Looking Back Only at the Failures of 2024!

Wow, 2024 has ended. How was your year? Did things go well? I almost asked that, but then I remembered I wrote "Looking Back Only at My Failures in 2023!" article last year.

So, following last year, I decided to look back at what happened this year. As before, I’ll briefly reflect on events this year that I consider failures (things where my methods were poor or circumstances were bad and I didn’t achieve my goals). This year had a lot of successes, but constant self-promotion like “I won XX award!” can get tiring. There’s a lot to learn, yet the internet is full of stories of people who succeeded. Apparently, taking pleasure in others’ misfortune can ease your own inferiority complex by making you think, “They’re not that great after all — they’re human like me,” which is comforting, so let’s take a look.

Not studying at all in my second year of high school, then realizing how bad that was in my third year 😭

The first failure might be a classic high-school story.

I wasn’t very committed to school studies to begin with — I fiddled with computers and played games a lot — so even in my second year of high school (2023) I barely studied. I mostly thought “it’ll work out somehow” and only occasionally felt a vague anxiety about time running out. The school I attended barely assigned homework (maybe they expected us to do it ourselves), and my friends didn’t study much either, so academics got neglected. That was also when I discovered programming, so by the end of my second year my PC was always in front of me during breaks and lunch, and I was constantly tinkering with it.

When I saw my hopeless grades at the end of my second year, I realized how badly I’d been slacking from an academic standpoint.

At that point it was just “this is bad.”

I didn’t think about university at all

The problem started from here.

Up until around my second year of high school I’d assumed “I’ll probably go to university after graduating.” The adults around me were preparing with university in mind, so I didn’t think deeply about it.

But going to university without a purpose is a waste of money, and with those desperate grades there weren’t many places I could get into. Still, I didn’t realize that until December 2024, right before graduating high school. For a moment in my third year I had the intention to focus on school studies, but then my desire to build an app exploded, and in the last six months I mostly just followed what teachers told me and didn’t think carefully about it.

I did enough to avoid totally hopeless grades and managed to get average marks, but that average was for the Australian curriculum my school followed — I needed to consider how that would be viewed by universities in other countries. I had received Australian education while living in Malaysia, so I needed to take that into account when planning my path.

Also, no matter how impressive your achievements are, many top universities expect equally top-level grades.

I don’t know how to reach that level, but in the end I hadn’t decided on the schools I wanted to attend by graduation, and I was even unsure whether going to university was really the right choice for me. So I hadn’t considered what documents, achievements, or grade levels I needed to submit to universities. Because of that, when I considered applying to Japanese universities through the overseas student quota, some universities disqualified me from applying due to my unusual geographic/educational background. (I might write about this later.)

To avoid situations like this, if you’re planning to attend university, I recommend starting preparations more than a year in advance.

Shining achievements 😄

…So I had several pretty big failures this year, but if I only show those you might think “ah, this person couldn’t do anything right” and get a negative impression, so here are some bright achievements (self-praise time).

Even someone who made these mistakes was still recognized by others. I’m happy.

Selected for Mitou Junior; Certified as a Super Creator

As I wrote earlier, I got hooked on programming and neglected my studies, but thanks to that interest my project was selected for Mitou Junior. Mitou Junior is a creator support program for people below high school age, and last year I was rejected because my project had no technical basis (it wasn’t feasible). I was surprised at how much I improved in one year. Since being selected I’ve been absorbed in building what I wanted to build, so my schoolwork… as I said earlier, suffered a bit, but I learned a tremendous amount and connected with many people.

Won App Koshien — Champion & Technical Award

I entered the app I made for Mitou Junior into the AI category of App Koshien, and its technical strength was highly evaluated. I managed to win the championship and the technical award. I talk a lot, but I’ve never been great at presenting in front of people, so winning like that made me really happy (my vocabulary fails me).

Again, focusing on one thing and having people recognize that effort is really important. I probably couldn’t have done this alone. I’m very grateful to everyone who helped.

In closing

So, how were my failures of 2024? I made bigger mistakes than last year, but I also achieved big things. I hope it all works out… well, I’ll make it work.

Resolutions for next year

Next year I plan to go to university. Above all, I want to discover more of what I really want to do, and to learn, build, and share as much as possible so I can connect with many more people around the world.

P.S.: This is Mame one year later. Regarding university, I was safely accepted to my top-choice school.