What can I do for you, my future employer?

To have an English degree and a Professional Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) degree are wonderful assets to have, but I bring so much more experience to an employer.

Skills:

Writing and editing – My writing style can switch from succinct to instructional to user-friendly and informative to entertaining. I have great proofreading skills, and I am never without my reference book.

Leadership skills – I was section chief at my last base which included supervising programs, such as safety, supplies, equipment accounts, hazardous waste, training, and much more. I was swing shift supervisor for many years before I became section chief.

Organizational skills – At every base, and temporary duty (TDY) location, I organized either the continuity books, the squadron aircraft board, the technical orders, office supplies or whatever could benefit from my skills. I have organized McKendree campus bulletin boards. I wrote and posted computer lab instructions because many broken computers were not being reported to IT office. If I see a need, I fix it.

Communication skills – I taught PRP to 300 squadron personnel. I have always had excellent customer relations skills.

Flexibility – My work schedule could change in a moment’s notice from dayshift to swing shift to mid shift. I have deployed numerous times – some were no-notice deployments. I was hand-selected by supervision to become squadron Personnel Reliability program (PRP) monitor after 2007 “Bent Spear” incident at Minot AFB.

Disciplined – Always on time which means I was always at work 20 minutes before work started. Always! Deadlines always met.

Conflict resolution – As section chief, I have dealt with and resolved many in-shop personal issues.

Volunteer – When you hear the statement, “20% of the people do 80% of the work” I am that 20%! Engrained at a young age with a strong work ethic, I began working at age 13. Awarded 5 MXS 2008 Volunteer-of-the-year! I do not need to be asked to do something.

Enthusiastic  – I am easy to get along with and fun to be around. As the PRP monitor, I had the pleasure of talking with and getting to know all the squadron personnel and their families.

These are just some of my talents and skills.

I made my first Microsoft PowerPoint video

I have always wanted to make videos but not like push a record button on your smartphone and viola! you have a video or make a video using my old camcorder. I have done that 1000 times. I want to make informational, instructional videos. I want to be able to copy a page and be able to show viewers where to input information on that page, or be able to explain and instruct in a video. They are ubiquitous on YouTube already–I know–but I still want to learn how to make them.

I would also love to learn how to make digital films like those Pixar and DreamWorks movies, such as Shrek and Despicable Me.

Anyway,  I have to start somewhere, so I made a Microsoft Powerpoint video highlighting McKendree University’s involvement in the Civil War. So here it is. 🙂

https://youtu.be/IUUKETqaDNI

A little hobby of mine: Adobe Illustrator

One of the classes I took here at McKendree University was Computer Graphic Design which taught Adobe Illustrator. I really enjoyed the class, so much so, that I added Adobe Suite on my computer at home. Here are some of my projects inside and outside of class. The only drawback to showing it here is that I have to convert my Adobe Illustrator to a pdf. file to be able to download it on WordPress.com, so that takes away some of the original coloring. Dr. Dennis2. This is an Abode Illustrator of McKendree Univerisity’s president: Dr. James Dennis. It is funny to me because it looks like Dr. Dennis’s suit has stains on it, but, of course, he would not wear a suit with stains on it. I was just trying to show the shadowing in his suit. Please keep that in mind when viewing these pdf. files.

Here is one I did of Dr. Patterson. I used the picture she gave me for the article I wrote on her and made an Adobe Illustrator avatar for her. Dr. Patterson LATEST2.

I also did my own avatar, and a candy box with my own designs on it. Avatar no bars &  BOX – Starburst7.

I also did a freaky avatar which my art professor, Amy MacLennan. loved, so I will add that as well. BICK_DONNA_GEOMETRIC_Portrait.

More on ME!

Along with transcribing archives for McKendree University’s Holman Library Archives section, I have also written articles for The McKendree Review. I enjoy writing and editing and wish I would of have had more practice writing and editing articles while attending McKendree. Here are a few articles I wrote while attending McKendree.

One article I highlighted is the A.L.P.H.A. (Amazing Ladies Pursuing Holistic Alternatives) organization on campus which is mainly an African American registered student organization (RSO) that reaches out to other fellow female students and wraps their arms around them to let them know they are not alone in the struggles they may face while attending college. These wonderful ladies are so welcoming that I had to write about them. I even wrote about them twice. No topic is off limits. They help with ethnicity issues, relationship struggles, academic mentoring, you name it, the A.L.P.H.A. ladies are a support system like no other.

Another article I wrote about was of one of my favorite professors: Dr. Patterson!  She is an English Professor here at McKendree and when you take her class, you feel like you are time warped back into the thick of American history. The way Dr. Patterson delves into literature and the background surrounding the literature, makes you really get an understanding of an author’s masterpiece.

My latest article was on the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) epidemic here in America. It is shocking to know that so many people are walking around with HIV and have no idea they have HIV. That is a scary thought that I wanted to bring attention to these young students who might think casual sex is harmless.

I also interviewed Christie Bledsoe from Bethany Place here in East St. Louis about what their program offers, and, I have to say, I left there with an urge–no, not a sexual urge–but a foreboding urge to let students know how risky casual sex is and also the dangers of protected and unprotected sex. Condoms are not full proof against stopping the spread of HIV, and STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Disease). I also highlighted other STD’s that plague America’s society, such as Herpes, Gonorrhea, and chlamydia. If I had more space in The McKendree Review, I would have added pictures of affected body parts to show what can happen when someone gets one of these dreaded diseases. Nevertheless, I felt the article highlighted facts from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) very well and gave students an ‘appropriate’ scare to make this topic sink in some.

What have I been doing lately?

Well… school is pretty much done with the exception of my last Professional Writing and Rhetoric class. I got to walk in McKendree University’s May 2015 graduation, but I won’t officially graduate until I finish this last class in July. School will never end for me, but my years at McKendree University are at a close having received a double major and a minor: A Bachelor of Arts in English, Professional Writing and Rhetoric, and a minor in Creative Writing.

As of right now I am helping the McKendree University Archives section by typing up Civil War artifacts into a detailed content listing in lieu of what they originally had in place. To get an idea of what they had in place originally, I attached a copy of one of the old Civil War content listings: CW Photos. And then I am attaching the new listing I recreated for box 1 of Civil War contents: CIVIL WAR first box only – LONG LIST. I transcribed ten boxes of Civil War boxes into a detailed content listing. You can see the whole listing here: CIVIL WAR boxes – LONG LIST.

I also transcribed the Clionian Society, Philosophian Society, and the Platonian Society’s artifact listing as well. See the difference?

Clionian Contents page 1

Clionian Society – LONG LIST

Philosophian Contents page 1

Philosophian Society – LONG LIST

Platonian Contents page 1                               Platonian Contents page 2

Platonian Society – LONG LIST

HTML – Hypertext Markup Language

What is HTML? HTML is Hypertext Markup Language. Web pages are created using HTML which is an authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web (www). When you understand this language and take apart codes in a document, it is not as scary.

Here are some basic HTML codes:

Main headline=    <h1></h1>

Paragraph=          <p><p/>

Line Break=          <br />

Bold=                    <strong></strong>

Underline=            <u></u>

Hyperlink=             <a href=”______________”></a>. Where the line is is where you would put your link that you want hyperlinked such as, http://www.google.com.

Font color=            <font color=”_____”></font>. Where the underline is, is where you would put red or green or whatever color you want the word to be.

Image=                  <img src=”_______” />. Where the line is is where you would input the url address for the image you want posted.

Horizontal rule=     <hr />.

Ok, so this may not make sense to someone who has never worked with code, so maybe a Introduction to html video will help.

Website Wireframe

The learning never ends and I have to say, I LOVE IT!!!!

In class, we were tasked to come up with a website wireframe design of our choosing. I chose to do a website wireframe design on a personal philanthropy site. It has been a long time goal to be a philanthropist on a Rockefeller level, as of right now, I am on a peasant’s level, but nevertheless, I am a philanthropist! I used Microsoft Publisher, which I am not too familiar with, to make my design, but it has potential. Here is what I have come up with thus far.

If you are wondering what a wire frame is, I’ve added a video. See below.

Contest: The Environmental Awareness & Sustainability Committee

McKendree University sent out an email about a contest to design a logo and slogan for the Environmental Awareness & Sustainability Committee. I decided to try as I thought this would be fun and I could improve on my Adobe Illustrator technique. It took awhile to get all the images in my design. I was informed I could not use images found online, but I could trace around them and tweak them to my own taste. If I had to draw images myself without some type of template, I would most likely come out with a bunch of stick figures. I worked for two days just tweaking and changing features I wanted added until I was finally content with my logo, but when I saved it to a pdf file, two of my images changed and had to be redone. I had a too yellow turtle and a too brown sunflower. Although this was a setback, I learned to soften my images in Adobe Illustrator to create pleasant looking images in a pdf file.

I am still not satisfied with the slogan, but for now, I am done.

Here it is:

Ok, so I recently learned about Vischeck.com and I learned how people with color blindness may see images differently, so I took a recent image I did in Adobe Illustrator which was converted to a jpg file and loaded it here and after using Vischeck.com. I have to say, that this is disappointing because so many people do not see a work as it was originally intended like my original Adobe Illustrator image above. See for yourself.

Magazine Cover – Flyer – Advertisement in Paint.NET

I am having so much fun with learning these new technologies and getting more familiar with paint.NET. This blog post will show my magazine cover. I initially started out with my cat’s photo to practice with and make a cat magazine but when I was done practicing, I noticed a misspelled word, and I was running out of time, so I just stayed with the cat magazine theme and started all over. The bad thing about Paint.NET is that if you make a mistake in one area, such as misspelling a word and want to go back to it, you can’t! You will erase everything you did after you get to that one area you go back to in your history, so it is good to work in layers which is what I did the second time. Magazine2. Here is a link to my magazine cover. And yes, that is my cat, Somer-short for Somersault-on the cover. It may be hard to tell, but she is a tad bit overweight. At least that is what the Vet always tells me.

Below is a 11X17 flyer I made for PWR-350 in Adobe Illustrator. I traced Google images of the horseshoe, the shamrock, and the hat. The rest I used Adobe Illustrator to color the background and give it a light-dark image. Trying the get the letters to write on a curve was hard, but it is getting easier. I LOVE THIS STUFF!!!!!

I also learned how to export an AI (Adobe Illustrator) image to a JPG.

AI to JPEG YOUTUBE video

I also made a flyer for my PWR 350 class and I want to save it to my BAGTHEWEB.com site, but…well…I don’t know yet how to do that. In the meantime, I am going to load it here.

I did this in Adobe Illustrator for the “Share Your Story” night at the Hett.

I don’t fully understand why some attachments are so difficult to maneuver, but the above flyer or maybe it is to the right, I don’t know because when I type this message it is above, but when I update it, it moves it to wherever! Frustrating! (I’m referring to the purple flyer with the silhouettes).

I also did an advertisement for a golf tournament coming up. I would like to use other sites, such as Microsoft Publisher and Adobe Photoshop, but I am not as familiar with them as I would like to be, so this flyer above was done in Paint.NET.

Why this downloaded so easily versus the other one, is beyond me. Go figure!

Anyway, I hope you like it.

Paint.NET

I love learning new technologies! I am a non-traditional college student, (basically I’m old, I’m almost 50) and I grew up with the latest technologies being beepers and maybe getting access to a computer if I go to a library. So now that I am in college, I am so excited about learning new online technology, such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Publisher, but the latest is Paint.NET. If you are thinking, Wow! What rock did you just crawl out from? Well…that thinking is very accurate. In many of my classes, most students have already had exposed to some, in not years of this type of technology. I am familiar with most Microsoft software, but Adobe is new to me as well as Paint.NET. I had the great pleasure of messing around with Paint.NET and an in-class assignment I recently had to do was to take a photo and download it into Paint.NET and change it using what I learned in Paint.NET. The assignment was to pretend I am a photographer hired to produce a photo to use on an upcoming post-card intended for prospective students. This ‘pretend’ University, which is actually McKendree University where I attend, has asked me to submit a photo of the campus that best represents the University. Specifics on the assignment are as follows:

• Why I choose this photo
• Use of photography fundamentals (i.e. the Rule of Thirds)
• Your thought process behind the finished photo
• Defend your file type submitted

Here is a picture of my original photo: And here is my updated photo:

My reasoning for changing the photo so artistically is because I wanted the photo to be creative and capture the viewer’s attention. I used the Rule-of-Third’s top two anchor points as markers. I wanted the photo to be large in the postcard, so I knew I was going to use at least two anchor points. In Paint.NET, I used sepia to give it a historic feel as this University is actually the oldest one in Illinois. I chose the library image because the core values of this university are, Responsible Leadership, Engagement, Academic Excellence, and Lifelong Learning and where do you attain all these values on a campus in one setting? The Library! The structure is a magnificent prominent structure as well. I added zoom blur to focus in on the library, but blur the outer components, and I used posturize to separate colors, such as the clouds and the snow. I used saturation to give it the mystical feel and to add more of the universities color, which is purple. More to my reason for making this photo so eye-catching is when prospective students receive this card, it will have the University’s website and the prospective student will surely look up the website and see photo after photo of sharp, focused, absolutely perfect images of life on this campus. My thinking was that I wanted to capture the viewer’s attention. I believe I did. 🙂