" So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."
- J.K. Rowling
It's odd to discuss failure in a CSC165 post given that my grade in the course is currently above 99%. (This is not gloating-- as I am wholly aware that this mark will plummet after I encounter what is next to come. Guaranteed. This becomes more obvious as this post goes on.) However, I live in perpetual fear that I will be discovered to be a "fraud". I am impossibly bad at math, and it is a constant, pulsatile reminder; that I am attending a university revered for it's difficulty, in a faculty renowned for its focus on computation, mathematics, and logic. Today, a post on the UofT Computer Science FB page further perpetuated this fear. To hear that the difficulty of Computer Science rises disproportionately each year was a shock in and of itself. A friend at Waterloo's program had said that he had found his first few years in Computer Science to be the most difficult. Whether or not the difficulty of the program increases as the years progress, regardless of my weaknesses in math, I will continue to press on -- to learn more about the things that I am passionate about. Life is a continuous struggle to reach the goals we set for ourselves. I am finally learning things that I am passionate about. Although I am at a disadvantage in terms of my learning background, and the years that I have had away from my math, I am confident that I am well versed in the art of Try-Harding. I spent so much time being disinterested in the things that I-did-not-want-to-do, that my second time around in a post-secondary institution has been all about spending all of my time studying-the-things-that-i-want-to-do. Even so, I ultimately decided to drop MAT223 this semester. This is the first time in my academic career that I have ever dropped a course. My first true encounter with failure. However, it made me realize that my desire to do well, and my efforts to do well, were not entirely realistic. Majoring in a field completely void of the mathematics, and working in a hospital for a year and a half is not conducive to writing algebraic proofs. We're not in Kansas anymore. It's time to start from square one in terms of math. To learn from the beginning, and to learn it well. At first, I was ashamed. Now? I am determined.
It is currently 3 AM. Further updates will be made this week as I pursue the dread mathematical proofs and the big-Oh(my god).
It is currently 3 AM. Further updates will be made this week as I pursue the dread mathematical proofs and the big-Oh(my god).
Hey. That TED Talk from J.K.R. was great, and I've had more than one professor sling that on me just before handing us back our exams. But you're too hard on yourself.
ReplyDeleteYou're here and you've doing well. Expecting failure at every corner and trying your best to avoid it is not the best strategy; your best strategy is to take what's going well and keep going with it, and once (when!) you encounter a problem, finding a solution such that you don't repeat the problem again. It's all life's really about.
Your Slog is great so far, even if you feel like you're talking to yourself. That might even make it better: let your creative juices flow. Find problems outside the classroom, even if they don't seem completely pertinent. The art of computer science is that everything can be as relevant as you make it, hence the startup culture.
Please talk to any of your professors or TAs about anything, from academics to personal. The only reason we're here is to make you succeed :)