For my senior year of high school, I was required to get an internship. I did successfully score an internship at a company in Boston - formerly Digital Results Group, Inc. and now Novetta - but that internship could not start soon enough. So, I looked for an internship at my school, which was the best option since I was taking A.P. classes my senior year and was required to be there for those classes. I noticed that the 3D printers at the school were not being used (we had 3) and I realized how much potential the printers had.
So, I decided to do a self-directed internship preceding (and somewhat conflicting with) my internship in Boston, and it turned out to be one of my biggest entrepreneurship stories (albeit I don't have many) that I have thus far - although it did fail somewhat terribly. My goal for the internship was to fix the 3D priinters, design an interesting website (can be found here - it has not changed at all for 2 years) and to get the 3D printers integrated with the school (e.g. get the 3D printing integrated with math classes and perhaps have a class on how to use the software and fix the hardware). I did in fact print some pyramids for the geometry professor, who then used the pyramids to show the students how to find different lengths on the sides, and I coordinated with a professor who said that she would, indeed, be interested in using the 3D printers for an entirely new art class. I even followed up for months after the internship, but she did not respond to me. I made a turoial on how to use the printers for the art teacher (and all who might need it), made a user manual on how to operate the printers and perhaps repair them and coordinated with the principle about getting safer plastic (PLA instead of ABA which produces semi-toxic fumes, although that has not been fully proven yet I guess).
All in all, I thought it would be a good move to get the full use out of the 3D printers (and make them safer and more usable) because they are becoming ever more useful as software and hardware continue to grow and people become more aware of them, and I thought it would be a very smart thing to get the printers up and running and integrated with the school in order for the printers to become a little more useful and allow people to learn about something that is interesting and very useful. However, as you can see, I failed utterly in this entrepreneurial attempt - if you can call it that. I look forward, however, to continuing my knowledge of hardware and mostly software (although that bias may shift) and seeing what benefit my skills might be in the future.
