A Failure Resume
Success isn't linear. Most progress is one step back, two steps forward. I've had a lot of achievements over the past few years, but this isn't the place for that.
This is my anti-LinkedIn page; it's the salt in a good cookie. It makes my successes sweeter, but it more importantly paints a realistic picture of the things I've done. It reminds me of what I've learned from failure, acknowledges that I've worked hard for the things I care about, and motivates me to keep doing so.
Like the antilibrary, I copied this excellent idea from Jacky Zhao.
2023
- Rejected (placed low on waitlist) by ERSP
- Ended up finding a ML research lab and contributing to a RL project anyway, so the above wasn't that big of a deal.
- Rejected from an undergrad TA position in the CS department (again)
- Accepted the 3rd time around for Fall 2023! It's been great
- Gave up on joining a UCSB quantum computing lab and an NLP lab
- Strategically giving up is not easy. I lost interest in theoretical quantum computing (a la error-correction algorithms) and didn't see a good fit in that NLP lab. In this case, the strategy worked well.
2022
- Rejected by 96 of 96 internship positions I applied to
- Rejected from MIT (and all my other top-choice universities)
- This was particularly disappointing because SSP (a research program I attended) has abnormally high rates (~20-30%) of alumni who attend there. Learned that hard work doesn't guarantee you'll achieve a specific goal; many things are simply outside your control.
- Rejected from the Atlas Fellowship
- Rejected from an undergrad TA position in the CS department