Lorena is Leaving? [ TBD, might be clickbait ]
Hi everyone! This may or may not be my last blog post as an STA, so I’m unsure of how I should be feeling as I write this closing post. My time at LAITS has been so much fun, and I’d be sad to leave but we’ll see where life takes me!
My Journey and Shoutouts!
I started here at LAITS as a Content Management STA in December 2021. There I worked on the COLA Web Refresh Project, in which our STA team managed design and content transfer of the UT College of Liberal Arts site to a new operating system. In September 2022 I made the jump over to the Design team, and the rest is history! I’m so grateful for LAITS and the STA program, I feel that I’ve learned a lot here and met so many great people!
To the other Design and Web Dev STAs, Adrian, Thang, Louisa, Carrie, Lelani, Marissa, and Daniela — I loved working with all of you, thank you all for a great year! And also of course De’sha in the Fall 2022 semester, thank you for inspiring me and having been such a devoted member of the team! To our new member Isaiah, it was great to have met you and I hope that your time in the Web Dev team will be great!
To our STA managers Maddy and Valerie — thank you for being the backbone of this team and doing such a great job guiding us through these semesters. You are both so talented, and seeing how you guys address different design projects and are able to phrase feedback so effectively has been really eye opening to the possibilities of everything design!
What I’ve Learned!
Through my time as an STA I’m really grateful for everything I learned, from skills like professional communication and time management all the way to navigating Adobe programs. I feel as though I’ve especially grown more comfortable in Adobe Illustrator as I’ve figured out how to use more of the really great tools the program presents, as well as Adobe After Effects with these more recent animation projects I’ve been assigned.
The Near Future!
This summer I’ll be participating in UTLA, which is a UT program in which I’ll be spending the semester in Los Angeles! As a Radio-Television-Film major, I’m really excited to be getting a film-related internship this summer and experiencing LA.
I don’t want to make any promises as my Fall 2023 semester is still a little up in the air, but I’m hoping to start working on my big Connecting Experience project to complete my Digital Arts and Media certificate requirements. Basically this project is sort of similar to a capstone or thesis course, but it’s more of personal project that I have a good amount of flexibility with. I’m keeping my project idea under wraps right now, but I’m hoping to do something that really challenges me as a designer and writer, working as a testament to everything I’ve learned at UT!
Closing Remarks
And that’s about it! To all the Lorena fans and supporters, totally feel free to follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorena-chiles). I’ve really enjoyed my time as an STA and am so thankful for this program. As I mentioned, I’m not sure if I’m coming back for Fall 2023 yet, though y’all will know what I ended up choosing if you see this blog being active again! Bye everyone! <3
