend to go in a couple of differing directions. Some tend to lean more to the design part. Others more to the coding part. Not really many are great at both aspects.

Well someone on another message board told me to look into Network Admins aswell. I dont know I like making a cool looking site and the coding part alittle less, it just can be a pain sometimes coding stuff without like a html editor type program. The only thing I know right now is QBasic and some HTML, but I'm striving to learn more HTML and going to start on maybe C or something like that. In Photoshop I can do some pretty cool things especially after I learned some design things in this Commerical Art Class. I do like to work on computers, like in the neighboorhood and at my moms work I'm often called in to fix a problem or install some new hardware. I've helped my dad build two computers but other than that its just like installing burners, memory stuff like that. The whole foreign language stuff bugs the hell out of me because I have no deisre for it and I dont think I'll even use it. I was thinking about just taking some of my basic classes and some of the programming or similar classes at either a tech or community college instead of some big univeristy so I can save some money on rooming and tution.

Just one more thing to add, what aobut math for a field like this? Like what do you guys recomened to take in Highschool that will help with what I have to take in College.

Calculas would help

Don't limit your options! You are still very young and getting a good, broad knowledge is probably best right now and then specialise later. That's my advise

Welcome to TWF!

Ok well I've decided I'm gonna look into alot of things right now. Taking a computer art class aswell as networking classes next year. I'm gonna start looking into some programming languages and gonna start playing around with Linux on my own at home.

Are you talking about more of a community college program or a university level program? If you're looking at University you'll certainly need some high level math courses. Community colleges tend to have less restrictive requirements, but it would probably be a good idea to take some anyway. In either case, I don't see any reason why you'd need a language - I guess it might be different in the 'states, but here you only need to take languages in University if you're in arts - no other factulties have language requirements AFAIK.

I agree with Julia that it's best to keep your options open at this point. When I was your age I thought I was going to be an architect. Then I ended up going to University for Urban Planning, now I'm here - see my point? Things change, so it's best to get a broad education that you can apply to different fields.

i'd suggest staying away from comminty colleges or private business schools. in my experience they don't teach you jack and most of the teachers are dumber than the students. They want to get your grant money & student loans then get you out of there as quickly and cheaply as possible. Also don't get sucked into a Microsoft certification program, theyre worthless.

Well, I just got out of a community college (2 AS degrees). Most teachers are... eh, less knowledgable than desired, but then again, the average student is dumber too. I went to a community college because I knew I didn't have the motivation to go to a uni. But I can now see how the larger degree could help.

I took 2 years of spanish in HS, and 1 semester of spanish in college. "Yo no se nada." ...yup, that about sums it up.
You need a language to get a BA, but not a BS. Some colleges require a language to transfer from a community college to a university.

Math..
If you get into the programming side, you'll want to take lots of math. Something I've noticed people complaining about is that they'll never need to know this or that. But what you gain from a math class isn't just formulas. You're training your mind to solve problems. A very important for programmers.

In HS, I took physics, chem, trig, and pre-calc. In college, my AS degrees required one coure that was higher than algebra (trig,stat,pre-calc,etc - 100 series courses). I took the first semester of calculus (math 250).

Setting up linux at home is a good move. I setup a linux box in Aug 2001. I've learn heaps of stuff and had loads of fun.

The economy sucks in California. Before Gray Davis became governor, California had a $12 billion surplus. After one term in office, he sank us down to a $35 billion deficit. He's now cut funding to schools. Local districts have a hiring freeze and have even laid off IT people. :mad:

I applied to one position, and called back 2 days later. The guy from Human Resources said they had over 75 applicants (within about a week).

Quote: Originally posted by R0B
i'd suggest staying away from comminty colleges or private business schools. in my experience they don't teach you jack and most of the teachers are dumber than the students. They want to get your grant money & student loans then get you out of there as quickly and cheaply as possible. Also don't get sucked into a Microsoft certification program, theyre worthless.

ITA! They always make things sound great but the reality is quite different. Want to hear my horror story?

My 2 cents is just keep your mind open, try lots of stuff and your calling should find you - who knows, you could be the next Bill Gates

sTaY @ sHcOl CaUsE ShC0oL iS c00l Or U'lL EnD LiKe mE 1+1=3

Ya I'm keeping my mind open. I just dont wanna get into anything that I gotta deal with calc in, I mean math is the subject I hate the most. To be a Network Admin would I be required to take calc classes or actually have to use it on the job?

yes, anything to do with programming requires advanced math and logic theory.

The more you learn now, the easier it will be, like saving money -- it's worth more later if you learn it earlier.

In the old days of the Internet (5 years ago) web design firms hired graphic designers, programmers, network administrators, web administrators, etc. Now they want one person to do it all.

You'll need to know Ftp, Telnet, Linux, Apache, SQL, Php, Perl, Javascript, Flash, Photoshop, web server administration, security, SSL/SSH, DNS, etc.

Megan, what's your horror story?

Meagn do tell please! My son is going to go for A+ Certification after graducation in June.

We were looking at one Community College where he's already been involved in a shadowing program, and one local business type college.

He poo-pooed the Community College after we got the lierature and he found out he'd need to take core subjects just as he's always done. So he's leaning towards the business college.

A frined of mine is changing carrers and is attending the same one, and it seems that they cover a wide area of it....not just the A+ part, but then she could barely send e-mail when she started.

>Begin Best Mom Voice<
paintballdude13, get as much education now as you can. Take it from someone who passed up a full scholarship to a leading university.......you'll be sorry later. Besides....once you get older the old brain isn't so quick to remember stuff.
>End Best Mom Voice<

Quote: Originally posted by c-double
In the old days of the Internet (5 years ago) web design firms hired graphic designers, programmers, network administrators, web administrators, etc. Now they want one person to do it all.

I would disagree actually. I would say it's the opposite - companies used to try to hire "do it all" types, but now they realize that it's quite impossible to find someone who's good at everything. The big companies who can afford it seem to segregate things quite a bit, and those who can't seem to use freelancers and contract workers to get things done right. Subcontracting is another method that seems to have become more common.

Here's my horror story - I'm just going to copy and paste from another forum where I posted it before:

Mine wasn't with one of those cheesy ITT Tech type places - it was with a well recognized community college. (Conestoga College). It was billed as a "digital media" program - 6 months, 5 hours a day.

The first day they had someone from the college in there to talk a bit about the program. They advised against holding a part-time job because the program was just so intense that you'd have trouble finding time for both. Now that I think about that I'm not sure if I want to roflmao or throw up.
The instructor had all kinds of fancy qualifications - a BA in fine art, some sort of multiimedia program from Ryerson, teachers college, and a masters of something. All seemed well.

Now, before I forget - the course was supposed to be a post-grad certificate for people who already had some prior design experience. It turned out that about half the class had no tangible design experience and most of them didn't have degrees or diplomas either. (so much from learning from your peers!)

So, the first two months weren't too bad. That's because Adobe provides training manuals with complete instructions on how to teach the excercises they've already defined. I didn't however, find myself doing a whole lot of homework and had no problems working part time as well.

Then we got into the "web design" portion. The instructor started out with 3 days on HTML, all the while emphasizing to my ignorant classmates that it wasn't necessary to know HTML at all. So he goes on, teaching the basics of Dreamweaver etc., spends one day on tabled layouts before introducing Layers! This was two years ago, folks - nobody was using CSS positioning at that point in time. I should have dropped the class when that happened. The next pathetic thing that happened was when he was going through all the menus in DW explaining what all the items did. When he got to Server Side Includes he said, and I quote, "That has to do with forms." LOL!! I had to correct him on that one. What a moron.

Things got worse after Christmas. The class was supposed to start at 9:00 - by this time he would maybe start a lesson at 10:30, maybe 11:00. He also didn't have Adobe manuals to rely on anymore and ended up winging the entire class. That's right, no lesson plan and this was someone who had gone to teacher's college.

After a couple of haphazard weeks on SoundForge, Acid, and Premiere we started Flash. That's when things got messy. He just did not seem to know how to use the program at all. He kept making all kinds of mistakes, having to go back and repeat himeself, further confusing the already confused students. Two of them were having such a hard time catching on to flash that the pace of instruction slowed to a crawl. I wanted to scream when he spent an hour trying to explain how flash can detect when you're importing a numbered series of images (button1, button2, button3 etc.). I stopped paying attention.

We were also supposed to learn Director and After Effects - Instructor guy didn't bother teaching those much - he just passed out photocopies from books and told us to follow along ourselves. Actually, that's how the last part of the Flash instruction went as well.

One more thing - grading. We were supposed to be putting all our little assignments into a "checklist" area at the end of every class. This was supposedly going to be marked and looked at by the instructor. I stopped putting anything in there about halfway through the program and nobody ever said anything to me about it. When I finally got my grades they seemed to be almost random numbers.

Quote: Originally posted by paintballdude13
To be a Network Admin would I be required to take calc classes or actually have to use it on the job?

Depends on your degree. My cousin now has a AS in something networking and he didn't take anything over algebra. You don't even need to take any math for a CCNA. I don't know what the requirements are for a BS, it may just depend on the college or university's catelog.

No, I doubt you'd ever use calculus doing a network job. I've never used it programming, nor trig or physics. Those maths are not always requirements solely because you'll use them on the job. Most times they're requirements just to teach you problem solving skills.

Quote: I've never used it programming, nor trig or physics.

That depends too. In my hobbyist programming, I've had to use a lot of mathematical logic and somewhat basic algebra — but that's just the nature of the programs. I wouldn't rule it out entirely. (I also tend to make physics/math oriented stuff for fun. )

Isn't most math required for general programming taught in courses anyway?

Quote: Most times they're requirements just to teach you problem solving skills.

Very good point. We can't always see the connection, but things tend to converge as we get older and learn more things.

Ya that is a good point, never thought about that. I just didnt see the point of some of these high level math in code crunchin.

Math becomes important in things like Flash MX actionscript where you are converting coordinate points to angles, and simulating physics.

And optimizing expressions.

TonyMontana

I was reading on another forum and caught something very clever. A high school student had used the school's external learning program to get a major certification... MCSE, CompTIA, Oracle or something like that.

An interesting possibility for a high school student... get a valuable certification on the school system's dollar while getting a glympse inside DeVry or some community college, a chance to see what you like or don't. From there, you will be in an ideal place to evaluate tech school to help you draw a comparison and make the correct* choice of a liberal arts college or university.

* (word "correct" added to reflect personal bias)