Failing is part of life. Nobody posts and bloats about their failures only their wins.
I'm a student and I failed my C programming course last year. I'll be retaking it this upcoming semester, but I'm struggling to even start preparing. The strange thing is that I want to study before the semester begins, but every time I think about opening my old notes or coding, I just don't do it. I don't know if it's a lack of motivation or if I'm simply afraid of failing again.
Ever since I failed, I've felt like everyone else is moving forward while I'm falling behind. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I question whether I'm even cut out for this degree.
Has anyone else experienced this after failing a programming course? How did you get yourself to start again? Did anything help you overcome the fear of opening your IDE and just coding? I'd really appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation and I hope that this is the right subreddit (sorry if not, I barely use it).
Failing is part of life. Nobody posts and bloats about their failures only their wins.
I had a few false starts too. If it’s what you really want you’ll figure out a way.
It happens. I’ve failed more than one course when I was in school. Failing doesn’t define a person, but how you respond to it does. You can either learn from it and correct your mistakes, or give up. You should ask yourself the questions of why did you fail? Didn’t study enough? Didn’t take it seriously? Other stuff got in the way? Content too difficult? If it’s the latter, did you do anything to help with that? eg. Talk to the professor during office hours, talk with classmates. Especially in a field like this people tend to have a bit of an ego. Succeeding means you’re smart and smart is good. Failing means you’re dumb and dumb is bad. And if you’re dumb, what’s the point of even continuing? But that link is much weaker than it seems. This stuff is hard and everyone hits a wall at some point.
Most schools have tutors available (the University I went to used upper class CS students to do programming tutoring). Check with the chair or dean of the CS department and find out if they offer any tutoring or have a programming lab where assistance is available. That being said, the best way to learn programming any language, C included, is practice. Watch videos, read, but most importantly, write code daily. You will write a lot of shitty code before you write great code. That's okay, it's part of the process.
Why did you fail?