Before taking this class, I had already begun to learn to use Adobe programs for graphic design in high school. My first class using Adobe programs was freshman year, and it was an introductory course to several programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Dreamweaver. In my sophomore year I took a more advanced graphic design course and used Photoshop and Illustrator. I repeated this class as an elective course senior year. And before all of that, I took several years of art classes in middle school.
Of course, none of this includes various hours (and days, to my parents’ chagrin) that I spent on my home computer exploring open source programs similar to these Adobe programs. The ones I used most were GIMP and Inkscape, the open source equivalents of Photoshop and Illustrator. I began using these before my high school courses, and have been continuing to use those (and the Adobe programs once I acquired them for myself) both in and out of school.
All in all, I’d say below is a rough estimate of my time spent practicing various graphic design aspects (both illustrative and symbolic):
3 hrs/day x 5 days/week x 36 weeks x 5 years = 2700 hrs
4 hrs/day x 7 days/week x 9 weeks x 6 years = 1512 hrs
Overall, my total number of practice/expert hours is around 4200.