Should I use design patterns..New to OOPS ...and new to .NET..

I am working on a project in my company and as I mentioned in the subject of this question, being new to OOPS and new to vb.net, should I consider to adopt or use design pattern in this project ? Or am I better off in terms of meeting deadline to just go-ahead with programming in vb.net (will be using most of OOPS concepts) ?

Any thoughts and suggestions...my project manager is encouraging us to use the UML design patterns though he is aware that I am new to both ....

I am currently reading 2 books on Design patterns in vb.net but the examples illustrated are very simple and easy to understand but when it comes to being able to apply the newly learnt design patterns in our project I am feeling very difficult.

Any suggestions will be very helpful...

I am realatively new to design patters also. It seems that when I read about them, they just make sense. Most of the time I use them without even knowing it is a pattern (at least the basic ones like singletons and such).

First, if you are up against a tight deadline, there might not be much time to do the proper design required to fully incorporate these things. Only you are going to be able to tell if you have enough time to properly code something or not.

I have found that when doing new projects, it is best to pad the time schedule with research and prototyping time. If you can incorporate it into your project cost, even better. It gets the client to pay for training that your company will benefit from for future projects.

Those are my thoughts, and I am a little tired, so they may not make a lot of sense... Sorry I can't offer any more help.

regards
nath