intro
I believe it's a great idea to reflect on all the activities you've worked on in a year. One post per year is a perfect period; not too small, not too broad. I'm here to remember things I've accomplished and give myself feedback on what could've been done differently. Hopefully, you can derive something useful.
achievements
For me, this year in tech was very productive.
- Got a job working as a full stack developer.
- Participated in 6 hackathons and won 4 of them, roughly making $2,000 in total.
- Won the biggest hackathon in Kazakhstan: Decentrathon and got published in Digital Business.
- Won 1st place in National Fair of Scientific Projects (Daryn). There were 23k+ projects submitted this year, Kelbet Til was one of them.
- Worked on a freelance project to fight cheating in our education system. You can see all my bigger projects here.
- Started a telegram channel for more personal updates and grew an audience of 70+ subscribers.
upsets
- Bottled the university application process.
- Got rejected by 5 companies.
- Failed to launch 2 startups.
weaknesses
One of my biggest weaknesses this year was time management. When you are given many responsibilities and you're "confident" to keep all of them in mind, this is exactly where you start to mess things up. No need to install fancy to do apps and keep track of calendars: what I found to be the most effective is journaling everyday. Nowadays, people don't have time for self-reflection. Social media has taken all our free time and it has become increasingly harder to stare at a wall – no outer stimulation – just for one minute. It's so easy to be great today if you are disciplined.
conclusion
In my 17 years of life, the best advice I can give is to keep persevering. The tech world is inflated with all these news and updates around AI, and getting a job today has become harder than ever. A friend said to me, "in a sea full of fish, be the bigger fish". I didn't win a hackathon, didn't land a job and didn't build a successful project in my first try. Each of these attempts introduced me to better opportunities and bigger connections, which in result led to victories. I believe that reaching success is exponential: small wins lead to bigger ones and my 2024 definitely mogged 2023.