VEGAN ME

ABOUT SECTION

About VeganMe

VeganMe is the resource for vegans worldwide. Featuring a dynamic nutrient tracker that ensures that you are getting your required nutrients, regularly updated blog posts and recipes, and a vegan grocery list builder that can help new vegans get a hang of their new diet, VeganMe is a great tool to help and guide people new to the vegan lifestyle.

The inspiration for VeganMe came from a coding competition. Khan Academy was offering a Macbook Pro to the winner of their programming challenge, and I decided to combine my programming experience and knowledge of veganism to build a website tailored towards helping vegans as quickly as I could. I only had around a month and a half to complete the project, and spent the first week planning and brushing up on my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (3 programming languages essential to web development). I decided that I was going to have five main features - a nutrients tracker, a blog, a recipe database, a grocery list builder, and a forum (in the end, I could not create the vegan forum due to time constraints - but after the competition I will definitely get to work on this fifth intended feature of VeganMe).

I then set about building the actual website around a week later. By then I had established a rough schedule that I would more or less adhere to for the remainder of the project. The nutrients tracker and the grocery list builder were the hardest to create, due to sheer amount of hardcoding that went into them and the pressure of time. By the time I finished the grocery list, I was exhausted (I was cranking out around 3-4 hours a day working on VeganMe), but pushed on, knowing that the end was near. Finally, on August 27 (one day before my personal deadline to finish the coding part of the project), I had finished programming VeganMe. I had done it! The hard part was over, and all I had to do was to put together a decent presentation, submit my project, and hope for the best. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never touch VeganMe again - after all, after the contest was over, what was the point?

My schedule for creating VeganMe.

However, this website has grown into far more than a mere project for me, and I realized that soon enough. As I worked on VeganMe more and more, I developed my passion for programming further and greatly admired vegans and their extreme lifetsyle. VeganMe made me more aware about the vegan community, and was my first programming project created for the benefit of others. I have learned a lot from this experience, and felt that although working feverishly trying to output one's daily caloric intake needs was hellish at times, I enjoyed tackling the many challenges I faced during the construction of VeganMe, and especially that feeling of triumph when I had finally succeeded. At first I was relieved that I was finally done working on this difficult project, but then I started to miss those challenges and that feeling of elation.

And here I am today, writing this about section shortly after submitting VeganMe to Khan Academy. I learned to stop viewing my creations as mere 'project', but more like actual, legitimate websites. VeganMe was created at first to win a Macbook Pro - but now I realize that it was created to fulfill my passion for coding. I could never completely leave VeganMe - it was my finest creation, my most difficult creation - and these past two months have been both heaven and hell at times. But now I can conclude that even if I don't receive that Macbook Pro from Khan Academy, I have received much more during my experience creating VeganMe.

About the Creator

Hi, I'm Anand Krishnan, and I'm the creator of VeganMe! I'm from Schaumburg, Illinois, and am going to be a sophomore in high school next year. I am a midfielder on my school soccer team and am the producer of our school's annual winter musical.

I created VeganMe in June 2019 as my programming project submission to Camp Khan, where we had to create a program that could change the future. I am a vegetarian, not a vegan, but became interested in vegans' no-animal diets. When I tried making this diet switch, I realized how difficult going vegan really was. So when Camp Khan rolled around, I decided to create a website that would help other new vegan-converts out with their new lifestyle.

I'm just one of the hundreds of high schoolers hoping that their project is good enough to win that MacBook Pro - but even if I do not win Camp Khan, I will be content to know that I have put my best effort possible in VeganMe.