I’ve been writing a résumé of my high school accomplishments, but have been hung up on one major issue in particular. I once started a massive technological project that was promising and successful, until it was eventually undermined by forces out of my control. I wondered if I should mention my participation in the project. Normally, it would be an exemplary story of initiative and skill development; however, it ended in failure. Here we go:
When I was a mere freshman, I was approached by a technical worker whom I was friends with at my high school, and was asked if I had any ideas to get some sort of television-driven announcement distribution system established throughout the school. I had plenty of free time back then, and by the next day I had a decent prototype created. Technically, it was unimpressive – a web page with three frames. The top frame had a clock that updated itself and slowly moved left and right. The middle frame’s loaded a .txt file and scrolled messages up the screen. The bottom frame was a CNN-esque ticker, which also loaded from a .txt file. My idea was that one could remotely access a computer attached to the video feed and launch the web page full screen. Then, he or she would update the .txt files to update the announcements. The master web page would force-refresh itself every 10 minutes to display updates. The system was simple, but elegant. It got the job done, and cost taxpayers nothing. Continue reading ‘My Failed Accomplishment’