It’s hard to believe I’ve been working at the Digital Media Bar for 2½ years, ever since I was a sophomore! I sought out the position after learning from another STA (Amelia) that it was a great position to learn new things, which I am always game for!
As a big fan of experiential learning, this job was my main source here at Wooster. I got to independently work on my own interests, mainly spending my solo time learning the Unity Game Engine. I had the free time to learn all sorts of game design & development tools while exploring some of my own game ideas, including my IS project! It’s thanks to this position that I learned those two softwares as well as I did & was able to learn game implementation!
On the flip side, I was able to use our DMB resources to try out digital art & drawing tablets for the first time, which ultimately led to me getting my own & further practicing in Clip Studio Paint I’ve also started working on a potential new service for the DMB that allows Wooster students to test out our drawing tablets, just as I did. I’ll be graduating, so I won’t get to continue this project myself, but keep an eye out for it sometime next semester!
Graphic design is another field that I’ve always been interested in and I got tons of practice with it here! Learning Canva was one of my first goals after getting the job. Ever since then I’ve been designing tons of posters & promotional materials for my workshops, DMB signage, DMB services, and more. I’ve been very pleased with many of my designs. And since Canva & graphic design are versatile skills, they’ve been very applicable to my academic work!
I’ve also discovered how much I enjoy designing & teaching workshops. My most recent one – Game Development for Beginners – was one of my best! I led a group of students through developing a simple dodging-game in Unity. Everyone had a fun time playing with the 3D animal models I included & learned a lot because I was able to make the content relatively easy to understand (within an hour). However, this workshop was also the most intensive to design out of any I taught before. I had to come up with a game that would be simple to implement while still covering a breadth of topics, figure out how to explain Unity in an understandable way, & do many trial-runs to make sure the workshop was easy for beginners. It was well worth it in the end.
Lastly, I’ve made lots of good friends during my time here, including not only my fellow STAs but my wonderful bosses as well 🙂 It’s been fun to get to know people & watch each other grow in a professional sense as well as in a personal sense! I’m glad I made the decision to apply back then!