Over the winter break off my junior year, I had an unfortunate encountering with salmonella. This caused me to be unproductive and bed ridden for the majority of my break. Which made it nearly impossible to spend time with my family, cousins or brother who came for the holidays. During one of the days of my misery, I caught myself mid reflection reflecting on all the things our service group Care For Paws has accomplished since Rashmi and I stepped up to be Service leaders. It was amazing and fulfilling to see how far we had come and the positive impact that resonated with the community around us. However, it occurred me to how little people within our own school community are aware of all the events, fundraisers we actually host. Not only that but the hours of planning and the hours of action. It was difficult to share the processes and the real time action that occurs with these events. Which lead me to believe the best possible solution would be to create a website where we can share all these steps and milestones with our community. It would be a platform for them to get involved and really make a difference with what we are doing. But also to appreciate the efforts of our group.
Initially, I thought of using a website host from online. But with the overwhelming amount of time I had available to me, coding it from scratch seemed like a challenge I was willing to take. As I have had previous experience with HTML, CS and some Java script, it wasn’t necessarily foreign territory for me. I took the initiative by downloading sublime text onto my desktop and I began coding. I viewed other websites for inspiration but also referred to some of my older more unpolished work. After weeks of stressful nights that consisted of eyeing detail, the website was finally coming together. At times when I was uncertain or really stuck on a line or an error, I turned to my savior stack overflow. It was a learning process in which I had to be patient with as there were moments when I felt like scrapping the idea. However, by the end of the month of January I had the code for the website complete.
Unfortunately, during the month of February my laptop crashed and everything that was on it erased. It was every coders, students or even persons worst nightmare. I was shattered to see all my school work, pictures and handwork vanish. But with the stress of catching up and retrieving all the school work I had lost, the website was the least of my worries. Sometime during the month of May, I had a moment of realization where I remembered that the night before my laptop went south, I had transferred the files using an external software. Which meant that they were hosted on a domain website. To my relief it was up on the web as I had imagined. I was then able to download the files and edit them to make the changes necessary. After about a week of adjustments and updates to the code I was able to successfully host the website. This was one of my most proudest moments as I took risk to engage in something outside of my comfort zone, in order to challenge my skills and my capabilities which took me by surprise. Ultimately, it really empowered me to believe that anything is truly possible, if you puts your mind to it!
Care For Paws website: