Anyone from tampa, florida?? Options

[*icecreamisyummy*]

any cB members from tampa, florida??? i'm planning on moving down there in summer and go to college over there and ill most likely have my own apartment. any tips???

[*mzkandi*]

I sometimes work at the mall in Citrus Park!

but idk if its one of those schools like ITT-Tech and those weird vocational schools that get advertised at 10am on tv so high school drop outs and young single mothers could see and want to attend.

That was a concern of mine when I was looking around for an art school in the area as well.


Yes, that is something you need to think about, you can't transfer credits. It's not a bad thing if don't think you ever plan on transferring but if you think you would then it's something you seriously need to consider. It's definately not an ITT-tech type of school but it's not one of those prestigious art schools like Ringling. Most people I've come in contact are statisfied about their education there though.

As for why I didn't go, well, before I came to where I am now I was a student at the University of South Florida. To make a long story short, I hated what I was doing and decided to pursue something I had a passion for. I spent that entire summer researching and the Art Institute was something that I reccomended to check out. At first I was skeptical because, like you, I didn't want to go a school like an ITT or something. And I didn't want to go to one of those school where you finish your degree in 13 months or something. I had already researched what a graphic education should be full of and I took that knowledge with me with I went to check out the Art Institute The thing I found that liked at the Art Institute over IADT is that because it's a Fine Art's degree there is a lot of traditional art courses you must take before you even touch a computer. This includes Beginning Drawing and Drawing and Perspective, Color Theory, Principles of Design. These classes have helped me immensely because I can apply the theories learn in each class to work through design problems I may run into on the computer. Also, at this school they teach that as a graphic designer your most important tool isn't your computer, nor is it such programs like Photoshop or Illustator. In fact those programs and being proficient in them doesn't make you a graphic designer at all. Graphic design is a lot of creative problem solving. You will be spending a lot more time on paper working on how to solve a problem and reasearching more so then finalizing the idea in the computer. And I like that. It totally changed my perspective on what Graphic Design is really about. IADT offers a Fine Arts degree but it seems to lack such courses at Concept Design, Drawing and Perspective, and Principles of Design. Even with that said, that doesn't mean IADT doesn't teach these fundamentals as well.

Also at my school, like IADT, you can't transfer credits easily from the Art Institute due to how it's accredition is set up. That wasn't really a problem to me because I put in a lot of thought before I made my decision to go here and I'm here to stay. :D