Matt Whelan's Extended Resume

Objective

To become gainfully employed.

Education

USC

B.A., Biological Sciences, May 2004
Minor: Business Administration
I spent four years of my life studying biology, business and a host of other subjects at the University of Southern California. When I began university, I intended to become a doctor of medicine. It took me until the end of my junior year to realize this wasn't what I wanted to do.

In the spring of my junior year, I added a business minor to my college to-do list. The most interesting class in the business minor program- as well as the one in which I excelled the most and enjoyed more than any other- was accounting.

UCLA

Business Statistics x115
Intermediate Accounting Theory and Practice x120a
In the autumn of 2004, approximately one half year after I graduated from USC, I began taking classes at UCLA. My experience in accounting 410x at USC had led me to seriously contemplate becoming a certified public accountant. I'm still entertaining that thought presently as I am only twenty units short of meeting California's classroom requirements for certification.

Work Experience

Web Designer - mattwhelandesigns.com

October 2004 - Present
I began working as a freelance web designer not too shortly after I learned HTML in the autumn of 2004. Currently, I am designing and developing websites full time and have had no shortage of clients to date. Thanks to referrals, the Minnesota Web Design Directory, Craigslist.org and a few other marketing approaches, I've found that I can generate enough clients for myself so as to have to turn away jobs on a regular basis.

Budget Assistant - Childrens Hospital Los Angeles

August 2004 - July 2005
Located at the intersection of Sunset and Vermont in Los Angeles, CA, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is one of the most well reputed children's hospitals in the world. I had the good fortune to gain employment at CHLA as a budget assistant in the hematology and oncology departments. My various responsibilities included drafting payroll transfers, reconciling cost accounts to their respective receipts, as well as a host of other support tasks. I learned a great deal from my year at CHLA and was able to leave the hospital with a better understanding for the way in which large institutions function, as well as a love for Thai food.

Barista - Caribou Coffee Co.

December 2005 - February 2006
I worked here. Don't ever work here.

Skills

HTML/CSS

For those who aren't familiar, HTML and CSS are languages used in the construction of web pages. I didn't know any HTML at all until after I graduated from college. My motivation for learning HTML and CSS was my punk band, Fluffy Bunnies i.a.f.o.d., which needed a website with which to promote its shows. I'm completely fluent in HTML and CSS and have been a freelance web designer for almost a year and a half, initially part-time and currently full-time.

PHP/MySQL

Again, for those who aren't familiar, PHP is a programming (or scripting) language used to make unchanging web pages (designed with HTML and CSS) into dynamic entities which respond to user input. I taught myself PHP a few months after learning HTML, and have found it to be an extraordinarily beautiful language to use and study. I can only claim to be about 75% proficient or so in PHP programming, but I'm always striving to increase my knowledge of the language.

MySQL is an SQL database management system. PHP and MySQL, when used in conjunction with one another, can produce powerful, dynamically driven web applications.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the method by which a website is made to rank well in the results pages of the various internet search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN). The Minnesota Web Design Directory is my fist venture into the field of SEO. I built this particular site in response to all of the inefficient web design directories currently on the internet which are typically full of advertisements not of any real use to potential clients. My goal with the Minnesota Web Design Directory was to design a simple interface for potential clients, as well as to limit the byte size of the web pages so as to load quickly for all users (read: dial-up).

Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Etc.

I know how to use these.

Personal

Los Angeles Marathon 2004

Completing the Los Angeles Marathon in March of 2004 was one of the most fulfilling moments of my life (to date). I trained for over five months with the USC Marathon Club, running at various points around Los Angeles. We began our training by running three miles around the USC campus in October and culminated in February with a twenty-two mile run through the South Bay. Race day was a blur of runners, cheering fans and cups full of Gatorade. Nothing compares to crossing a marathon finish line, and I encourage everyone who is capable to give it a try.

Drums

I taught myself to play drums in the summer of 2003. Previously, I had played guitar and trumpet, both in high school bands and rock outfits but had always been envious of the primal physicality of drummers and the way in which they were allowed to 'hit' their instruments. This led me to borrow a high school friend's drum set for the duration of my summer break, during which time I spent no less than two hours a day playing along with my CD collection in the basement of my parent's house.

After one summer of relentless pounding, I became quite proficient at the drum solo, but had yet to play with a band. Upon returning to USC for my senior year of classes, I was able to fill a drummer void in my friends' band, Freeforall, which taught me how to play well with others. In addition to Freeforall, I've also played drums with Fluffy Bunnies In A Field Of Daisies (Los Angeles) and Death Metal Natalie (Minneapolis).

Freeforall

Listen to the music >>
Legendary. That's all I can say about Freeforall, the first band with which I ever played drums. Before the start of my senior year at USC, Freeforall, which had formed two years prior, found themselves without a drummer. Just having learned to play, I was more than delighted to join their band. It was a bit rough at first, but over the course of the next year, we played myriad Los Angeles clubs, such as The Knitting Factory, McRed's, The Whiskey, Club Good Hurt, The Johnny Foxx Club and an occaional USC campus gig.

Fluffy Bunnies i.a.f.o.d.

Listen to the music >>
Don't let the name fool you. Fluffy Bunnies was a hard-rocking punk band that lasted almost a year, and to date, is my personal favorite of the four bands I have officially played in. My good friend Brian Stephens and I began this band with our mutual friend Emma Jensen after we all graduated from USC. Over the course of the summer of 2004 we wrote songs and rehearsed in a rental space in Vernon, CA. When our act was polished enough, we started playing shows around LA. It was this band that inspired me to learn web design well enough to build a real website, although, I wouldn't dare show Fluffy Bunnies' homepage to any potential clients these days.