On Failure
5/23/2017
I think it's important in life to be able to bounce back from your biggest failures. Recently, I found out
that I failed to declare computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. On top of that,
my GPA is abysmally low. I got to the point where I questioned staying in school as an undeclared junior. It is a humbling moment
for me and I'm not entirely sure I've still come to terms with it. For someone that's consistantly strived to be
the very best at everything since a young age, this kind of finality tore me apart for weeks. In
recent days however, I think I've been coming to terms with that fact slowly. The most important part of getting
over this kind of mental block is to slowly accept that you've fallen down. In life sometimes you'll win and sometimes
you'll get the life kicked out of you harder than you could have imagined. The rest of your life will be determined by how you react to it.
I've decided that one of the best ways to figure out how to bounce back is to write about it. Not really a journal
or anything, but more like open advice for people that are or will go through the same thing. It's ok to fail sometimes.
Interestingly enough, I never would have said that as a freshman. I thought failure was more of a small blip in the radar
that a bit of hard work could always reverse. The finality of failure never really made its way into my psyche. It
was always this abstract concept that entrepreneurs and life coaches talked about. I never truly thought about
the interim period between failure and success where the real work took place. It was always a romantic idea that
seemed well encapsulated by cut scenes and motivational music in movies. The raw pain and struggle to pull yourself
out of a hole never really made itself clear to me. And so now, as someone that's contemplated everything from dropping
out to suicide, I think it's important to put it out there that for anyone that's going through a rough time, you're not alone.
There are literally thousands of people like you and hundreds in your school or workplace alone. Don't retreat into your own
mind to try and get through it. Take some time off, feel bad for yourself for a bit but then come out swinging. Leave no stone
unturned in your journey to make your own dreams come true. You are the only thing that can prevent your goals from becoming
a reality. Keep plotting and keep fighthing for what you know is yours. As cringily over used as this quote is, "Stay hungry,
stay foolish."
The Reactification of this website
DATE
So my internship starts next Wednesday and I have to learn ReactJS by that time. I figured that the best way to go about
doing this would be to update my website which currently uses some simple functionalities of CSS3 and HTML