Following on my previous post, I guess I’ve been coming to the conclusion, recently, that my college education wasn’t quite as second-rate as I’ve always thought it was. For some reason, I’d just always thought that, since I went to school in my hometown, and it was a state school, AND it was an art program, that I must somehow be less-educated.
But the truth of the matter is, I’ve really got a hell of a good base of knowledge in a huge variety of subjects…subjects about which most of my contemporaries just look at me blankly whenever a key word passes my lips.
For instance, the other day I was driving along and thinking about the 3D modeling software I used to play with in college. If I hadn’t had the tools at my disposal, I wouldn’t know what rotoscoping is, what inverse kinematics are, what compositing is, etc.
And today I was working on a website, on which I had to reverse a gradient from light green to dark green: the light part was passing under white text, which was making the text unreadable. Even though the other pages (orange gradient and blue gradient) had the same tint value, the green was blowing out the text because green is inherently more “visible” to the human eye. I never would have known this if I hadn’t studies Physics of Light & Color my sophomore year.
These types of things pop up almost every day, and it’s only recently that I’ve started noticing just how much of my college education has turned out to put me head and shoulders above the current pool of grads in the job market. I mean, honestly, it’s probably just the fact that time and experience tend to solidify theory…but still, these are things I’ve never forgotten, and have been using since I learned them. Experience’s role has been more about teaching me self-discipline and time management.
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And of course, no mention of my college education would be complete without a shout out to my man littlematt. Without him, I’d be absolutely clueless when it comes to the basic inner workings of a unix-type server, and myriad other technological tidbits he’s imparted to me throughout the years. I still think back really fondly to the wee-morning hours of running Cat-5 cable through the walls and ceilings of Tyler Hall. Here’s to you, buddy.
Tags: college, education, memories, SUNY Oswego