End of the semester crash

As of Friday, I'm on holidays. I hadn't realized how exhausted I was until I finally crashed yesterday and spent most of the day asleep. I'm still tired right now even though I went to bed early and woke up later than my usual.

Looking back at the semester, I realize just how far the lecturers have gotten us. I started the semester thinking one year was not enough to be any good at this. Now though, I realize I know more about certain aspects of publishing than my supervisors at work and I understand pretty much everything else that's going on, why they do certain things etc. I also have a decent knowledge of marketing (although I really do not enjoy doing that kind of work and will not go into that if I can help it) and I notice the clever things other people do to get you to buy their stuff. In fact, it's kind of taken over my brain. I'm always spotting things I tell myself "I gotta remember that for when I'm working". It's evil. I also know about production, how to order a book, what paper and what kind of press should be used etc., stuff most people in publishing don't know or care about because they have other people to do it for them.
And finally, I know how to make a book look good.

One of our project this semester was to design a non-fiction fashion book. I was skeptical at first. We'd never studied design before, let alone book design, were just learning the basics of Adobe InDesign and didn't exactly know what was expected of us. We had a look at all the projects on friday and it was AMAZING! Everyone's work was professional and the look fit the purpose of the book. You had all sorts of styles from the traditional, discreet catalogue to gorgeous, striking and elaborate. Some people had a very classy, discreet look and other very modern, eye-explosion stuff.
We're going to get a CD with all the projects to have a look at. I am really impressed with how far we have come in less than 4 months.

I'm slowly realizing that I know enough to completely create a book from scratch all by myself. Not a lot of people, in publishing even, can do that. This is really a very well rounded program and although I often complained about having to take marketing when I don't want to go into that, I can see why Brookes students get hired so easily. We have a good knowledge of what everyone else does and how hard/labor intensive it can be and makes us better at collaborating.

I'm really looking forward to next semester, starting in 02/09. I'm taking the mandatory "New Product Development" and two electives, Children's Publishing and Digital Media Publishing. It should be really interesting.