How Lynda.com Can Keep Illini Smart During the Summer

How Lynda.com Can Keep Illini Smart During the Summer Summer is an amazing time, especially when youre a University of Illinois student. You dont have to worry about any classes, homework, or exams. Its your time to relax and work at an internship or job to advance your career. I think about my time back in high school, and I used to dread these two evil words: summer reading. You remember the required book that we had to read for English courses for the inevitable quiz on that book the first day of school. Thankfully, that doesnt happen in college and theres never a required summer reading book. However, looking back, I can see why teachers made us read a book during the summer. It kept students like me in school mode and my brain fine-tuned and sharp. I prefer not to read any required summer reading books anymore, but I still want to stay sharp during the summer. Thanks to the University of Illinois, I can. Theres this amazing service called Lynda.com, which is a site that hosts thousands of video tutorials on any skill or topic you can think of for professional development. Companies pay a lot of money to get Lynda.com, but as an Illinois student, youre able to use this service and website for free. Its just one of the many perks being an Illini to say the least, and I have certainly taken advantage of it. As an Advertising major, its pretty important for me to be a master at the Adobe Creative Suite. This means that I should be pretty proficient at Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. These are programs vital to me because this is how most print advertisements are made. I use these programs in many of my classes, so to stay on top of my game, I spend the summer watching tutorials on Lynda.com about these programs. I attribute all my skills learned from these programs to this. Im able to work on the program side by side while I listen and watch the tutorial, which is nice. I encourage all Illini to use Lynda.com during their time here and to take advantage of all the incredible resources the university offers. They give you the tools to succeed; its up to you to use them! Daniel Class of 2018 I’m an Advertising major in the College of Media. I’m from a northwest suburb of Chicago called Buffalo Grove. I chose Illinois because it was the first university in the entire world to offer an Advertising major, which is pretty cool!