Learning to be a Student Again

Hello woodworkers, no I have not given up woodworking, I have just been busy pursuing my education. I decided to go back to school at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio a private Quaker college where I am studying for a dual degree in Fine Arts, and Media Productions. yes friends I do plan on using this in my online woodworking hobby. What I am hoping to do is to get into producing online content for applications like ibook or working for a magazine. I am hoping that there will be a need for people who know SketchUp, video, photography and how to write, so they can produce manuals for products like Ikea bookshelves or Cannon cameras in iBook. Content that is straight forward and easy to follow with SketchUp models, art work, pictures, easy to follow writing, and videos of professionals assembling or using the products. Theses books can be downloaded from ibook and and will give the user a better experiences. 

I’m on spring break this week, so I am catching up on my art work. I am also preparing my images for my screen printing classes which has been a great class, now I can make my own company T-shirts. I have noticed one thing watching some of the other students in class that I also noticed in some woodworker classes I have taken. Students take classes to learn how to do a technique, but somewhere long the way they get so wrap up in their project that they get tunnel vision where the whole class becomes about that piece of work instead of learning as much about how to do the techniques needed to do that project. For me any art piece or woodworking piece I make in a class is a by-product of the class, a by-product of learning the process and I try not to get to focused on it, but instead put all that energy into learning as much as I can. I do that by talking to other students and helping them when I can and excepting their help and advice. I ask them about their mistakes and try the make note of them so I don’t repeat them and I tell them about mine and how I fixed them. I also started making better notes with pictures that I keep in Everynote, a program that I have came to love. This has made me a better student this year and I am sure that in the long run will improve my work whether its art or woodworking.

Joey