A little bit about me
I'm Matt Heisig. I am a User Experience Specialist for the E.W. Scripps Newspaper Group in Knoxville, TN. Basically I work with a pretty cool team of people and make websites for the Scripps family of newspapers. I've been with Scripps for a total of about a year and a half, designing websites, playing with Django templates and generally having a good time working at an enjoyable job.
I got into web design pretty much like everyone else who's currently making websites and in their mid-twenties: I built my first site using AOL Press when I was about 13, played with Frontpage and learned HTML as a teenager. I soon learned to hate Frontpage and began handcoding my sites as I went into college. I majored in Information Systems Management at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and after realizing that I didn't really enjoy it, ended up graduating with a B.A. in English, something I enjoyed far more.
It turns out it's hard to get a job with a degree in English, but I had continued building websites on the side and grew to love the business and the design process. I moved from Annapolis, MD to Knoxville, TN with my wife in 2005 and got a temporary design job with the Knoxville News Sentinel. When my contract was up I managed to get a position with the E.W. Scripps company as a Junior User Interface Specialist. Not a terribly unusual career progression for your average designer.
And then I joined the Knoxville Police Department and became a cop. Being a police officer was something I had always wanted to do, and the opportunity presented itself in 2006. After a six-month training academy I was commissioned as a police officer in the City of Knoxville.
I had a real love-hate relationship with police work. I loved the work itself. I loved going to work, loved interacting with people and loved being involved with what was going on in the city. It felt like an important job, like I was on the scene of events that genuinely mattered rather than reading about it in the paper the next day. I got to see, do an experience things that most people can't even imagine. As the old saying goes, I had a "front row seat to the greatest show on earth," and I even got paid for it.
Unfortunately I didn't get paid much. And I rarely saw my wife. Or my daughter, who was born on the fourth day of the police academy (that was a slightly stressful week). In late 2007 I reconnected with my old boss at Scripps and found out that they were looking to hire a another person into the group. After a lot of talking, praying and soul-searching, I took yet another plunge and resigned with KPD to return to Scripps.
Not a day goes by that I don't miss some aspect of police work. Driving to a shots-fired call with lights and sirens, making a good arrest and seeing some of the craziest stuff you can imagine. There's also a whole lot I don't miss. I don't miss being barely able to pay the bills. I don't miss being outside at 0400 when it's 5 degrees and snowing. I don't miss working wrecks in the rain or coming home from work at 0800.
I wouldn't trade my experiences, skills and memories as a cop for anything, but the design world is a much better fit for raising a family. I have managed to carry over some very useful skills from being a cop as well.
The most stressful day as a web designer pales in comparison to getting in a foot pursuit, racing to a fight in progress or uncovering a loaded handgun on someone you arrested. Crashing servers and the perils of IE6 debugging really aren't that stressful after you've covered a house with an active shooter while waiting for the SWAT team to arrive on scene. Thus, I find web design to be about as low stress and relaxing as it comes.
If being a cop teaches you anything, it teaches you to communicate with a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. Communicating design concepts, arguing the finer points of web usability, presenting to the board and negotiating with vendors is relatively simply after you've talked an inebriated and combative transient into not fighting you or talked a suicidal man out of taking a bottle of pills.
I still miss police work and any time I see a police car go by with lights and sirens, my heart aches a little bit. Overall, though, I'm a far happier and content person, as are my wife and daughter. If police work provided anything, it was at the very least a healthy dose of perspective that I can carry with me for the rest of my career.
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