This is the third time I have rewritten this. I am having trouble expressing myself in regards to CreateAthon.

For starters, it happened. That’s true.

I won’t say it was fun, but it was totally awesome. It was insanely rewarding and I’m very happy our presentation to the client went well.
That said, it was not a water balloon fight underneath the highway overpass. It was some seriously stressful work. This was like the last week of every May and December, except now I could let down whole groups of people in addition to myself.

I didn’t get tired. I didn’t have time for that bullshit. I was busy. I had to move.
We were sharks. We were swimming. If we had slow time, I’d go continue the rivalry we established with ACTS or UPS. I couldn’t stop working.

My team was awesome. Everyone did an incredible job. Bradley made an amazing marketing and outreach strategy for our client. Shannon helped me understand exactly what the hell a website is supposed to do and what works (all this while super sick. She left around 4AM, which was amazing considering she started off the day being ill). Milgo and Nicole both killed it with design, while Raven saved us an hour with some really tight writing. Even Cody, who was stepped in at 4am after an entire day mentoring, helped keep our feet to the fire with his design work on the website.

(Most of) The mentors were great. This one may not be what I’m supposed to write about, but I’m not going to dance around it. We had some real annoying (I danced here) mentors and some great mentors. Grant Mizell and Jolinda Smithson were huge parts of our success. Peyton, Tara and Christina were on-point when we needed them. Chad Woods, Joel Austin and Nelson Johnson on the various gO! teams were indispensable.
Then we had some people who slowed us down and got in the way of what we were doing. There was a reason we hung our “STAY OUT!” sign early in the morning.
I know that they were as excited as we all were and really wanted to help. I don’t blame anyone for that. I blame them when they forgot that we (myself, and by the end of the night especially, my team) were the best advocates for our client and I have no patience for the person who walked in and asked why we didn’t have [x] done yet.
I know that I speak on behalf of my team in this regard; I tried being cool initially [I am known for a certain hot temper] and I was met with an immediate “why did you let that happen?” from my people.
Let me sum this part up by saying that we do not hate criticism and I certainly don’t think we were above it ever; but when people walk into a room and assume knowledge and take condescending tones then I’m tossing you out.

Social media is timely. I made one Tumblr/Facebook and Twitter post the entire night.
And I love Twitter.
I still had 40% of my battery when I left the building at noon.
They gave me a camera. I didn’t do anything with it. There was NO TIME.
Actually, during the midnight check-in I said as much to someone on the gO! team about that and they responded “I knew you wouldn’t.”
Ugh. I hate video.
But I did make a podcast out of it! I expected it to be much longer and have much more energy, but there was no time. I’ll post that here when it comes out.
Just no time.

So it’s over. The event, anyways.
And I loved it. Despite the complaining, the stress, the mentors, the rumors and everything I loved it. That was the highlight of any Spring Break (and a couple semesters ago I jumped out of a plane on Spring Break). My team was awesome and giving that presentation in the morning felt awesome. That the client liked the work meant a lot.
I told Bradley as we were wrapping up I was getting a little emotional. I lied. I was getting really emotional.
I felt amazing when we were done. I stayed up til 2AM the next day. I had dinner that night at the Camel, just to get back to the meet and greet.

Would I do it again? Absolutely.
I’d probably need to be a team leader though.

—Jacob McFadden