There is a crazy, busy, exciting, very confusing cloud coming my way this spring + summer. I dont quite know what Im getting myself into yet.
A few days ago, Saturday, in fact, my friend Jo and I attended a web design competition at one of the community colleges in our town. I first heard about it 4 days before the actual competition was to take place. Kind of really stupid, but a teacher passed out the flyers for the competition to her class which a few of my friends were in and I heard her talking about it so one of my friends gave me his flyer knowing that I would make more use of it than him - only sign ups for the competition closed about a week before she handed them out. She's a smart one, huh? I called my dad as soon as I was able to use my cell phone and when he went to the website to check it out they hadnt actually taken the registration form down so he was able to sign me up (which they then closed like immediatley after they got my registration, lol).
I really, really, really wanted Sarah to by my partner for the competition. When I talked to her about it, she got extremely excited and was looking forward to it. But then she remembered that she had pit orchestra rehersal Saturday during the time of the competition. So before band class that day we went to double-team our teacher and preceded to beg and plead him to let her miss just this one day - we even tried to bribe him with a part of the $1000 we would win if we got first place. But no luck. So my friend Jo agreed to be my partnet.
Even though Sarah knows absolutely nothing about making websites, she knows me, which is all that matters. She would have been able to keep me calm (because I cant help freaking out) and she would have kicked me in the ass to keep me on track. Jo is my friend, but we both doubted her ability to yell at me if I needed it.
Anyways, the day of the competition:
I was so nervous and excited. When it finally started, I met my competition: 9 other pairs of guys (all guys, Jo and I were the only girls) who, lets face, were nerds. But nerds I could appreciate. I was thinking to myself, "We got the leg up in this competition because I am creative and I can make websites." I believed that the other teams, being male nerds, lacked that creativity. I guess we'll find out!
The purpose was to create a website about the Computer and Information Science program that the college offers. They wanted us to make it interesting because very little college-bound students enter in to that field of study despite it being having one of the largest and fastest growing job outlooks.
Anyways, we started off okay. I asked Jo to start writing or doodling some ideas down for the website, but she kind of just stared at me. I had to do most of the work myself - but that was alright, because we expected it. After I had made the graphics for the website, I turned around and I glimsped the computer screens of 2 teams nearest us - and my heart dropped. It looked like they had really nice websites almost finished. I started to get really hot and all of a sudden I completely hated what I had done so far. Like, I was embarrased to even have it on my computer screen in case someone turned around and saw it. Thats when it went all to hell. 10 minutes later I had pretty much given up. When the 3 hours we were given to finish it came around, I just had enough time to quickly put some word vomit on all the pages and then turn it in for judging. Actually, I almost didnt turn it in. I BEGGED Jo to let me ask the judges if we could just forfeit, but she said we spent all this time working on it so we might as well just do it.
We were being scored 50% on the website and 50% on our 3 minute presentation to the judges - male-nerd-dominated once again. I was so embarrassed and nervous. I couldnt think of anything to say because I hated what I created and I wasnt proud of it. Jo wrote some things down and then I added a few, and then we got up to be the last presenters.
I started off describing how I tried to make it look cool and interesting (I think I actually used the word "hip". Jo said she almost died inside. lol) And I added a little tid-bit on how I hand-coded the entire thing in notepad. Then it it turned into more word vomit until the end. After we were done TWO people - one of them was a judge - came to tell us how much they enjoyed our presentation over everyone elses. The reason? Because we actually did what they wanted us to. If you remember, they wanted us to make it so more students would go into the field of Computer and Information Science. We presented our project from a marketers point of view to prospective employers, in essence. Every other group did nothing but say, "This is the navigation, this is the header, we put text here, etc, blah blah blah". The judges were thinking to themselves, "Yes, we can see that is the header, duh." lol.
We ended up placing 2nd. :) I was totally and completely surprised. Jo laughed because I had almost not even turned it in. The website was probably the worst thing I have ever created and I plan on never looking at it again. It was also very interesting that when they announced us the winners, they mentioned the fact that I coded the whole thing by hand. Apparently very, very few people can do that; who would'a known?! Our prize was $200 to Barnes and Nobles. Yay books!
So now that everyone knows how much of a computer geek I am... lol. Just kidding.
My future looks bright? I hope so. Right now the light seems to be blinding me half the time and the rest annoyingly blinking on and off. Freakin' fixture.
MCR next week. :D