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Dealing with Disappointment...

dwinhold

Hello community,

 

I haven't seen this ever brought up before, so I figured I would talk about it.

 

Scenario:

 

So I competed in a challenge and created what I proposed. My design worked great, went that extra mile with my creation. Posted many blogs and followed the rules of the competition. I was very proud of my accomplishment figuring, "I have got this, how can I not win!!".

 

Result day, I have to see what I won (Since I had to win). WHAT? How could I not win? This isn't fair.. image

 

I'm sure I am not the only one who has felt this way (If I am, I'd be surprised).

 

Stages of not winning:

First comes disappointment (about 10 minutes of this stage)

Then the "So unfair" stage. How did I not win, I had this. What were the judges thinking?

Stage 3, I don't want to compete anymore. Why should I compete, create the perfect project and still lose.

Stage 4, after felling sorry for myself for a few days I start thinking, "What did I do wrong?".

Final stage, read in detail every competitors blogs (especially the winners) and see what they did differently.

 

After spending days reading the blogs I realized, "My project was great, I learned a lot, but it wasn't winning material". Reading the winning blogs made me realize how far off the mark I was. Sure my project was the best in my mind, but my blogs, videos and photos were sub-par. Lacking the fine details that could have made it a winning project. The winners of the challenge more then deserved it, great blogs, impressive videos and photos.

 

Boy do I feel like an ass, the way I felt about loosing. I suffered from the sore loser syndrome.

 

What did I learn?

So what did I learn? Well, I learned so much from my project and my abilities greatly improved. After reading the other competitors blogs, I learned a bit more about how to create better blogs of my own. It was my own fault, not the judges for not winning. For me to think that the reason I didn't win was everyone else's fault and not my own now makes me feel real bad. The winners deserved to win (Great job to all the competitors).

 

In closing, there are reasons for how well I did in any challenge and to learn how to improve for the next one.

 

I hope I am not alone on this,

 

Dale W

Parents

  • Are we talking about vibration sensing? Or something else?

    I've found winning projects are hard to predict.

    I'm sure that the results are very subjective and depend A LOT on the judges.

  • in reply to neuromodulator

    Which competition doesn't really matter (but yes, the vibration sensing one is my latest completion). I have experienced these feelings in others as well and like I mentioned, learn from them. If I did my best, I still won!!

  • in reply to dwinhold

    I would say it matters... I find design challenges easier to predict than P14. Mostly because you know who are going to be the judges. There are many aspects that can be evaluated: engineering, novelty, documentation, aesthetics, fun factor, etc.

    For instance in the vibration competition I didn't expect to win anything at all. I just did something I found interesting and that I was interested in exploring. My project was more about signal analysis than building cool stuff, and I believe that that is boring to most people here, I suspect the single comment that I received in my project blog confirms that. From the 2 judges, I'm not sure what DAB finds attractive (he usually gives 3 stars to most E14 projects), but I've noticed that Michael Kellett is very technical so I expected him to give a higher weight to the technical aspect. Now, judging by the results I suspect both judges evaluated me relatively well or otherwise I wouldn't have been 2nd, but I'm also sure that other judges could have evaluated projects completely different and I eventually wouldn't have won anything had I been evaluated by judges that give more importance to building stuff...

     

    In the end, probably the best plan is to do what you enjoy, if you win something great, otherwise you still had a great time...

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  • in reply to dwinhold

    I would say it matters... I find design challenges easier to predict than P14. Mostly because you know who are going to be the judges. There are many aspects that can be evaluated: engineering, novelty, documentation, aesthetics, fun factor, etc.

    For instance in the vibration competition I didn't expect to win anything at all. I just did something I found interesting and that I was interested in exploring. My project was more about signal analysis than building cool stuff, and I believe that that is boring to most people here, I suspect the single comment that I received in my project blog confirms that. From the 2 judges, I'm not sure what DAB finds attractive (he usually gives 3 stars to most E14 projects), but I've noticed that Michael Kellett is very technical so I expected him to give a higher weight to the technical aspect. Now, judging by the results I suspect both judges evaluated me relatively well or otherwise I wouldn't have been 2nd, but I'm also sure that other judges could have evaluated projects completely different and I eventually wouldn't have won anything had I been evaluated by judges that give more importance to building stuff...

     

    In the end, probably the best plan is to do what you enjoy, if you win something great, otherwise you still had a great time...

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