Today, I got a B grade in my graduation design and somehow frustrated. The fact is that I didn’t put much effort into this work as I was engaged in my GSoC summer intern and my Leetcode solutions. I think it’s not strange for me to get such a grade. Though, it is still a tough time, because this work valued 8 credits, which can pull me down greatly in my undergraduate rankings. Here, I would like to write down some of my thoughts about this unsuccessful experience.
My lack of initiative and my mentor’s unclear plan led to this failure. In fact, I can hardly say what practical significance my research has. In the last week, I just plan to change the direction of my research interests to ML and AI in my graduate study. I spend chaotic and purposeless years in the undergraduate research phase. During my undergraduate study, I didn’t think that what my interests lie in, the only thing I thought is how can I publish papers as soon and much as possible to better my CV. It’s not right. I think the purpose of scientific research should be to study something that matters. For instance, many journals and conferences are published in MSRA each year, but the requirement for interns is to ensure that the quality of the articles is as high as possible. Yeah, I know it takes a long time, but who can say it’s inefficient to spend time doing something you value?
Sometimes, our negative emotions are generated when compared with others. It’s not a good feeling, to be honest, especially when I see works that are lower-quality than mine that gets a grade A. But there are always jinxed guys and lucky dogs, we cannot choose which to be. The only thing we can do is to remain confident. We always see some shiny CVs and sites with seas of publications and beautiful honors and awards, but we only looked on the surface. We don’t know how these people went through, what they suffered to gain this. With these amazing accomplishments, it looks that they are born to be successful. We don’t know their sorrows. Recently, I had a glimpse at Yizheng’s blog about why he chose to gap. I knew him for some weeks, but this is the first time I saw his vulnerable side and inner torment. Everybody has tough periods, it’s inevitable. But what matters is how to face that. Yeah, we should not tolerant all unnecessary mistakes, but why not cut ourselves some slack when the burden has been already heavy? Success makes a person beautiful, but failure makes a person real.
It’s time to restart again. May the odds be ever in your favor!
