Patrick

Nationality: American

Age: 17

Role: Wrote interactive activities and animations

Hi! I'm Patrick. I created the interactive activities on this site as well as a few animations.

I am a sophomore at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH, USA. I am in Mr. Poirier's C++ Programming class. I also work at the Hampstead Middle School after school maintaining their Industrial Arts computer lab and their Linux servers. Also, because my life includes more than just computers, I'm in Pinkerton’s wind ensemble, marching band, and jazz lab band. Until I learned about ThinkQuest, that was pretty much all I was involved in.

I learned about ThinkQuest from Mr. Poirier when he was looking for people to add to his team. I am very glad that I joined the team, as ThinkQuest has been a valuable experience. I have had a chance to work with some great people (Kishore, Chris, Chloe, Laura, and Amelia). Kishore helped keep the team afloat and looking at the reality that we had deadlines to meet. Chloe helped in pretty much every department we needed her to. Amelia managed to turn around beautifully written content pages. Chris created and brought to life MM-19, our mascot. Laura churned out the Spanish translations in record time. In short, I don't think it was possible to put together a more talented team. I have learned a lot about web design, which was one of those things that I had pushed off to the side before I joined the team. I can now write Flash games and animations and program in ActionScript. I am pretty excited. This whole experience has been priceless.

However, my experience with ThinkQuest wasn't without its difficulties. There were those days that I had to stay up really late working on something ThinkQuest-related. There were also days when I was in my stressed-out panic mode, such as when I had no clue how to approach the word search. I knew how I wanted it to look, but I didn't know how to implement it. After a week of searching, I nearly gave up on it, but with some help from Chris, I was able to find a solution I hadn't thought of. What we found turned out to be a very efficient solution. Working through the problem with Chris like this made me appreciate how teams work together to get the job done.

All in all, ThinkQuest has been a very exciting and valuable experience for me, and I wish to thank Mr. Poirier for inviting me onto the team. I'd also like to thank Tina and the entire team for their dedication, advice, and support throughout the entire project.

See also: Credits, Reference List