Wow. Hard to believe my time at the University of Pittsburgh is coming to an end: tomorrow.

Because there is no developer yet to replace me, my workload has not decreased, and I’ve been scrambling to finish up a couple of projects. I completed one yesterday, but another will likely not be done before the final whistle blows (been watching too much World Cup). So the reality of my departure has not hit since I’ve been so busy. It will be weird to just stop and leave it all behind.

My Time at Pitt

I started working for the Pitt web team as a contractor in the summer of 2003 after moving to Pittsburgh from Arlington, Virginia. Originally, I was meant to stay 11 weeks. But they soon found me indispensible, and I was hired full time in December. It was my first full-time job since being laid off from a dot-com company one week before September 11, 2001.

Nearly three years later, I have built around 20 or so sites and leant a hand in a dozen others, and have gone through a lot of development myself.

How CSS Changed My Life

My biggest achievement was taking on CSS positioning and web standards and then introducing them to my team. That really transformed the way we built sites, and it changed the way I viewed my work. It began a heavy investment in industry best practices, information architecture, usability, design, and open source solutions.

Further, it led my application to CMU’s interaction design program within their School of Design. And since I got into the program, you could say CSS changed my life.

How I’ll Be Remembered

I’ll probably be remembered for asking questions like, “Did the client provide content for the design element mocked up in the design?” and for responding to every question about whether we can do something with, “We can. But should we?”

But I’ll also be remembered for my Starbucks coffee cup collection decor, and affinity for sprinkles.

Moving Right Along

So on the eve of my last day, I am happy with what I contributed, but excited to be moving on. I got my CMU student ID this morning. And I start my six-week design fundamentals course on Monday. It’s surreal to think that this time next week, my life will have changed so much.

Of course, if you know anything about the last year of my life???????and arguably most of my life???????it’s been about big changes.

I will leave you with a quote from a song from the Muppet Movie, as sung by Kermit and Fozzie Bear, “Moving right along!”