“You and your partner will be creating a cookbook in print form and web form with Adobe InDesign,” my Professor told us as I sat in my Production Tools and Document Design class.

You love cooking and food, so creating a cookbook should be a fun assignment for you, I thought.

Little did I know the hours of work I would spend tearing up as I stared at my screen, trying to learn the software. Not to mention trying to use the new design principles I had just learned.

Armed with a great partner and a tutor, I launched into the project. But creating a print book was not a simple task.

The first time I opened InDesign, I stared at the blank document and felt overwhelmed by the huge number of tools that stared back at me. I wondered how I’d ever learn to use the program in several weeks and actually create a cookbook at the same time. Worry suddenly tied my stomach in a knot. Over the next few weeks, my partner and I were in touch, but our schedules did not allow us to meet in person. I struggled with the program, trying to learn by experimentation. But most of my trial seemed to end in error.

And yet, when my partner and I finally met, we amazingly started making progress within just an hour of working together. Everything’s going to be okay; we made so much progress within just one meeting, I thought to myself.

With no experience in any of the Adobe programs, I struggled to learn the unfamiliar tools and use them quickly to write and design a professional document. Although the start was rocky, I enjoyed learning how to use the different tools and strategies in the software while designing a creative and engaging layout. During the process, I would celebrate after just learning how to accomplish a simple task, which made the process a lot less stressful.

Looking back, I see that I worried a lot more than I should have. Throughout the whole process, I learned to teach myself through trial and error. The experience taught me how to learn and showed me that in the future, I really could create professional document designs with programs that I had only been using for a few weeks. I am now prepared to learn any program and start using it quickly, which feels empowering. So whether in classes, an internship, or a new job, next time I have to create a project with unfamiliar software, I’ll be ready.