My NHD Website & Story

Hey friends! So, last year I had to do this big project including research of over 20 sites, annotated bibliography writing, etc. and it was all for something called NHD. It stands for National History Day. They give you a theme and you must choose a topic that fits that theme. Last year's theme was Breaking Barriers. Just saying, this is a worldwide thing, many countries have schools that participate in this. I chose Mahatma Gandhi as my topic and wrote a thesis and did the research for each control and had an intro and conclusion, etc. It's a side project you do in History class while learning the history content and syllabus. So it goes on throughout the year. Then, we had to pick a project type. Like a website, performance, documentary, etc. I chose a website. By the way, the year before (the year before was a practice project, to prepare for the actual NHD) we used Weebly to create our project. But now, they made their own website maker called NHD WebCentral, which was kinda hard to use. It was laggy and didn't have all the resources as Weebly which was much more neat and clean and simple. But it's okay, I got through. My school-level project, which is the mandatory one wasn't that great but due to my presentation, I got second. I was soo happy! I got to go to the county-level. That isn't mandatory, the school one is because it's like schoolwork. But I wanted to go to the county-level obviously. And I worked so hard to make the website good-looking on that hard-to-use website maker. It took a lot of sweat and hard work. Especially because of the annotated bibliography being so long and me using so many pictures. I think I have about 45-50 sources in total, plus you need to annotate each site, each picture, and everything. So you needa be wise ('bout what you use). Inserting videos was really hard because it couldn't be from an external source and the embedded media wouldn't work. But over time, I figured it out. My teacher was just doing her part in the research but didn't have any clue about the website. So, I was on my own. The school-level competition was frustrating because my computer wouldn't load and took forever. A few days before the big day, the videos stopped working but I wasn't allowed to edit anymore. I was panicking like anything. I ended up just explaining the videos' content to the judges. Luckily, the county-level competition time, they worked, I fixed 'em. I used a bigger computer so it wouldn't lag as much and the website got way better, the school-level competition experience didn't go to waste lol. Anywho, sadly, the day before the county-level competition was when the lockdown orders came. I wish they waited one day because then the competition got canceled and postponed. They waited for two months and decided to check our projects online WITH NO PRESENTATION. PRESENTING IS WHAT I DO BEST! I wish they let me present. But anyway, I was so excited to see what I got but I had to wait a few weeks. Then, it came . . . I GOT THIRD!!! YAY! I was sooo happy. I got third out of everyone in the county! But . . . I realized that I couldn't go to the state-level. I may not have won at the state-level but I really wanted to go! I worked so hard. If they let us present, I'm so very sure I would've at least got second. I really wish they'd let me. But you know what, life doesn't always go the way you plan. I just wanted to edit the bibliography a bit and I accidentally repeated an image and quote so I wanted to fix that and insert an interview in replace of the intro video (an interview I would conduct from someone who knows Gandhi or so). I just wanted to make some small changes and go to states. I really really really wish that had happened because I spent the nights in hard hard work. But it's alright, that happened several months ago, in April. The past is the past. Anyway, that was my NHD story. I know there's always next year but I don't wanna go through all that painful work again. And now . . . for the grand finale . . . my website!!! Here, read away, https://20-56934832.nhdwebcentral.org/home.