Reflection on the Dell Website Challenge

My name is Rachel Ott. Last year, I looked up the VEX online challenges for the first time and only one really caught my eye: the Dell Website Challenge. This was a bit of an issue, seeing as I had never so much as opened the source code of a website before, much less thought about the graphic design aspects it would take to pull one together. However, I'm nothing if not stubborn. I started by visiting every list the internet would give me on the best ways to build a website. I found google sites (as many other competitors did, I would later find out) as a bare-bones option for beginners.

For one, shining moment, I thought that designing a website was going to be easy.

But, thanks to murphy's law, anything that can go wrong, will. Accidentally deleting progress, never being able to decide on a color scheme, low resolution images, bare-bones software, losing track of time, and every other setback imaginable were my companions for months, not to mention learning the programming I needed to insert widgets that I wanted and more.

My robotics coach often glanced at me in the same way that you'd look at a homeless person arguing with a pigeon across the road; curiosity and awe but not in a good way, something that compels you to glance away quickly. I cant say I blame him. I often grit my teeth and tug at my hair as I work, which can make me look a little unhinged.

But I'm so, so grateful for my time spent on this site. I've poured my heart and soul into it. It's been the home of my restless nights and early mornings, my half-finished ideas and my magnum opus's. Despite using a design platform, I hope that those who visit this website can feel that I truly care, because that's my goal.

And now, I have to leave this website behind. I'm a senior, and I've had my fun in robotics, but after this year, I'll be headed off to college far away from home. Despite leaving this website in my memory and moving on, this website won't be leaving me. I've declared my future major to be computer science, in the hopes of one day being a real web developer.

So here's to the future being a tapestry of the past.