For once, I actually made sure to do all of my work, and I planned my speech ahead of time. I had all of my points and ideas and important lines laid out, and I was ready to go. Today was supposed to be my day to practice and refine.
When I woke up this morning, there was no TED talk doc on google drive. In fact, according to my computer, I did not access google drive yesterday.
I spent two hours thinking through what I wanted to say, what lesson I wanted to impart. I planned out everything for my speech, from the set-up, to the breakdown. Everything.
And now it's gone.
In a rather cruel way, I suppose this is reminiscent of my entire project.
Sometimes in life, no matter how much you plan, life sucks. Or google.
But if there is one thing that I have learned from this project, it's that when life gives you s***, you ignore it. Because at the end of the day, it all has to get done.
So now, I have to start over again.
I suppose that this is just another support for the subject of my TED talk.
Given that I don't think anyone actually reads these posts (2 views on the last one, hooray), I suppose it's ok to explain what direction I'm heading in.
Throughout this project, I've been very emotional. At first I was amazingly happy, and ready to build an assume quadrotor. When my shipping issues began, well that was the true content of this project. It ceased to be about quadrotors and began to be more a dialogue on setbacks.
At first, I was convinced that my parts would get here. I figured "oh, it's a shipping error. I'm sure it'll be here soon." I quickly realized this wasn't the case.
For a while, I was just angry at the world. I just felt as if someone was out to get me, and I didn't understand why of all time, there had to be a paperwork error for my project.
After that, I decided that constant frustration wasn't healthy, and I moved on to reasoning with life. I did EVERYTHING I could in order to get those parts here by spring break. I wrote e-mail after e-mail, sent angry letters, contacted support centers; it didn't work.
Finally, when I realized on the 3rd day of spring break that my parts weren't ever getting here, I just felt sad. Sad because I had no parts. Sad because my project was a failure. Sad that my dream fell flat.
I was stuck there for a while, with a bit of all of those feelings swirling around me. I was always mad and sad and unhappy. And I realize now all it did was make me miserable and mean.
Where I am now, is the final stage: acceptance.
I guess I've accepted the truth, because there's nothing I can do about it.
From that, I see now that it isn't that big of a deal. I can still give a TED talk. I can still write blog posts. I won't have an amazing new quadrotor to fly for my presentation tomorrow, but someday I will.
That's the amazing thing about a goal. It never dies. The process I've shown you above, is known as the Kubler-Ross model. It's generally used to evaluate people grieving for terminally ill people. It's used to observe the effect of death.
But my goals have not died. I will build that quadcopter someday. Because the beauty of a dream, is that you get to try again.
Ge, I am really proud of you for being able to accept the fact that your parts and your google doc are both nonexistant. I know all of the work, and research you have done for this project, and it's sad that you were unable to build a quadcopter. However it takes a lot of strength to persevere through it all to come up with what I believe, will be a fantastic speech, tomorrow. Although it may not be as flashy as a quadrotor, your journey is something that shows a true application into life. Instead of saying this is my product, and what I did over the past 7 weeks, your journey will be something that nobody else can talk about. Your journey of hardships, I think, reveals so much more about you than building a quadcopter. Also, the last paragraph about a goal never dying was very touching and true. GO GETTEM TOMORROW G$
ReplyDeleteIt's such a shame that your parts never came, and that on top of that, you lost your entire TED talk. But as with everything, I'm sure you'll bounce back and deliver an amazing talk.
ReplyDeleteAnd as you said, this setback only adds to your TED talk and gives you more experiences to back up your presentation. I think those last few sentences in this post really support your topic, and I'd suggest using them word-for-word in your talk (though of course that's completely up to you).
When you do (finally) get the parts, I'm excited to see the completed quadcopter -- you'll still be updating this blog, right?
First of all, a HUGE congrats on personal initiative. I'm actually impressed that you tried to be prepared. All in all, the universe just didn't want it to happen I guess. Well, actually, the universe must not like you all that much (who came blame 'em?) because it seems as though your project was not successful. Who am I kidding, it wasn't. I do think everything about it was really awesome though! Hopefully, you're ted talk will be more upbeat than what I have proposed, and either way I can't wait to see it! See you then!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that the parts never came :( and then your TED talk getting deleted, that's so frustrating! The hardest thing is, none of that you could control. You seem to be handling the disappointment pretty well though. You will build that quadcopter eventually. Good for you for persevering despite all the setbacks you experienced. Good luck tomorrow!
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