Biography - Namrita
Hello, I am Namrita and I am an 18 year old from India. Originally from Mangalore, I am doing my undergrad in computer engineering in Chennai. I’m incredibly fascinated by dance, I learn a South Indian dance style called Bharatanatyam and I’ve had the privilege of travelling all over India to perform at various temple festivals. I've also been passionate about writing for as long as I can remember, at least ever since I saw Lois Lane battle it out in the newsroom during the adventures of Superman! :)
I was more of a non-technical writer for HashThat! though I tackled technical articles as well, with some guidance from Jason. I remember how both of us were in splits after seeing the first draft of my fairy-tale version of the DVD encryption article!
ThinkQuest was a lot of firsts for me. It was the first time I got to work with an international team, the first time I’ve written on such a large scale… It was even my first on screen appearance! (Suffice to say acting may not really be my cup of tea, but it was fun nevertheless!) Working on ThinkQuest was exciting; I got to learn how different the lifestyles of people my age in other parts of the world were, and at the same time be amazed at how well we could collaborate transcending the barriers of distance and time .
Coming to my team, I personally worked with Laura and Erika for translation, their unfailing determination to finish translation on time only motivated me to work longer and harder, and boy was there a lot to be done! David did a truly fantastic job as our designer, hats off to him! Rajesh was an awesome game developer, no matter how high we set the bar, he still crossed it. Jason and I worked well together as the writers on this team, we complemented each other. Not to say we didn't disagree on things! But he is a perfectionist in every sense of the word, and I would like to think that it has rubbed off on me a little! :) And last, but definitely not least, Kishore, backed by Jim, was the glue that held this team together. He was our best friend, and our worst critic all in one!
The major challenge I faced as a writer, was picking out exactly what to present to the user that would captivate him and at the same time give him the overall view of cryptography. Tracing cryptography back to the time of its inception was tricky because there are scarce bits of information available, and we had to really compile and double check the authenticity of it.
We really tried to make the site both fun and educational, and we hope people from all over the world can relate to it the way we did! All in all, I loved that I got to meet an incredible bunch of people and spend that time doing something that meant a lot to each of us. So this is Namrita saying ten-four, until next time!