My Failures and Disappointments

March 06, 2018

• #self

Social media has become a medium for people to show the best parts of their life, however it’s very easy to interpret this as how someone’s life always is. I’ve had people tell me things like “You’re a data science prodigy”, “Now that you’re in university, you have everything figured out”, but it’s easy to make quick comments that aren’t necessarily true.

Everyone fails to meet their own expectations at times and I want to share mine to show a different prespective. Note these are based on memory and some details are vague for privacy reasons. Some could be elaborated a lot more, but then don’t really follow the list format.

Inspired by cv of failures.

2018

• Didn’t win any of the prizes we applied for in StarterHacks that we thought we had a really good shot at
• Got rejected from the Hack the North logistics position after a 2nd interview
• Personally rejected and told I wasn’t good enough from companies I tried to network with
• Got a 48 on my CS 240 midterm

2017

• Ended up with a 64 in CS 245e, while everyone else found the course to be a mark booster
• Lost over 10% on the CS 246e final project because of a few lines of code
• Struggles with my first internship, especially seeing all the other cool jobs my friends got
• 45 job application rejections
• First workshop on Kaggle held for UW Data Science Club went horribly
• Rejected from the NBA hackathon
• Got a 47 in my MATH 136 midterm
• Hurt a friend because I wasn’t a good enough friend

2016

• Got 50s in my MATH 135 and MATH 137 midterms because I underestimated university math
• Deferred to Mathematics from Computer Science for my University of Waterloo application
• Predicted IB grade dropped by 5 marks (out of 45)
• Lost contact with a friend from abroad because keeping in touch is not my strength
• Rejected from high school’s DECA team
• Rejected by a girl that was a good friend of mine

2015

• Felt alone as all my friends were in a relationship
• Ended up in last place in my Track and Field race during ROPSSA
• Laughed at my non-existant skills in volleyball at the YMCA

2014

• Feeling extremely stressed due to IB
• Had 2 close friends really dislike me
• Missed out on swimming with the boys because I went to the wrong community center
• Went on bad terms with a friend due to my indecisiveness

2013

• Got a 51 on my first math test in grade 9

2012

• Got a 47 on my Grade 9 English final exam