For starters, this class had only five students, which suits the kind of learning the Center is offering.  Secondly, the entire course was only four days long.  We covered introductory material, getting to know MAYA, the interface, basic modeling, texturing, particles and such.  I have never had to cram so much information into someone’s head until I started teaching at the Center.

This latest run was actually my second stint at PCCI, the first being back in September of this year.    It marked a few firsts for me, such as teaching a crash course from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon.  It also marked the first time I had to work with MAYA in a Mac, as MAYA was installed on several Macintosh G4s.  

Now this was a challenge for me, who grew up in a Windows environment.  I had handled a Mac OS before but only slightly.  I know many people out there love their Apples to no end, and they have good reason to.  They like the speed, the clean, stylishness of the machines, outside as well as inside, as in the GUI.  However, ejecting a CD-ROM by dragging it’s icon to the “Trash” required me to, as the Apple slogan says, “Think Different.”

So it was a relief for me to see that in Tiger, Macintosh’s latest Operating System, I didn’t have to do that.  Dragging something to the Trash always equals deleting it to my mind, which would not be a good thing, of course.  (I can just hear some Mac supporters snickering right now.)

And also the whole CTRL/Option/Apple key issue was a hurdle to get past.  By the second class though I had become slightly more familiar with handling Tiger and MAYA on a Mac, and I can safely say that the CTRL/Option/Apple key issue is a PC-to-Mac hurdle that I’ve gotten over.

During both classes I was lucky enough to have students who were Mac users, having to use them for work on a daily basis, and they taught me a thing or two as well.

Being small makes a class easier to teach, since there are fewer people to go around and assist, and I can spend more time assisting each one.  But the class has proven informative for me as well.  One of the Center’s main sources of students are industry professionals, who are looking to either enhance their skills and knowledge or perhaps explore a different but not altogether separate branch of their field.

I’ve had web designers and digital video people in my class, some looking to shift fields, other’s just looking to see what else is out there.  Its given me a chance to learn about their fields as well.  I’m not much of a web developer myself but its good to know about what’s going on in that area, especially with the ongoing trend of convergence nowadays, where different fields all come together and melding into one.

I even had a student who came all the way from Guam.He worked for an advertising firm over there, and during lunch and the breaks he was nice enough to share what it was like working there, and how things were done in Guam as far as advertising goes. (Random Trivia: Apparently Guam consumes more Budweiser, Tabasco and Spam,  Per Capita, than any other nation in the world. )

When I asked him why he came all the way he answered that it wasn’t really that far, and with the money he would have spent to go study somewhere there he’d rather come over here, study, shop a little and go back with some cash still remaining.

All in all I enjoyed myself teaching at PCCI, and Iwouldn’t mind doing so again sometime soon.