Welcome to my FANTASTIC portfolio website!

In this website of mine you will find all the accumulative knowledge I have gained over my two years at Freestyle Academy. It focuses on how much I have changed from the beginning of Junior year to the end of Senior year. It will mainly look at how much I have improved as Web/Audio (that being a coder), but that is not to say I haven't improved in many other fields as well (design, writing, photography, etc...).

Please browse at your leisure.

My First Ever Website!
The first website I ever created, which you can find by clicking here, shows just how much of a dramatic change I have gone through over these past two years. For my first website, a Self-Portrait website, we had to create something that best reflected ourselves. So, I decided to do a videogame themed site, since that's all I do with my time. What I really love about this website is that the code behind it is so brittle, the whole thing gets destroyed if you move the slightest pixel. The difference between this website and the ones I've created recently is staggering. I'm very happy to see how much I've changed over a couple of years. Of course, like a first love, I always look back and admire the past, even if she was hideous.

Notable Features:

---Rollover buttons!

---Autoplay music!

---A lot of writing!

---My beautiful, young face!

---Code that's all over the place!

And Just a Few Years Later...
As the years progress, I began to create bigger and better websites. For example, one of the websites I'm most proud of, the Music Video site, has a very large contrast to my Junior year websites. You can find the Music Video website by clicking here. This site, as well as the ones I created throughout Senior year, contain a lot more interesting features than previous websites. As time went on, we learned more than just basic HTML and CSS, and expanded towards more complex code as well as Javascript. A lot of my future websites began to feature simple Javascript animations that later evolved into complex ones. It's important to note, however, that even though I love these current websites a lot, that is not to say I dislike my Junior year websites. All of my websites hold a special place in my heart, just like my ex-girlfriend.

Notable Features:

---Fancier buttons (that scroll)!

---Not autoplay music!

---Writing is more compact!

---Favicon!

---Youtube video player!

---Photogallery that uses Fancy Boxes!

21st Century Skills I've Gained
After spending two years at Freestyle Academy, you think I would leave with some sort of applicable knowledge for the 21st century. Well, you'd be right! Here is just a small list of skills I have gained thanks to my time at Freestyle Academy:

21st Century Skills English taught me includes, but is not limited to:

Critical thinking, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, researching, interrogative questioning, oral and written communication, public speaking and presenting, listening, leadership, teamwork, humanitarianism, and how to properly say 'touche`'.

21st Century Skills Design taught me includes, but is not limited to:

Creativity, artistry, curiosity, innovating, personal expression, perserverance, self-direction, planning, listening, color scheming, proper photography, posing models, using Photoshop and Illustrator, and how much better a pen is than a mouse.

21st Century Skills Web/Audio taught me includes, but is not limited to:

Personal expression, perserverance, self-direction, planning, self-discipline, adaptability, initative, asking for help, information and communcation technology literacy, media and internet literacy, computer programming (HTML, CSS, and Javascript), how to use a Mac computer, and how tiring computer programming can be.

"You Get Out of [Freestyle] What You Put Into It"
As the year comes to a close, I feel it is best to reflect upon my stay here at Freestyle. I have concluded that my time at Freestyle was undoubtably worth it. I've learned many skills that I know I'll be using way into the future, and I've made some great friends as well. Now, since we all agree that I would do it again if the opportunity arose, the real question is, "What would I do differently?"

Some of my websites don't really meet my expectation, and I know I could do a much better job if I were to work on them now. The same can be said for my design and English classes as well, as I wish I would have spent more time on my projects before I quickly turned them in for a grade. Also, hopefully I wouldn't procrastinate as much the second time around (but I doubt it).

However, it's important to note that it's easy to look back into the past and talk about how you would redo things. At the time, however, doing things differently may have been much more difficult without the knowledge I currently have. While I would definitely do it all over again, I'm not sure it would end much differently. But you know, that's just fine.

It was amazing to see how much my skills have developed over these short years. I can type code at a tremendous rate thanks to my Web/Audio and Computer Science class, which really went hand-and-hand Senior year. I feel a lot more creative and imaginative this year than I ever had before, which I can only credit to my Design class. Thanks to English, I've gotten more interested in reading for fun rather than just for a class assignment. It's clear to see that I've grown greatly as of these past few years.

What Does The Future Hold?
When I learned I was actually going to graduate high school, I realized I now had to do something with my life. Crap. I decided, with a large push (shove) from my parents, to pursue higher education in the form of a 4-year college. After many months of applying, I've decided I'll be going to University of Denver in Colorado. The current plan is to double major in both Mathematics and Computer Science, though I wouldn't be surprised if that changes because the workload is way too much. Math has always interested me since I was a wee toddler, and I've been raised in a heavily computer-focused household, so it only seems to make sense to take on them both. I've also heard that those two majors often go hand-in-hand with each other when looking for careers, so hopefully I'll be able to get all the jobs. While it's impossible to say what the future will truly turn out to be, at least I can believe the future will be bright. I'll definitely prove my ex-wife wrong!

Thank you for reading.