i went to my ethics class because a missed class = 10% loss in my final grade
and i had to miss my other class which was a 7% loss in grade.
i had to choose one.
i left ethics class 30 min early and walked home.
i stayed at transamerica park and went through all the past LC questions i've studied, cramming them in my brain, hoping that i will hit the jackpot on one of them.
i went home at 1 pm when i started to get hungry.
i heat up my chinese herbal chicken soup and ate it with some rice.
i spent the next hour and a half revising through ML concepts and also some DP recurrence relations
the clock was inching closer to 3pm. i was growing more and more anxious. this was my first ever big tech interview.
it started out with introductions, then the leetcode question dropped in the coderpad. i first panicked, then felt relief when i realized i've seen this question before, then proceeded to feel my heart drop when i was asked to prove the solution. i failed to produce it and started writing my code only 20 min in. before i could finish writing it i was asked to implement quicksort. and i froze because the last time i learned that was 3 years ago in my DSA class in iowa. after that was over, i talked about my research for the rest of the interview and i asked a few questions about their semantic search system.
i felt like i blew it after the interview. i immediately got frustrated that i could not produce the proof and i did not even finish writing my code. and i could've done better at explaining my research and answering their questions. i went to A's apartment to chill and relax. after that we went home and i finished watching past lives with T. i also claimed the chatgpt free offer for students and generated 20 ghibli images of her and us.
this was another major defining moment of my life. hopefully the interviews that come after feels easier, not technical wise, but in trusting myself and in God. there was really no reason to feel like this interview was life or death. i don't define my future. i have no control. i just do my best and let God handle the rest.
i can go back to my usual life now. no more leetcoding and ml design studying every waking second of my life. the past 7 days were intense, and it can only go up from here.