Beyond University
Graduation
With the onset of the recession all those years ago, I thought my best course of action to safely pass the worst of it, was to enrol at university. I came to my course with very little previous programming knowledge. The extent of my experience was from creating some exceptionally basic websites with HTML and a little amount of CSS.
It took some time to get the hang of it all. The initial classes were a slow, basic introductions. As the years went by, I learned to write much more complex code with Java, C#, and C++. I feel a lot more comfortable with IDEs, APIs, SDKs, and other three letter acronyms. I created a variety of applications on various scales: not many games, however.
Graduation is two weeks away, and I’ve purchased all of the extortionately expensive extras required for the day. While I’m not too concerned with the whole affair, the primary reason for taking part is to make the parents happy. Tomorrow, I receive my degree classification: Those two digits that determine the ease with which I will progress on my next step, returning to the workforce.
Applications
Over the past few weeks I’ve been spreading my freshly updated CV across the internet like a carefully formatted virus. I already knew that jobs within the games industry were few and far between, especially for entry level and graduate roles. Finding a position that will, in some fashion, relate to the games industry could be a difficult task. The job sites tell me that programmers are in high demand - primarily as web or .NET developers - but most jobs still require experience. How you gain experience without a job remains a mystery…
On the bright side however, I have been contacted by a lot recruiters who are trying to fill some of the roles currently on the market and the interviews are going well so far. Many of these roles depend on those two little digits heading my way tomorrow. If they aren’t as good as I am hoping, it could make my search harder. University was merely a starting point, however.
Projects
I’ve been told that I should do at least one hour of programming a day to keep my skills sharp. One of my lecturers said that he found he accomplished more with the “one a day” routine than he had ever done before. With that in mind, regardless of how my job search goes, I’ll be fleshing out my portfolio by cleaning up past projects and starting on new ones.
Future posts on this blog will share details on some of these projects as well as the finished results of some others. I’ll also add some clips to YouTube when appropriate. Links to my online presence can be found to the right.
The coming months will be, interesting…