FACULTY OF

COMPUTER SCIENCE

In May, Temitope asked me to talk about stories of how I failed. Her intention was for my stories to show other people that they are not alone in failing, that failing is part of life, and that it is not that big of an issue.

She gave me a list of stress factors that international students at the FIN face and that they are afraid of failing at. I have experienced some of these. None of these led to anything that I would call a failure. And that is not because I'm extraordinarily smart, successful or well-prepared. It's because they wouldn't matter as much to me as they would to others.

Throughout my studies, I had softer cushions to fall on than most people. I could afford to study longer – and I did afford that. Had I been on a tight budget or had an annoying Foreigners Office in my neck, it could have had career-threatening consequences. For me as a German speaker, I knew it was going to be a lot easier to find some kind of job than if I had needed to search for jobs without that requirement. And, last but not least, I have spent much more time here, so I think I am more aware of opportunities and support options that I have observed over time. In general, I would say a major disadvantage of living in a new country is that you will not be aware of so many "things" that there are and that you can use to your advantage.

The consequences that a mistake or error can have depend on the personal circumstances – and also often on luck. So I would consider it unhelpful and inappropriate to give advice that some mistakes are no reason to worry. You need to find it out yourself, taking the whole situation into account. I encourage you to approach the advisors that you have at the university. That being said, don't follow them blindly, but ask on what assumptions they give you their advice, and evaluate whether these assumptions hold true.

I'd like to take a different perspective on errors, mistakes and failures – a retrospective one. They happen. And the later you approach them, the more expensive they get. Claudia told me this in my first year of studies, in the Key Competences lecture. She framed it around bugs. The longer it takes to find a bug, the more costly it gets to fix it. At that time, I wasn't able to make the connection to my study life. My university programming assignments were all reasonably short, so if I made a mistake early on and noticed it at the end, that's annoying, but I would just rewrite the code and reuse as much as I could, right? Some people learn early that this is not all there is to it. For me, it took a few semesters longer. During the first weeks of working on my master thesis, I committed to researching which machine learning models would fit my task, output human-readable results and come with appropriate software libraries. We had weekly meetings on Thursday morning. The first machine learning model that my supervisor hinted at and that I read about seemed to fit. It had a software package that I was able to run, it was producing human-readable rules that were explaining how it classified, and I rather quickly understood what it was doing. I was slow in doing my research. I didn't manage to read any further papers in that week or two. But I had committed to finding out which model I wanted to use. And I had a good-looking candidate, right? I didn't want to appear lazy and disappoint my supervisor, so I committed to the algorithm. Prematurely, as it turned out. It would have saved me a lot of worries down the line if I had been open and said that I thought the algorithm was good, but I hadn't investigated any other algorithms yet, and I think I should do that before committing to one. That didn't invalidate my thesis – I still found out that my specific approach did not work well, which is a valid result. But it caused me anxiety and pressure to justify my choice. Later, when it turned out that my algorithm produced results that were too complex for humans to grasp, I could probably still have corrected my mistake, if I had felt comfortable asking my supervisors whether that was a good idea at that point. But I was worried about admitting that I could have seen that coming earlier. So I didn't change anything and decided to go on as planned.

The day of the week when I talked most about my thesis and took most decisions, was Thursday. The day of the week when I wrote the least, coded the least, and read the least, was also Thursday. How did that come? It happened because of our meeting on Thursday morning. I wanted to have at least some progress to tell about when I was asked in the meeting. But I often didn't have the progress that I would feel good about presenting by Wednesday evening. That was mostly because of distraction. When a problem in my thesis appeared, I had too many other things to think about and avoid hammering down that problem in the short term. So on Wednesdays, I often felt embarrassed for my lack of progress and wanted to quickly get something done. Of course, I often could not get anything done quickly. So I kept thinking and worrying till late at night. This is a trap! Most people, myself included, experience a massive drop in productivity at night, which will keep them up even longer if they want to reach something, and make them suffer more. And the next morning, I might have had a result, or something that looked like one, but after the meeting and lunch, I would just go back to bed and sleep. On some occasions, I didn't manage to get something to present, and in some of these cases, I skipped the meeting. This is also a trap! Next week, it would be even worse, because you want to have more results. I haven't actually resolved this issue. The same behaviour of procrastinating a task into a time when I should sleep even happened while I was writing this very text. The message is, if you have failed to do something, admit it. It is better than contorting yourself into maintaining a fault-free image. And if you feel you need help, ask for help.

Sure, not every mistake is one you should admit. If I had killed the last unicorn, and its corpse was lying on my kitchen floor, I would probably not admit it. But the university is a place where you tend to receive support for correcting your mistakes – probably more than in most corporate workplaces.

Let me tell you a story of a good friend I had during my undergraduate studies. I was preparing for an exam that both of us would write, but my friend would have another exam the day after our common exam. I had already completed that other exam one year earlier. My friend was very stressed, anxious and regretful, because they had made the mistake of starting the preparation for the latter of the two exams too late. They started crying. I was emotionally touched, but I am not good at comforting people. Then I had an appointment outside, and I needed to leave the lab. When I was on the tram, I thought about the situation my friend was in. And I realized that, from a rational point of view, there was nothing to worry about, because my friend was a good student. I regretted that I had not been aware of the actual situation, and had not said what I honestly thought: "You are a good computer scientist. And because of that, you will have a lot more chances to show that, even if you score a bad mark in this exam." This was my honest opinion, and it would have helped if I had said that. I know that, because I said it later, and my friend gave me that feedback. My friend is actually a good computer scientist, passed the exam, and graduated successfully.

Not everyone is a good computer scientist. Or a good student. But many of you and many of your friends are probably better than they think. When you are in an unfamiliar situation and experience difficulties, it is normal to question whether you can do this, whether you will succeed, or even whether you deserve to be here at university. Such thoughts can then further deteriorate your ability to study, to join study groups, and to experience success. It can lead to loneliness, too. This is a trap! Prevent your fellow students from falling into that trap, by appreciating their skills and successes, and by giving positive feedback for your positive observations. Studying is hard enough, so make it a bit easier for each other.

In my first semester at university, I attended a course in educational science. The professor coined the following wise words: "The only thing that you can change in your life is your past." So, finally, if you cannot correct your mistakes, it might still be possible to find some meaning in them, and to take pride in what you achieved despite the mistakes you made. Perhaps they even turn out to not actually be mistakes.