CADD

"When Chris still attended church, one of the churchgoers had connections with a business that did a lot of CADD work and told him to submit his resume. You know, the shit he went to school for and is so unbearably proud of? Well, his excuse later was that the business was too far from him. At most, maybe 20 minutes away."

- Emily



CADD stands for "Computer-Aided Drafting and Design". It is a college degree which provides career development in the use of computers to create and analyze designs. For Chris, however, this degree has provided no real-world benefits whatsoever, other than giving him something else to brag about to boyfriend-free girls.

Chris's CADD degree
Chris graduated from Piedmont Virginia Community College with an Associate in Applied Science degree and a CADD certificate in May of 2006. Chris admitted in his call with Kacey's father that he entered into the CADD program without knowing what kind of jobs such a certificate could get him. Throughout his years at PVCC, and in the years since graduating, he still hasn't bothered to figure it out. If Bob were still among us and Barbara still cared about anything, they'd be kicking themselves for wasting money on his tuition.

CADD at PVCC was designed as a two-year degree, but it took Chris five years to complete it, not including the year in which he was suspended from college. The CADD certificate itself only required four courses, or one semester of work. The remaining credit requirements were to be met with major-related requirements and a few general education classes. Chris would have needed extensive consultation with his advisor in the CADD program. In addition to this advising, Chris had at his disposal two CADD labs, a Career Services department, web-posted job openings, and links to relevant external sites. None of this could overcome Chris's general apathy and confusion about entering the world of work.

Despite the inordinate amount of time it took Chris to obtain this degree, and the amount that Chris talks about it, he only ever produced two pieces of work. While one might assume that they were two large projects produced over a long amount of time, the two designs he produced were a map of his mall and an incredibly large Mayor's Office about the size of a football field with nothing much inside it. The mall contains a two-story Pokemon center and numerous stores where one can buy and play with games and toys, as well as restaurants that mostly sell junk food. The mayor's office is supposed to be in the mall but is nowhere to be found in his diagram. This cyclopean structure contains several rooms over 100 feet long containing very few objects, with a table around 20 feet in length in the middle. It contains few doors for a building of its size, and some hallways are fully inaccessible.

Chris claims that he received an A+ for these projects which took him "weeks to months" to complete. However, he has also admitted indirectly that one of his CADD professors, Dr. Kene C.U. Meniru, gave him a failing grade at some point. Typically, Chris could only assume that this criticism was completely unjustified, and that Dr. Meniru was entirely malicious. Dr. Meniru would appear as the CADD Chef in Sonichu #5 which Chris was drawing in the month of his graduation.

The Associate's Degree in CADD is no longer offered by Piedmont Virginia Community College. As time goes on, computer-aided design programs evolve, and it's more economical to learn the craft as part of another major (such as engineering, machining, digital media, or product design). Simply majoring in CADD nowadays is like majoring in Microsoft Word. Additionally, Chris was trained on Windows XP-era software that is most likely long out of date and has made virtually zero effort to keep up with new developments in his field of study. This has left Chris with very few job prospects he wouldn't have gotten with any other AA.

Usage in the comics
Chris's CADD degrees apparently come into use within his comics. He even alludes to them assisting him at many points in his comic; for example, Sonichu & Rosechu's benefit house. However, the few basic measuring skills he may have picked up from his CADD courses seem to have been forgotten, because he never uses a ruler, nor are his drawings to scale. Additionally, he doesn't use a computer for anything but the text, making his CADD degree entirely inconsequential to the production of his comic (in fact, he was firmly against using computers for art until 2020). Obviously, a college course is not required to be able to make basic measurements or draw things relatively proportional to each other. When you consider his lack of improvement over the last 20 years, he'd probably have been better off spending Bob's tuition money on Lego blocks.

Chris petulantly inserted Dr. Meniru into the comic as a villain by the name of CADD Chef, who mocks Chris's designs for his mall. This "injustice" guaranteed CADD Chef a place in the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens as one of Mary Lee Walsh's minions.