A Breakthrough in San Francisco

I failed the test. When I realized that this was actually my own reality all I could truly do was feel anguish. I felt like there wasn’t anything I could do and all the hard work that I did leading up to the test was for no reason. All those hours of practicing problems on JavaScript had done me no good. Luckily, my professor, Sherif, and facilitator, Malena, were right there to catch me right before I convinced myself it was impossible to pass. “The first step is to realize that this is not failure”, this was the first thing that Sherif told me, knowing my ungodly fear of failure would soon begin to devour my mind. When he said this I truly didn’t understand what he meant. I failed the test which was my exact definition of what failure looks like. I thought that I had truly wasted this experience because even though I worked extremely hard and learned an immense amount, it was not enough. Unfortunately at the time, I didn’t know that all of this was untrue. This was the moment before I would have my big breakthrough in San Francisco.

I was given a loaded plan of what I needed to do in the next 5 days leading up to the test that would “for sure” make me pass the test with flying colors. I didn’t believe any of this in the beginning because it didn’t make much sense that five days would make any difference. I thought I needed months to be able to master the concepts that I was being tested on. Despite my skepticality, I knew that I had to at least try to pass so I followed the plan I was given: 100 easy practice problems, redoing the past practice test, and yet again reading hundreds of pages a night. I’m going to be completely candid, I did not do exactly as I was instructed to because I felt like it was a little extreme. That being said, I did what I thought I could which ended up being 50 easy questions on my own, 20 partner work problems, and keeping a coding diary filled with pieces of code that challenged, interested, or intrigued me. I did this for 5 days straight (I definitely took a lot of breaks because that was also heavily recommended by my instructors) and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough. I did all I could to simply expose myself to every function, method, piece of code that I could get my hands on. I wrote everything down and when I went to bed every night I would re-read my notes right as I would drift off into a deep slumber. This was a process that I would repeat up to the day of the test and intend to repeat in any moment where I need to intensely study. When the test came, not only did I pass it, but I got the highest score out of all the retakes and this test was exponentially more difficult than the original test.

This experience made me realize that I could accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I passed the test and I was able to show myself that I could do it. But despite passing the test, I got a much more valuable lesson which was the fact that success, in my eyes, is no longer simply “passing the test” or getting the best grade or anything in that aspect. Success to me is learning and expanding my knowledge. I can now say that I have conquered my fear of “failure” and this wouldn’t have happened without going to this program and challenging myself through rigor and confusion.