There’s a quiet assumption that once you’re accepted into a program, an internship, or a new opportunity, things are supposed to click. That confidence should come automatically. That the struggle somehow ends at the door.
It doesn’t.
Lately, my struggle has been feeling like I should already know more than I do.
I’m an intern working with a large codebase that was unfamiliar at first. On the surface, everything looked final, I read the documentation, followed discussions, and tried to understand the flow. But when I began contributing, I realized that understanding a codebase and working inside it are two very different things. Functions referenced other functions I had not seen. Libraries behaved in ways I didn’t fully understand yet. I spent hours chasing what seemed like a simple issue, only to realize I misunderstood something basic.
What makes this harder isn’t just the technical difficulty, it’s the voice in my head. The one that says, “Everyone else gets this faster.” The one that whispers, “You’re behind.” The one that asks, “What if I disappoint the people who believed in me?”
That voice is convincing. Especially when you’re surrounded by smart people who ask sharp questions and navigate complex topics with ease. It’s easy to compare your confusion to their clarity and conclude that the problem is you.
But here’s what I’m slowly learning: struggling is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of being in the right place.
Every time I get stuck, I’m forced to read more carefully. Every time I ask a question, I learn something I wouldn’t have learned alone. Every mistake shows me how the system actually works, not how I assumed it worked. The struggle is uncomfortable, yes, but it’s also doing real work on me.
I’m also learning the difference between struggling silently and struggling with support. When I finally ask for help, the response is rarely judgment. More often, it’s reassurance: “Yeah, that part is confusing.” Or, “I struggled with that too.” Moments like that remind me that nobody arrives fully formed.
Everybody struggles. Even the people who look confident. Even the people whose code you admire. The difference isn’t who struggles and who doesn’t, it’s who keeps going despite it.
So if you’re in a place where things feel hard, where progress feels slow, where doubt shows up uninvited: you’re not alone. This is part of learning. This is part of growing. And this, too, counts as progress.
Thanks for writing this Malika!
This reminds me of a talk I had over an after-work beer with two younger colleagues. One of them (A) had just finished university (he did his examination work at the company I worked for at the time) and he felt bad because he got his degree so late in life and that everyone he worked with was so far ahead of him. My other co-worker (B) told A not to worry, that this is called imposter syndrome and most everyone struggles with it. B then continued with explaining how he felt inadequate when joining the team with me and two other more senior developers to which I replied “I’ve felt the same thing towards you because you’re always on time and you get things done in time for deadlines and you don’t struggle with keeping focus the way I do”.
It was a very nice moment and the reason I’m sharing it is to really emphasize how we *all* struggle with this. Hopefully there’s some comfort in that. 🙂
Oh, and I actually did Google Summer of Code in 2013 and my struggles then feels similar to yours.
In short: you got this! 🙂
Kind regards,
Mattias
Thank you for this Mattias. I really appreciate you sharing that story. It’s a clear reminder of how shared these feelings are, even among people we look up to.
It means a lot to hear this from someone who’s been through GSoC as well. Thank you for the encouragement 😊
“if you’re in a place where things feel hard, where progress feels slow”
Then go ahead, You are in a right place. Leave easy deployments for devops and show them who’s the boss. (-:
😄 True, the hard places are often where the most learning happens. I’m still very much in learning mode, and that’s exactly what this stage is for. Thanks for the encouragement!
The grind is real
True💯
“Easy deployments for DevOps”
Made me chuckle a bit.
Really nice writing Malika, and I think you got core of it. Struggle is ok and what is difference is what we do with it.
I am also flawed as devops and programmer and I have learned to adapt my weak points at some level. Things got better when I realized it is just part of my how my mind works. Still try to tweak it everyday but that is part of being human.
Haha!
I love what you said about adapting to our own weak points, that self-awareness makes all the difference