EPTAfter all of my hard work in late 2011, I finally got to it, a final interview with Microsoft as a "Software Engineer in Test" on Windows Phone.
I was on top of the moon in Christmas 2011. I was doing a challenging final year project to do with multi-agent systems and traffic simulation that I was thoroughly enjoying.
Then my typical life hit me whenever I tried to achieve anything truly great
I suffered horribly in my final interview due to jetlag and as such, failed at getting the position.. I scorned myself harshly on the flight home to the UK from Redmond, WA.
It's a feeling I don't think many people have felt. Where you come so close to achieving something truly amazing, truly great, and all through your hard work, only to fuck it up due to frustratingly problematic conditions.
I thought over the problems over and over again that they had brought up in the three interviews I sat.
I'd solved them twice over by the time I'd gotten back to the UK, and still bitter from the result of finding out I didn't get the job.
I had failed. I had failed my family, I had failed myself, and I had failed my work-hard attitude.
Fast forward to April 2012, and the hand-in date of my final year project for my Computer Science degree was due.
Around this point I was struggling to get my AI to scale correctly to recognise multiple lanes and 4-way junctions from reacting to its surroundings. I had no pride in the work I eventually handed in as my submission for the project.
I had to barely get a demonstration program working in time for the submission date due to the difficulty and time it took to re-design the AI for the new graphics style I had implemented for the project late on.
I got 58. A huge failure, in my opinion. My tutor expected an A grade for the resulting program, and my work leading into the hand-in was judged as being 'A' - level material. All because of my own failures to be able to scale my AI correctly to get it working for 4 lane junctions and any shape of junction.
Didn't matter that I had created a framework for building roads of any type, curve, angle or length. Didn't matter that I had designed it to be multi-threaded.
Didn't matter that I had done it all in pure Java 2D with all the insanity that is their graphics implementations.
Didn't matter that I had written almost 20,000 words on my dissertation describing my system in depth, and explaining a lot of my design choices.
I had failed.
My final exams of my university career come and pass. I get my grades back.
I get a 2:2 with honours.
I feel a stone drop in my stomach.
Going from the high expectation from my personal final year project tutor for a first class degree, and even my other tutors of the same degree grade, to a 2:2 with honours, is something I found to be incredibly difficult to take.
I had already managed to get a job in late 2011 starting when I graduate, due to them being so impressed with my work ethic and passion for development.
I has started this job very soon after I had finished university, and I found it to be quite possibly the most stressful and probably the biggest soul searching I have ever done on a single aspect of my life.
It was a horrible job, to me.
Put on a phone for 3 days of a week, answering angry customer calls and having a very angry and non-sympathetic boss, spending the other 2 days a week doing development in languages I'd never learned before. It was a big ask of anyone.
Soon after I got into the flow of the work, my aunt died.
I then struggled to manage to keep up with the high demands and out of work hours work that they had set for me as being a "graduate". I didn't want to do anything. I felt apathetic, even retentive towards work. After some internal fighting with myself, I eventually mustered up the strength to say that the job wasn't for me, and that the death in the family just happened to be a distraction from what was really going on. (Sorry, aunt)
I quickly was able to find another position doing development, closer to something that I enjoyed, but was on a far smaller scale than I was expecting to be positioned in after I graduated.
I still am positioned there at the moment, as the year ends, and I'm currently being stressed externally by the fact that my ill grandfather is now in hospital with dementia and is aggressively fighting off doctors from his hospital bed because he thinks he is "late for work".
When I look back on 2012, I only really see a year of promise, dashed by greater failure and toiling.
When I look at 2013, I see a promising year of being able to push for being the senior developer on my team, seeing my girlfriend another few times this year, progress our relationship further, and push my sporting side to finally reach the team I've wanted to be a part of, for the past 2 years of trying week-in, week-out, to be part of a team that is grouped with semi-pro's. That is what I want, and that is what can happen in 2013.
Will it happen? We will see.
Am I hopeful? Not really.
P.S I'm sorry this is so long. I just needed to throw all of this out onto a keyboard in hope that I could get some other people to support me. I'm still somewhat recovering from my own mental issues and from time to time, they come back and hurt me.
- Daniel.
