Ever wondered how it's like to be the first class? Well I can tell you! Last year I joined the "Multimedia Design & Development" class in Emmen, Holland. Of course some starting problems are not really surprising, but it can be annoying. I barely made it to next grade.
After this troublesome year I had the choise to start over in Zwolle, on a different school. But I refused, I assumed that my current school learned from their mistakes and would make my second year a lot more comfortable... WRONG!
I had a boring vacation this year, worked most of the time to save up for a new PC. With a good feeling, I returned to school after the holidays. I systematically walked up to my old classroom, when a see that it has been taken my the new class... Ok, ok, it was not quite a shock, I could have seen this one coming...
But then I saw my new classroom...
Does any of you have a walk in closet? Yeah? Well, try to picture 22 students sitting in it, all behind a PC or laptop. Unthinkable eh? Well, it is possible, I've withnessed it!
Also, the room was completely empty, we had to carry down all the PC from the old classroom to this one. Plus there weren't enough chairs, so those had to be carried down too. Lets see, what else...? Oh yeah! We had like 8 power sockets in the room, while we need around 45! (PC's, monitors, fans, printer, scanner) And, last but definitely not least, there were no UTP cables (internet) in the room! Doing this Multimedia thing without internet is like playing tennis without a net, it's possible, but very frustrating.
Oh, and I almost forgot. The new students are all equipped with a Mac Book! I had to buy a laptop, with a crappy video card, 512MB ram (64 shared with the video card) and a terrible noisy fan!

I'm off, I'll try to get some sleep...

Gegroet,

Martijn Calkhoven (Pyrow)