Whimpers's blog

How to recover from failure?
By Whimpers, history, 2 years ago, In English

Hi recently I took a contest that I've been studying over a year for and barely failed. My mind keeps thinking about all the things I could've done better and I'm pretty angry about all the things that I missed. I did improve, but it seemed that even with so much studying I still couldn't pass. I'm also pretty demotivated to do cp now. Any suggestions or similar experiences from you guys?

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2 years ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it

My experience is not about CP. Its about failing in life.

  1. EVERYBODY will fail at some point in life, I don't care if you're a billionaire or currently the valedictorian. Failure is waiting. And, I can offer proof for this.
  1. The faster you fail, the better it is for you.
  1. If you have to fail later in life, you're more likely to be consumed by failure.
  1. Dealing with failure is the only true measure of maturity.
  1. Getting a B when you want an A is not failure and neither is failing a contest when you could've done studied better to do better.
  1. Getting a death sentence health diagnosis at the prime of your life is failure.
  1. Ran out of money to pay your employees, invested everything, worked 80-hour week for 5 years, and, you have children, a wife and other dependants is the kind of failure I mean.
  1. FAILURE is when you LOSE EVERYTHING, that "God! why ME!" moment #ShedsFirstTearIn10Years.. And no mom, dad or sibling will give you a non-cancerous prostate or a healthy pancreas!
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2 years ago, # |
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no way to recover. you will remember this fail for your whole life.

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2 years ago, # |
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What kind of super-important contest was that? Did it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

As for similar experiences, I just keep failing to win any kind of t-shirt :-) I missed the Google Code Jam qualification this year, failed Facebook Hacker Cup, failed CodeChef SnackDown, wasn't lucky in Kotlin Heroes lotteries, never ranked high enough for even participating in global rounds lotteries. But there will be surely more chances in the future.

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2 years ago, # |
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If you have time, perhaps you could check my rating graph. I still remember that when my rating was about 1750, I worked so hard to try to reach 1800, but it turned out that I didn't do so well during the next several contests and kept losing ratings.

It was a hard time but I never lose hope. I believe that if I do not perform well, it is because that my practice is still not enough.

So, please keep up practice and moving forward. If you would like to discuss problems, you are welcome at any time.

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2 years ago, # |
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This is the end of the world, give up hope, we will all be consumed by the void because of your failure.

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2 years ago, # |
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If this makes you feel any better — CP wouldn't have brought you any fame, money or mating advantage anyway. It's just fun and you seem not to have fun

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    2 years ago, # ^ |
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    I guess some Indians do think otherwise. I have heard of Indian companies (and not yet in other places) employ people based on their ratings.

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      2 years ago, # ^ |
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      Hmm... there is one Indian company, or at least it has an Indian CEO, and you might get some basic algorithm coding job interview tasks there — called Google

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        2 years ago, # ^ |
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        only one? Are you sure LOL?

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        2 years ago, # ^ |
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        Media.net mainly asks CP questions. Also most companies have an OA round which is hosted on hacckerank and hackeraerth. The questions in these OA rounds are very similar to CP questions. Hence doing CP in India makes real sense for people targeting tech SDE roles.

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          2 years ago, # ^ |
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          Interesting, seems like recruiters in India take it to the extreme from what you say. This makes sense if there's a ton of candidates and they want to quickly pick some smaller number for further recruitment...

          From my experience, there are some CP-like tasks in interviews almost everywhere, but it's usually at a very basic level. You can max-out Codility tests that companies often give you even if you're "blue" on CF, or at least I did. And you definitely don't need to max them out. When I was rejected, it always was for lack of experience in other areas than CP. (I live in Poland and also had some interviews with companies abroad and online remote work companies)

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            2 years ago, # ^ |
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            Interesting to know. Most popular companies in India mainly only care about DS and Algo skill when hiring people with less than 5 years of experience. They believe Tech stack or any other web framework can be learnt on job or in the initial training phase after joining the job. That is why there is a lot of market for DS algo courses in India. People here leetcode for 3-6 months and grab a job opportunity during the final year of engineering college even with minimal development related projects in their CV. That's why I am also planning to atleast reach blue level here on CF so that I'd feel more confident clearing the OA rounds and also so that leetcoding becomes easier with the CP experience I gain from here.

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2 years ago, # |
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hey, I have a similar experience as you on my country's national olympiad last month.Before contest I thought that i could be let's say top 15 I guess(?) , turns out I couldn't achieve that.As for u know I've been doing cp for a long time I can say and I've done a quite few problems.At that time i remembered I was so mad at myself because there were so many things that I missed during that contest which I thought I could've done better and got more points.But then as u see, time flies and your bad feelings about yourself would fade away.I remembered at that time I was also demotivated to do cp also, but as I said before time goes on and sometimes u will again have that moment that u wants to try and do cp again.So goodluck :)

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2 years ago, # |
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When I have a bad day for a few days in a row, I do one of these:

  1. Binge watch anime whole day.

  2. Catch up to my old friends.

  3. Treat myself with something unusual (maybe to feel grateful for what I have rather than what I don't).

  4. Sleep (a lot)

It's all a phase, that's all you need to know.

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2 years ago, # |
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Feeling bad is a human emotion, which can be controlled. I know that is very hard to keep moving when you dont see results (believe me, been there), but that's what it is all about, the one who succeed were the ones who kept working in this bad times or were just born LGM talent. Keep up !

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    2 years ago, # ^ |
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    "or had genuine fun with solving problems, which led them to solving problems more frequently and thoughtfully, so they trained on it for a long period of time with consistency, which led to becoming lgm level" instead of "or were just born LGM talent"

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      2 years ago, # ^ |
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      Well, that "born LGM talent" was supposed to mean born chinese be the sarcastic part of the comment, but there would be always people like you who have their opinion even on sarcasm xd.

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2 years ago, # |
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Well, we all get to a point in our life that things don't go as we expected. But there is always another chance. I used to be a teaching assistant in my Uni which gave me a chance to meet students who had the same experience as you so I would like to tell you:

1- Don't be harsh on yourself, you know that you tried your best and also you said that "I did improve" so take that to your advantage.

2- We all fail, no one is perfect.

3- I know that it will be hard to forget that contest but I am sure that after some time you will get over it, we live to learn and failure is part of that process, and I am sure that you will get up again and keep going.

4- Take your time, do the things that gets you comfy and get your confidence back, even you know that you are being harsh on yourself and you don't deserve that, so just take your time and keep going.

And the most important tip is that don't give up and don't overthink it, it is now part of your past so overthinking about it won't change anything, just think about now and the future and keep going.

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2 years ago, # |
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Erm... Silver medal in 6 months or join ice bucket challenge? I found similar things really affect me in a good way.

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2 years ago, # |
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