You’re not alone
An account of how to deal with the feeling of not being good enough, navigating uncertainties and the importance of persistence
In this blog, I intend to cover my experience in dealing with uncertainties and the feeling of not being good enough. The blog contains a personal account of my recent struggles and will be relating to college students who are aspiring to have successful careers.
These are the two sections in the blog:
1. Uncertainties in life
In this section, I will share my personal experience of recent struggles with finding job opportunities.
2. Dealing with the uncertainties
In this section, I will be sharing my personal experience of how I tried dealing with these uncertainties.
Before I begin the blog, the only thing that you should know about me is that I am currently pursuing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science.
With that out of the way, let’s start with the first section.
Uncertainties in life
I am currently at a very different stage in my life. Along with the learning opportunities and college life, there are a few expectations out of me. There are a few expectations that people have created for me and there are a few expectations that I have created for myself.
With these expectations, I have got certain responsibilities that I have to tend to. I have to balance my time balancing the multiple responsibilities and sometimes there will be a few hard times in managing these responsibilities.
I have been very fortunate to have got opportunities to learn and contribute to open source. I have come in contact with very helpful and talented people who have inspired me to pursue a career in technology.
I have successfully completed three internship opportunities and was selected as an intern with Facebook Dublin office.
I have faced a lot of rejections during my college life, but the last few months have given me a lot of bad news in a short duration of time.
Please note that I am sharing these details for the readers to empathize with my condition. Please don’t take them as self-boasting.
My reaction to these events should be considered as a normal human emotion, please don’t form an opinion about me from the below points.
Here are a series of bad news that I received in the past few months:
1. Facebook canceled my internship due to COVID-19. When I got the Facebook internship, I decided to not apply for GSOC internship despite being a strong candidate so other candidates can get the opportunity. Now I cannot apply for GSOC internship this year.
2. I got rejected for the CNCF Communitybridge internship despite being a past Communitybridge intern. I had no internship for the summer.
3. I got rejected in the first coding round(I didn’t even get an interview opportunity) for Microsoft and Amazon despite clearing all the interviews for Facebook.
4. My travel opportunities to the Facebook Dublin office, Kubecon Amsterdam and Fossasia Summit 2020 got canceled because of COVID-19. These travel opportunities were an opportunity for me to meet the people whom I had worked with. I have never traveled out of India before till now.
The news just went on going from bad to worse. This all happened during summertime when a lot of students are starting their internship program.
Every time I logged on LinkedIn, I would see posts of people posting about starting their internship program. There would be posts about clearing the initial coding rounds for Microsoft and Amazon.
These posts made me feel like a victim, It made me feel that I am doing something wrong that my opportunities are getting rejected.
I didn’t feel like doing anything for almost 3 days. During these times, different chains of thought run through your mind. I felt like an idiot to not apply for GSOC internship, I started questioning my interview skills and I pressured myself that I have to take some steps fast.
I would like to thank my family, my mentors, and my friends who have been very supportive of me during this time.
It took some time for me to come to terms with my situation, to be honest, I still don’t feel good about losing opportunities.
Let’s now move on to the next section where I discuss my learnings from these times.
Dealing with uncertainties
Here are a few of my learnings:
1. Persistence and Hardwork
Small things over a long period of time amount make a lot of improvement.
Start small, improve slowly, and keep persisting.
In the last few months, I made my main motivation to become better at interviews. I made sure that I do at least one question on Leetcode daily. It doesn’t matter if I was busy or sick, I made sure that I do at least one question every day.
2. Learn from people rather than competing
You should always appreciate the person who got the opportunity. They have done something correctly so they got the opportunity. Use failures as an opportunity to learn from them.
There will always be someone who would be better at doing something than you. It is a human feeling to think about how you cannot do the task that best way as the other person. One might also think that the other person just got lucky and there was no way they could have done a better job than you.
I have realized that there are a few things that are just not in our control. I can only control my efforts for the interview, I cannot change the result if someone else got selected for the role.
3. Motivation is the key
Motivation is the key thing that makes us get out of bed and pursue the opportunity at hand. If we lose this motivation, we find ourselves questioning why we pursued the opportunity in the first place.
We all have been at a stage sometime when we have prioritized the immediate rewards of pursuing an opportunity and ending up losing the motivation to pursue the opportunity after it has lost its initial shine.
This is especially true for our careers because we require motivation for doing it for a huge part of our life. Thus I would recommend everyone to find your inner motivation to pursue the opportunity rather than be swayed by the short term benefits.
4. Discuss learnings
Put in efforts to note down your learnings so other people can learn from you.
There is no fun in boasting about your achievements. Always believe in compassion and collaboration.
5. Continous learning to overcome the feeling of not being good enough
Learn from the people who are doing good work.
When you don’t achieve your dreams, it is not a failure.
There is chronic dissatisfaction that we are not successful enough, that we don’t have the best relationships and that everyone around us has all of these things that we want to achieve and are truly happy.
You also think that it is your fault that you are not working hard on yourself and that’s why you are in this condition.
Frankly, Everyone is figuring out their lives. The only way to counteract the dissatisfaction is to have gratitude about the things you have in your life.
6. You are what you are and not what you have
Quoting Fight Club:
You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.
The moral of these quotes is that one doesn’t need to hold prestigious titles at FAANG companies to make an impact. Do not associate yourself with titles.
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