My Story: a retrospective 5 years later

It has now been 5 years since I graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2020 and even more time since I had started, was writing, and finished the my-story on my site.

As I get further removed from my time at Waterloo I feel more and more disappointed by my-story and the content in it. It is a relic of my time in Waterloo. It is accurate in some areas but I notice the glaring plot holes, glossing over of topics, and decisions that I would probably not make today but I did choose to do 5+ years ago. Perhaps that is maturing and realizing the flaws in your character.

In the time since I have reflected on the story and tried to write multiple iterations afterwards but it never felt right. It always fell flat in the content, in the narrative, in my motivation, and a variety of other factors. I have had at least 3 different iterations that were all ultimately scrapped.

Maybe there didn’t need to be a part 2. Everything ended so nicely and wrapped in a bow. The mantra that

if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything

and it proved it in the first story.

But it is simply not true.

You can try your best and still fail.

Failure is painful. Rejection sucks.

I feel like all that needed to be said from that time period in my life has been said. Nothing I say here will add to the past. I predict most people don’t want to read this post. They want the flashy, succint, and captivating story of my undergrad going from not knowing how to code at all to getting a job in California. No one wants to hear the messy after-the-facts or ugly truths.

When I wrote the story I knew that my story didn’t end there but it was the story of my undergrad that was ending. Whether I foretold my future or not, it was right to end with the Watchmen comic strip with the message that “Nothing truly ends”.