When I talk to my friends and relatives, they frequently tell me:
- Ajay, you are so successful
- Ajay, for me, succeeding is not as easy as it is for you
- Ajay, you always make sure you get what you want
- Ajay, you always seem so happy
I believe this happens because I only project my success. My ‘happy days’. Others, then compare ‘what I project’ to ‘what they are’. And I believe this is true for everyone. We all compare ourselves with what we see on Instagram, which is a collection of projected images of humans. Obviously, these projected images are filtered to only include the Instagram poster's best times. So, collectively all of us are constantly comparing ourselves with an imaginary collection of humans who are better than us.
To do my part in tackling this issue, I want to make my failures as visible as my successes are. My life has been hard work for the last 2years, with an abundance of failures, so hey, I am not complaining.
Failure 1: University application rejections
I planned to go back to school after working in the industry for a few years and so I studied hard for the GRE and Toefl, got good scores, and then applied for 8 universities aiming to get into 1 of them for fall-2018. I got rejected from all of them. Excitedly checking for the university’s response every day for months, only to get rejected by all 8 universities, 1 at a time killed my self-esteem. I was dreaming of studying at a university in a few months, but it felt as if each rejection was breaking my dream bit by bit. I did not lose hope and I improved my application documents and applied again to 7 universities for Spring 2018. Boom! All applications got rejected again. Applied again to 8 universities for Fall 2019, got 7 rejections. These are some of the universities that rejected me:
- University of California — Davis
- Ohio State University — Columbus
- University of Florida — Gainesville
- University of Minnesota — Twin Cities
- Arizona State University — Tempe (Twice)
- North Eastern University — Boston
- Rutgers — State University of New Jersey
- State University of New York — Stony Brook (Twice)
- Oregon State University — Corvallis
- University of Toronto
- UC Berkley
- University of Texas — Austin
- University of California — San Diego
- Georgia Tech
- Texas A and M
- Univ of Illinois at urbana champaign
- British Columbia
- Wisconsin Madison
- Univ of Oklahoma
- University of South Florida
- Michigan Technological University
- George Mason University
- Syracuse
- Georgia Institute of technology
My x-girlfriend left me
Although I loved how much I was learning at my university, I was also constantly under stress. Assignments, exams, projects, presentations etc. taking a toll on me and I barely had time to sleep. One day I was so overwhelmed with work that I wanted to just speak to someone. I called my then girlfriend and I barely started talking when she interrupted me said she wants to breakup with me. She said long distance relationship wasn’t working and she loved someone else. Some moments are so horrible that it transforms you forever. This was one such moment for me.
A huge ass loan
I have a 80 lakh rupee education loan which I have to pay once I complete my education (approximately 110,000 dollars). I used my parent’s house as a collateral for the loan, which in the worst case means if I am unable to repay it, my parents lose their house. Add to it the fact that both my parents are retired from work and most of their savings went into my and my sister’s undergraduate education. To give you some context on how huge this amount is, the highest salary my father earned was 50,000 per month, which means even if he had a full time job, he will have to pay his full salary for 160 months i.e. more than 13 years (assuming 0% loan interest). Strictly speaking, as I took the loan, it is not really a failure. Nevertheless, it still plays a major role in how stressed I am sometimes. Big dreams requires big risks, I guess.
Company rejection list
I am studying in one of the best universities and so I was expecting to get a job easily. Moreover, I have always found it easy to clear interviews and get a job, so getting a job was the least of my worries. But covid hit hard and a lot of companies had hiring freeze. Add to it the fact that interviews were completely online and I had to almost relearn how to crack interviews. I applied to more than 100 companies and interviewed to more than 15 companies and failed in each of them. Constantly getting rejected by companies 1 at a time was a big self-essteem killer. Some companies that rejected me are:
- Amazon
- TuSimple
- Nutanix
- Bodo AI
- Roblox
- DVx
- Fungible
- SameGoal
- Cerebras
- Virtalica
Covid scare for my family
My parents live in Mumbai, a city with a very high density of population and thus a high number of covid cases. It was scary to think that my family has a high chance of catching covid while I will be away from them unable to go meet them due to the travel restriction. It was scary times when my parents told me someone in the their same apartment caught covid and then their neighbour caught covid.
Loneliness
Living in a new country when you know no one around you, is both, at times liberating and at other times saddening. I have always had a large and strong social group of friends and family to support each other. Suddently, not having anyone for support was scary.
Hectic schedule
Studying at Carnegie Mellon Univeristy is like volunteering to be living in hell. I got a few gray hair and wrinkles in my face in the last 1 year. While, by nature, I am used to keeping myself busy and pushing myself hard, it was always voluntary. At CMU, I had to work continuously, lest I fail. The hectic schedule also did not give me any time to get myself back up after any failures. I attended 2 four-hour meetings the same day my x-girlfriend broke up. It was tough.
Constant social pressure to ‘settle’
This is the trickiest of all the issues I faced. While I seldom get affected by what others think or say, it did in this case, as I was already living a stressful life. People, who are my well-wishers, wanted me to ‘settle’ which means they wanted me to not throw away the easy life I had in India. ‘You are earning so much, and you also have such a nice life, why do you want to leave all this?’ was a question that boils my blood now.
Conclusion
Yes, 2018–2020, as you can see was tough, but it also made me strong. And hey, I still achieved whatever I wanted to achieve. Based on what you read, if you are concerned for me, thank you but please don’t be. I have bigger badder goals for 2021, and I am darn sure it will bring along worse issues but I am ready for it. What is life without the thrill of failures?
Have a great day,
Ajay Nair
