4 years too late

Last week of April is when I got serious about the placements. While many start programming from the very first year of their college life, I only started it 7 weeks ago, in my 4th year, hence the title.

When I saw my friends’ offers getting deferred and rescinded, I realized how difficult the next placement season would be. I divided my time into four phases, each comprising of 7 weeks. Each phase has different milestones and today, I completed my first phase.

This is not a success post, I haven’t got any job or internship, neither I completed any certification exams, this is a post about my journey, the ups and downs of the last 7 weeks. The only reason I am posting it because I thoroughly enjoyed every single day of this phase, learning and growing every day.

Many people helped me along the way. Most important of all - Anand Dev helped me set up my competitive coding environment, guided me with the resources and prepped me for the placements. He helped me overcome every problem that I came across. He made me realize how much importance of guidance and mentorship is when you are just starting with something. Many others helped me with the websites and resources to learn from and how to go about it.

In the first week I jumped straight into competitive coding, I didn’t know much of C++ let alone Data Structures and Algorithms. Anand helped me with C++ STL resources from Topcoder. I started solving problems from Codeforces and learning from CodeChef DSA learning series.

The next few weeks continued with solving problems and going back to understand the topics better if I were unable to solve something. I also completed a few courses on DSA and Discrete Maths from Coursera. This problem was recurring, I would solve a problem, if unable to solve, I would again go back and revise everything, and that was time-consuming. There was a lot of self-doubt about my skills.

I switched from website to website, hoping somewhere I would find just the right set of resources, the plan and the path I needed to learn more efficiently. From GeeksforGeeks to Leetcode and Hackerrank to HackerEarth. I would keep switching trying to learn. Finally, I joined a Bootcamp, which so far, has helped me a lot in streamlining my learning process, complete a topic, solve enough topics to become confident in it, move on.

In the last 7 weeks, I solved a total of around 200 problems, out of which 120 were solved in the last 3 weeks. I also completed 5 courses from Coursera which helped me understand what’s happening under the hood, giving me more theoretical knowledge.

I was very sceptical when I started this journey, I was unsure of my capabilities and lacked confidence, I also kept going back and forth for a long time lacking proper guidance. I haven’t achieved anything as of yet, nor am I a red coder of Codeforces, neither I did get an internship in Google. People usually share such achievements on this platform, but there is a journey behind it, which is full of self-doubt and failures.

I don’t know what the future entails and what I will achieve. Amongst this pandemic, the future is as ambiguous as it could get. I personally enjoyed every day of learning and solving problems. Happiness comes from long term efforts and consistent hard work. There is still a whole lot of learning and preparation to do. I am glad that I set out on this endeavour and utilised a time full of ambiguity into something productive.

To Phase 2! :)