I'm much more than a designer

Those that know me well know that I’m not a full time designer but that I actually have a day job. I work as a metallurgist which is basically a an engineer who specialises in metals. The thing is I’m working in an area which I’m not actually qualified to work in. You see I have a degree in mechanical engineering not metallurgy or materials science which is what I need. Whilst this isn’t an issue on a day to day level as much of what I’ve learnt has been through experience - it IS sometimes an issue when I need to understand a specific bit of theory that would have been covered on a materials science or metallurgy course. I desperately want to fill the gaps in my knowledge because quite honestly it would make my job so much easier and a whole lot less stressful. So I have decided that I am going to look into going back to university to study for a Masters in a Materials/Metallurgy. I’ll be going to an open evening tomorrow at a university not too far from where we live and I hope to get a place on their course.

This is a big step for me. Being dyslexic and having a really poor short term memory means that learning (and especially remembering) anything is really difficult. I literally had to work a 60-70 hour week all the way through uni just to get through all the reading and re-reading to make sure that I’d remember stuff. Understanding I find is the easy bit – its the remembering it that seems impossible. I tend to only remember one instruction at a time and not even one complete sentence when I’m reading. By the time I get to the end of the sentence I have literally forgotten what I read at the beginning of it. Quite a nightmare when it comes to retaining information.

Of course I have had to have a think about what to do with the designs when I go back to uni because I basically have a full time job with that alone and I can’t possibly squeeze in blog designs, digiscrapping kit designs, “proper” work AND study into my day. And no I’m not even going to try LOL. So my plan is basically this:

Adori Graphics
Custom blog designs in vacations only
Tutorial Tuesdays will be kept up to date as Blogger make changes, but no new ones will be posted.
New premade templates will be posted “as and when” I have time
Freebie Friday templates will be posted monthly, apart from exam times (typically after Christmas and Easter)

Adorible Digital Designs
Instead of 2+ kit releases a month I will be working on 1 kit release every month and I will have to cut back some of my CT duties for my own CT (such as making layouts and stuff for the blog train). Other CT members will still be doing this, but I won’t be able to.

I hope that works. With a schedule as full as mine, every minute I can claw back will really help a ton!