Introduction

Hello everybody, and welcome to my blog!

My name is Dylan Hartley. I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, but spent most of my life on the outskirts of the city, in the rural counties nearby. Despite what my grades might have suggested if you saw them, I was not the best student throughout my public school career. Prone to fizzling out as time went by, it was pretty common for me to start a year strong, only to lose interest or motivation as time went by and stumble my way through the last month, finding myself with considerably lower grades than what I'd started with. However, in my Senior year, I ended up with a graphic design teacher who actually managed to keep me motivated throughout the year and help me to keep good grades the whole time. This came as a bit of revelation to me, and showed me just how much of an impact a good teacher has on a student. Once I graduated, I went into college to study Education and hopefully continue that effort.

Just like how my grades varied, my classes in public school varied wildly on what technology they had available. Most classes were restricted to Chromebooks, and even then they didn't always have enough for every student. However, some classes, like the graphic design class I mentioned earlier, had more than enough computers to go around and all sorts of different programs available. These were high-quality computers fit to run modern video games, and to do so well. On top of the good computers, these things came loaded with Photoshop, Illustrator, and even some game design tools. I was at least alright with all of those, and I like to think that I was alright with the majority of the other programs we used at school.

However, "alright" is not the same as "good." At this point, it has easily been four or five years since I used Excel, and my PowerPoint skills have almost regressed to the point of making basic slideshows. I'm more than overdue for a refresher, and hopefully EME2040 will do more than refresh my knowledge. I hope this class can teach me stuff I never learned in high school about these programs, and help me retain that information for a long time to come.