I got an email this afternoon saying that I passed the first round of Search For A Star, a competition to find talented final year university students in game development.I was pleasantly surprised! I honestly didn't expect to get shortlisted as I felt that my performance in the first round wasn't particularly amazing.
It was a one-hour C++ coding challenge with around 10 algorithmic questions. My department emailed us about this competition like three times and I thought it looked interesting, so I joined in for fun. I thought this would be a great opportunity to hone my coding skills too. The first questions are actually basic algorithms, which I'm lucky to have taken an algorithm course in my undergrad study, but the rest are a little more challenging.
In my personal opinion, some of the questions aren't very hard to solve but my limited coding experience made me spend more time thinking about how to code it correctly and efficiently. Some other questions do require more thinking though. At the end I was only able to finish half the number of questions.
I was actually glad I took the test as it exposed me to different ways of manipulating strings which I have yet to master. I learned from experience not to overestimate my capabilities and be more realistic, which might in turn lower my confidence at times, and I thought I wouldn't pass that round but I was happy I had participated.
To my surprise I got an email saying I'm through to the next round! I couldn't believe it!
This feeling though...
It's been a long time since I felt this way. A sense of accomplishment, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of winning... Finally, I was able to do something that I thought I couldn't do. I was able to do something better than others could (although surely a lot of people did much much better than I had). For once, I was good enough and I could be proud of myself!
For some, this may just be a usual part of their life, but for me, it totally made my day.
I started getting serious about this competition and went to find out more about this event. I wondered how many people were selected to the second round. I later found on Twitter that 100 people were shortlisted! Yay! That makes me feel really special and I'm getting really really excited to go to the next round. Not to beat other contestants, but to gain yet another experience and learn new stuff.
If I get the information correctly, the second round will give me the opportunity to build my own game on Unity. That's one of the coolest things ever! Back at the start of term 1, I actually wanted to join the GameDev Society at my university, but the meeting times always clashed with other events so I missed it. I'm really excited that I have a motivation now for learning Unity. Just so you know, I've always wanted to build my own game! Hopefully this time I'll be able to tick that off my bucket list. :)
However, sometimes I wonder...
Is it wrong for me to feel this way?
Is it wrong for me to feel satisfied over "winning"?
It reminds me of my high school years. I was very academically competitive. I always wanted to be the best in class, be the most favourite student, and I would be unsatisfied if someone got a better grade than me. Yeah, I was arrogant af. In my defense though, people said I was very hardworking. So I guess I deserve some credit for the effort? :P
Anyway yes, I learned over the years that we can't always be the best, especially when you go to university. I went to a rather small high school. My graduating class had less than 20 students. There were some competition, but certainly not as much compared to other, bigger schools. It wasn't too hard to stand out. Our teachers knew every student. To make things worse, one of the subjects I took only had 4 students. Of course that's no reason for me to be highly competitive, but I guess I was raised in such a way that shaped me like so. I thought doing well at school was the only thing I needed to do. Or rather, I thought it was the only thing I could do to make my parents happy.
Coming to university, I was placed in a community where everyone is studying the subject they like or do well at. It's not like my literature class in school where half of us didn't even understand what's going on and had no choice but to take that class. At university, everyone was there because they're good at it, and everyone else is also good at it.
With my competitive nature, I was completely overthrown by how amazing other people on my course were. I thought I was good enough. I thought I was capable enough. But I was just a small fish in a big pond.
I didn't know what to do in that situation. I fell apart. I lost my confidence. I didn't even know who I was anymore. It was probably the hardest phase in my life.
Ever since then, I learned to set my expectations low. When you only expect a little but accomplish so much, you get to feel a great sense of satisfaction. I liked that feeling. When you expect so much but accomplish so little, it feels completely terrible. (Or at least for me it does!)
I guess my self esteem has only gone down much lower due to that. I tend to think, am I good enough to be able to do this? Am I capable of doing so much?
Am I enough?
I don't like this feeling. But I do like it very much when I find that I have accomplished something better than my expectations. That's why this Search For A Star competition means a lot to me, and I'm gonna try my best in the next round. Even if I don't pass, I'm sure it'll be a great learning experience, and I'm really happy already to know that I passed the first round. :) (Ah, there I go making low expectations again!)
Disclaimer: I tried as much as possible to write every sentence in this blog post without sounding very cocky, coz that's really not the intention here. But if I do, please forgive me! Thank you for your understanding!
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