Reflecting on Imperfection

For the past few years, I’ve gone back and forth on the idea of perfection. Whether that’s in my projects or grades. There’s a few questions that keep coming back to mind:

1. Does a project or grade need to be perfect in the first place?
2. Is it worth it to sacrifice some well-being for the sake of a grade?
3. Is perfection, or even excellence, expected most of the time?

As I’m writing this, I’m currently mildly loopy off of some cold medicine as a result of a fever. Due to that fever, I may or may not take some zero grades on some assignments that I had due this week. Could I have worked on those assignments while hacking my lungs out? Sure, but I doubt my work would’ve been all that coherent or even up to par. On top of that, I decided to just make resting my priority.

Admittedly, this approach could be seen as lazy. But unless work or college is your only obligation, I think that perspective is a bit lacking. I was balancing classes, a full-time job, and caring for a family member with special needs during my most hectic years in college. At that time, I made decisions that were to the detriment of my studies to the point where I got suspended from my Engineering department for a handful of months.

Granted, I haven’t worked as a developer or security engineer in a professional sense at all, making my own perspective lacking. Perhaps it will change once I have some professional experience. Though that probably won’t happen at least for another year, so I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Despite my lack of effort in areas, I’ve still managed to learn a lot. I’ve also managed to create some cool stuff such as a small shell program and an AI agent! Surprisingly, my grades have also managed to stay relatively decent.

My current situation is a lot less stressful, so I have a lot more time to focus on my studies than I did a couple of years ago. But with the cold medicine kicking in and my ability to keep awake steadily declining, I think I’m going to just take the loss of those grade points and get some sleep.