My Failures and Disappointments

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