Introduction to Junior Year Reflection
My junior year is almost over, so here is a recap of what I did in Web Development & Design for the 23-24 year!
Junior Year Quarter 1: 8/29/23 – 11/6/23
At the start of this school year, I got the chance to experience having a new teacher and getting used to his teaching style. Meeting his pace wasn’t hard, it was actually fun and I like it a lot more than last year. My teacher for my freshman-sophomore year has a different style, which was fine, but it wasn’t as project based as my new teacher (which I’ve realized this year I really like).
By the end of this quarter, I was farther along than I was from the past two years. Still, I like how everything played out. The first two years (with my 1st teacher) I learned a lot of hard coding, and IT. In other words, it was more of the backend of Web. During that time I was able to build a strong foundation when it comes to CSS Flex and Grid, along with the basic coding of HTML and CSS in general. In addition, she taught us a lot about marketing so that was helpful. This year, my new teacher, moved us away from hard coding and put on onto WordPress. We still had a few projects later on where we had to hard code and that showed me that moving away from hard coding didn’t hinder what I previously learned.
Projects: Styled Homepage Creation, Installing/Configuring WordPress, Elevator Pitch, Employee Application Form, HTML Tables, Legal & Ethical Presentation, Poster, & Quiz, Personal Logo Design, & Yoast SEO
Favorite: Personal Logo Design
Bringing in an outside project my junior year
My teacher allowed me to bring in my own outside project. It was the first time I ever made a website for a client, and going through the entire discovery process was exciting. This first client is my sister, and I made a site for her cosmetology business (honeyibraid.com).
Junior Year Quarter 2: 11/7/23 – 1/25/24
By this time, I was already settled into Web and was enjoying its pace. This quarter included creating our own font, which was pretty cool and something I never did before. We also worked on JavaScript which was something that wasn’t as focused on as HTML and CSS last year.
Projects: Custom Typeface Creation, Dynamic Typography, JavaScript Auto Break Timer, Image Gathering, & Mad Libs PHP Game
Favorite: Dynamic Typography
Having my first client that reached out to me
I got more involved with LinkedIn, and a potential client actually reached out to me. It’s a huge project and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work on it during my senior year.
Introduction of FBLA Gala Site Project
Check out my blog post about how my team and I won the state web design competition for FBLA. Right here, in quarter 2, was the beginning of this project. It all started with my teammate, Prakash Bhandari, bringing the project to my class and discussing it with my teacher. I overheard my teacher giving him recommendations on who to bring to the team, and he told him to ask me. At this point, we never spoke to each other, but he approached me and asked me to join. I said sure, why not.
I’ve been a member of FBLA since it was brought to our school last year, so being able to finally get involved and compete was exciting. I didn’t know my other teammate, Daniel Ruby, at the time either so it was really a whole new experience with brand new people. I guess my teacher had a good idea of how we could combine our own skills to be an effective team because we worked well together from the start.
Junior Year Quarter 3: 1/26/24 – 4/4/24
Projects: PHP MySQL Voting, Animated Logo, Website Review for Redesign Sales, Mobile-Optimized Landing Page Design, Intro to React JS, Social Media Campaign Design, & Cybersecurity Awareness Poster
Favorite: Mobile-Optimized Landing Page Design
This landing page took us back to hand coding, so I was excited to move away from WordPress again. The project gave me more confidence in my development and design abilities, and I was glad to know I still remembered how to code despite it being so long since hand coding a full page.
Competing at the state level for FBLA Gala Site
Here’s a picture! Check out this blog to learn more about my experience.
Junior Year Quarter 4: 4/4/24 – 6/5/24
This part of the year was a great closer. I got to learn some photography, build my own resume, cover letter, and business card (which I gave out at the junior job interview session) and work on our “Web Design Final Project” (which for me and my FBLA group, wasn’t really a project). My teacher decided to give the class the same prompt we had for our competition. So, for this project, everyone except us created their own gala sites. We took the time to improve our site and presentation. For example, everyone presented once, while we planned to present twice for more improvement. We ended up only doing it once because things got pushed forward, but we still got good practice and feedback.
Projects: Resume & Cover Letter Design, IoT Device Implementation, & Sports Camp Registration Form reCAPTCHA. + a “Web Design Final Project”
Favorite: Resume & Cover Letter Design
Job Interview on May 2nd
School Plans for Next Year as a Senior
I have a lot of ideas, so I’ll simplify all of it to two things and minify it to only be school-based.
- Co-Op
- Client Websites/Projects
- Portfolio