This is the end of a long journey which I started a long time ago. In April 2008 I persuaded myself and my girlfriend (now fiancee) Marion that I wanted to change career and it would be great if I would do some training in web design—something that I had been dreaming of ever since teaching myself to code after graduating from university—and she pointed out an advert to Advent Training who had been doing lots of adverts on the TV and internet at the time. The first two modules of the “Masters CIW Designer” course were CompTIA A+ and A+ Technician exam. Basically to get me to be able to install, fix, troubleshoot any hardware or software in Windows. I really enjoyed being able to learn more about what goes on inside the computers and was able to learn a lot of useful stuff. The next module—the first of the CIW modules—was called CIW Foundations. It taught a little about coding, but was mostly about networking, business and very basic web stuff. The penultimate module, CIW Site Designer, was my favorite and was mostly about coding websites in different languages (although mainly HTML). I read a lot of other books at the time, books about Web Standards, Usability, and went to several UX meetups in London, I revamped my own website using all that I’d learnt and started applying for jobs in web design/development. I got the job that I was dreaming of and thus made my own progression from Chemist to Web Developer. It was after passing this exam that I found out that the company that I was doing the course through—Advent Training—had gone bust and I was thus left in a haitus not knowing whether I could finish my course. Luckily a new company came along and I could continue my course. The final exam was CIW E-commerce and it really sucked. I hate most (though not all) of the topics and studying was a nightmare because of my new job and not having the energy or motivation to sit down and study after a long day on the computer at work. So this month I have taken a number of days off as holiday from work and stuck to it, learning and revising the subjects in the book. Today I took the exam in Wokingham and passed with 84% (the pass mark was 68%). I am very happy now as you can imagine! You can call me a “CIW Web Design Professional” if you’d like to. Otherwise Andy is good for me;) Now I can focus on enjoying life a little and absorbing the festive Christmas atmosphere. After Christmas I will start to learn French.