It was my second semester. The syllabus was getting heavier, deadlines tighter, and expectations—both from myself and others—were growing silently in the background like vines on a wall I couldn’t quite climb. I was passionate, no doubt. I had chosen Information Technology because it felt like the perfect blend of creativity and logic. But passion isn’t always enough when you’re sitting in front of a screen filled with red error messages.

That evening, I had stayed back in the computer lab. Everyone else had left after class. I told my friends I needed “a little more time to finish something,” but the truth was… I just didn’t want to leave feeling like a failure.

I had been working on a piece of code for a simple logic-based assignment. Everyone else had already submitted it. I was the only one still trying to figure out why my solution wasn’t working. At that point, it wasn’t even about the marks anymore. It became personal. I felt like the broken code on the screen mirrored how lost I was starting to feel.

For hours, I typed, deleted, Googled, retraced logic, and read documentation that made my head spin. I was hungry. Tired. Frustrated. But I just couldn’t let it go. Not this time. Because I had already spent so much of my life walking away from things when they got hard. Back in school, if a math problem looked too long, I’d skip it. If a group project got complicated, I’d quietly step aside and let others take over. But college was different. Life was different. I was trying to be different.

I still remember how quiet that lab was. The only sound was the soft hum of the CPU and the occasional creak of the ceiling fan. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, eyes blurry from staring too long. And then—after nearly four hours—I tried something small. Just a single logical shift. Nothing big. And suddenly, the output was right.

I blinked.

I ran it again. Still right.

I didn’t jump or scream or high-five anyone. There was no one there. I just sat back in that chair and let the silence fill me, but this time it didn’t feel heavy. It felt *peaceful.*

I didn’t just solve a coding problem that night. I proved something to myself.

That I’m capable of figuring things out, even when I don’t have all the answers right away. That I can be patient. That I don’t have to be the fastest or the best in the room—as long as I don’t quit on myself.

That night marked the beginning of a shift in how I saw myself. I wasn’t just “someone who codes.” I was someone who keeps going.

And that mindset slowly began to echo through other parts of my life.
When I didn’t get shortlisted for a competition, I no longer saw it as a personal failure—I saw it as a chance to grow.
When a friend outshone me academically, I clapped for them genuinely, but reminded myself that my journey didn’t have to look like theirs to be valid.
When things got hard—and they often did—I went back to that moment in the lab. That tired girl, sitting alone, staring at the glowing screen that finally gave her a quiet yes.

Since then, I’ve worked on bigger projects, dabbled in machine learning, competed in hackathons, and even secured a global rank 130 in TCS CodeVita Season 12, among 8000+ top coders from across the world. That was a huge milestone, and I’m incredibly proud of it. But you know what? That victory would’ve meant nothing if it weren’t for that quiet win in the lab, when no one was watching—when "I" was the only one I had to prove anything to.

People often talk about “breakthroughs” like they’re fireworks. But mine was a soft spark. And it was enough to light the way forward.

Now, whenever someone asks me why I love coding, I smile.
It’s not just the logic or the elegance of algorithms.
It’s because coding taught me resilience.
It taught me patience.
It taught me to believe in my own mind, even when I doubted everything else.

It taught me that success doesn’t always come with applause. Sometimes, it comes with quiet moments of clarity, earned by refusing to walk away.

But my growth wasn’t just behind a screen. I earned the Academic Excellence Award across multiple semesters, received recognition as the “Best Code Developer” in the Codeathon Beginners Contest, and even stepped into the world of writing—securing Second Prize in an Essay Competition during Vigilance Awareness Week. Because I’ve always believed: true impact isn’t limited to just one field. If I could express my thoughts in code, I could express them in words, too.

From internships at the National Small Industries Corporation for Android development to participating in the SAWiT Learnathon by GUVI, I’ve explored, experimented, and evolved. Every step, every certificate, every sleepless debugging night—they’re all chapters in a story I’m still writing.

So no, I’m not the same girl who once doubted if she belonged.
I’m the girl who showed up anyway.
Who kept trying.
Who turned her setbacks into setups.
And who is now fiercely ready to turn her dreams into reality, one innovation at a time.

This is my story—not of being perfect, but of being persistent. And it’s still being written, one line of code at a time.