Ok, so it was a month and a half ago that I decided that I needed to transition to a new career. For me, well, transitions are frequently not gentle matters … rather, they tend to be sudden, abrupt, and often involve a startling lack of forethought. In my head, this is due to my stellar intuition, though, in truth, other people might use the word ‘capricious.’ But in any case, let’s just say I’m not a ‘wade into the pool’ kind of person. Works out for me, though …
So I left my art teaching job, enrolled in the local community college’s Information Systems Technology program, with a side certificate program in Graphic Design, and began two classes. I bought books on HTML and CSS, read them, and took notes. And more notes. And more notes. I’m very thorough, and it would seem somewhat fond of taking notes. And I was like “hey, this is fun! It’s not hard, it’s design, wow, I always assumed computer programmish things were, well …. difficult.” (Don’t worry, you will have the opportunity to laugh at my naive condescension in a few sentences. I won’t blame you.)
I built my art website (another shameless plug here … larakloppstudio.com … check it out … I’m proud of the site and the artwork!), I finished the intro books on HTML and CSS, and I began to delve into the next step … learning JavaScript and JQuery. Ok, JavaScript, not so difficult, at its most basic, baby level. Meaning, I understand variables, arrays, functions and loops as basic math/logic concepts, and I get the syntax of writing the format. Have I done anything longer than, say, 20 lines checking to see if an imaginary person filled out an imaginary form correctly? Well, no.
I understand the mockery I am deservedly opening myself up to, because I know that real code which fills volumes is so far out of my reach right now that (insert really good analogy here, about ants and giant mountains or something, but better than that). But the basics, they were, well, ok. So yesterday I transitioned into reading about JQuery. And suddenly words made no sense and symbols floated in meaningless blobs attached randomly to other symbols. I could see the CSS and HTML roots hidden in the code. I get that the parentheses held arguments, and variables. I know the curly brackets begin a function, and end it. But the entire syntax was lost on me … what is this dot? Is this referring to a class, or is it part of the JQuery code? Why is this symbol next to this other symbol … in fact, what is this symbol? I got that uncomfortable, itchy feeling you get when your clothing still has laundry soap in it, and is a little too tight in just the wrong places, and has an annoying tag you keep meaning to cut off but never remember to until you’re dressed. I shut my book and watched Jon Stewart make fun of republicans. I mean, they shut down the government to have a hissy fit, they kinda earned it. But, well, I’m not very political, so whatever.
So today is day 2. Maybe today it’ll make sense. This morning when I was showing my husband and explaining why it didn’t make sense it kinda made sense. Like I had to search a little harder to show him the really confusing part. I always appreciate it when my brain learns things for me while I sleep. I’m not sure we appreciate our brains for all they do for us. Take a moment. Thank your brain. And your autonomic nervous system. ‘Cause that makes sure you breathe. I think … it’s been a while since high school biology class. And caffiene. Ok, now I’m just procrastinating …
So now, back to JQuery! Wish me luck! And if all the babbling about computery stuff has your head spinning, tomorrow maybe I’ll write about what’s wrong with the public school system … that’s a fun one, no? Or art! I love art! But, for now, sigh … JQuery. I will not be defeated!
