First Step

Assessing my level

I have done a lot of work over a lot of mediums.  There are a lot of things but not all of them are necessarily "portfolio-worthy" pieces.  How do I choose the right ones?  What is my style?  I don't really know how to answer that at the moment.

Cynthia L. Baron writes about evaluating designers in her book Designing A Digital Portfolio.  Now I'm at the step where I need to take my skills and use them to create my brand; my identity.  I have no idea where to begin; I don't really know how to assess my skills.

What is a portfolio?

You would think after 3 years of school I would know the answer to that question.  I thought I did but I really don't.  A portfolio isn't just a way to display work, like I originally thought.  Sure, you display it but you also display your personality in it.  It says a lot about you much like a profile statement.  At the moment I don't really know what career path I want to go into but I will shape my portfolio around it.  I do need to get a job but I won't sacrifice detail just to fit the mold of the job I want to get.

What is not a portfolio?
I'm going to shorten this into two sentences:
A portfolio is not a chronological showcase of every single piece of work that you have completed since you started your career.  It is also not a way for you to be too critical of yourself and leave off some of the work that you think is not professional-grade.

I know for a fact that I am my toughest critic and I will be the first one to not include something if I think it's not up to snuff.  But I will need to swallow my pride sometimes because some things that have been done are very high quality but I may have disagreed.

Final decision-making

What will I actually put in there?  I have not the slightest idea what I will end up adding to my portfolio.  I do so many things and I think most of them are crap (this is a scientific term in computer science) and don't deserve to even be shown.  But like I said, I will have to swallow my pride sometimes so I can actually have more than like 3 pieces on my portfolio.  I like my work to speak about me.  The subject matter needs to match my personality and that is something that I am good at doing.

You want some help?

I help way too many people.  That is a terrible statement coming from me but I want to (at least for this class) not help people as much as I have.  I also need to focus on my own work.  Sometimes I get sidetracked on a problem with someone else's work and don't really do my own at a quality level.  For this class I'm going to cut back a bit.  Not to say that I won't help because I hate seeing people struggle, but I need to learn where to cut off the help and put myself first.