Dude, I should totally start a webpage

I've been kicking around the idea of making a website. The idea is that when I am in graduate school, I'm going to be meeting a lot of people and making a lot of contacts, both professionally, personally, and academically (and a fusion of all of the above), and I think it would be useful for someone who has my business card to have a website to go to that tells them "ok, so this is what Alec is about." Specifically, potential future employers and design / social collaborators. It would have:

• Professional work
• Student work
• Competitions
• Nonprofit work
• Resume
• and maybe even a link to my blog hidden somewhere in the site for people who really read every little detail on every page.

One issue is domain name. I can get www.aperk.us.but I'd really prefer a .com domain. I could go with studioap.net or apworks.net as well. I can get a domain for two years for about $7 a month. And that's with a premium 'eco' provider who run their servers on wind power.

One of the problems with working in the field of design is that your website needs to look and feel designed. No one is going to hire you for serious design work if your website looks like crap. This is an example of how my classmates are representing themselves on the net: http://www.patrick-riddle.com/ This is my aunt and uncle's website: http://scheerandscheer.com/. One's a little more flashy, ones a little more simple, but they're both really slick. I think if I create a site, I'm going to go for few elements and clean design with the hope that it will be read as "minimalsist" instead of "didn't want to shell out the bucks for a professional webpage designer." 

Thinking about that now, what kind of statement does THAT make? Please spend money on me to do design work for you, but when I needed a professional designer for a different trade, I cheaped out on a DIY website. This would bear closer inspection. Hell, talking about starting a website is like talking about starting a band.