Under Pressure...

As usual, I'll begin with an update on last weeks post. My time management, I felt, was better than previous weeks and this week I have again planned the entire week in advance, which I find helps my mentality- I seem to dedicate myself to actually doing the time if I have it on paper. The Design Mechanics visit last week was excellent- really worthwhile to come in on an extra day to listen to what was said by Dave and the two former students, Jemma and Oliver. On a more negative note, I didn't manage to get a final screen design chosen- I've got down to two now but will need some more feedback before deciding on which design to submit- I'll post the designs up later today.

This week it's really hit home to me that the deadline really is just around the corner. And there's still a lot to do. Although I've completed the majority of tasks now, the remaining tasks seem like a mountain in front of me. This week I've managed to complete the site structure diagram, and I've written up an almost final draft of the written part of the assignment- the project goals, target audience, delivery requirements and competitive analysis. The problem with this, though, is that I've almost written too much! With an upper limit of 2500 and mine reaching 2300ish, I'm really going to have to do some editing at some point. I think, on the whole though, I'm happy with this part of the assignment.

During my self study this week, I need to make sure everything else is ready to be incorporated into my assignment document next week. This includes:

• a final screen design;
• assets list;
• budget statement;
• evaluation.

This is a lot of work for one week, and admittedly I'm mildly apprehensive about getting it all completed for our "practice" deadline next Tuesday, but I'll try my hardest. I've already got my site structure diagram completed whilst practising with Pagemaker this week.

On Monday of this week, we had a session in which we discussed the question: "What do you have to do to get 'merit' and 'distinction' grades?" After this, I felt, to be honest, as though there wasn't a hope of achieving anything higher than a 'pass', especially at the moment. In a way this is a new feeling for me, to feel a grade is out of my reach, and it's not something I felt comfortable with. On the other hand, it's challenged me to set my targets a bit higher and has illustrated to me the difficulty of the course. Perhaps I could set an aim at some point to achieve a 'merit' or 'distinction' in an assignment, but I feel for now as though getting to grips with the course and what's expected of me is still a higher priority.