{"id":3980,"date":"2022-01-15T03:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-15T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scaler-blog-prod-alb-2135551341.ap-south-1.elb.amazonaws.com\/?p=3980"},"modified":"2026-07-10T17:09:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:39:46","slug":"scaler-diaries-shivank-pathaks-journey-to-compass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/scaler-diaries-shivank-pathaks-journey-to-compass\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaler Diaries: Shivank Pathak’s Journey to Compass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Always learn from your failures. This is the biggest lesson that my journey has taught me.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

I was a student who couldn\u2019t clear JEE Mains in his first attempt and later went on to receive 5th rank in a Pan India coding competition. Now that I look back, I am the sum of all the failures and rejections I have faced to date. <\/p>\n

Even before this competition, I participated in an inter-district coding competition in the 12th class. I ended up securing 1st rank in this competition. For a 17-year old boy, who was just testing his luck in this field, you can imagine how huge this must have been. I mean I did take CS as an additional subject in 11th class and enjoyed learning C++. But bagging the first rank was nothing short of a surprise. At that time, this early achievement of mine motivated me way too much to encompass in words. It made me aware of my capabilities which I had always neglected. Due to this, I took the CS branch in college as well. <\/p>\n

While this was a motivator, I couldn\u2019t clear JEE Mains. I had to drop a year before I made it to IIIT Bhubaneswar. I was devastated during that time as I was not satisfied with my college. My friends, who had already been in college for a year by then, told me that as long as I didn\u2019t compromise with my efforts, college\u2019s name didn\u2019t really count. I also learned from a few seniors that the only things that majorly varied in different tier colleges were the level of opportunities and placements. <\/p>\n

Because I knew this early on, I decided that if college didn\u2019t offer us enough opportunities, I would create opportunities on my own. In my first year, an MNC- Kronos organized a Pan India competition called Kronothon. It was a two-stage competition. In the first stage, they selected 100 people out of 7000 participants from all over India. For the 100 people selected, there was an offline competition subsequently. I participated in this competition and bagged 5th rank in this competition.<\/p>\n

I know these tiny achievements might seem insignificant but for a student who came from a small town in UP, these were too good to be true. The subtle motivations of these tiny wins pushed me to keep doing better. <\/p>\n

By my third year, the lack of opportunities was starting to hinder my progress which made me look for other options. That\u2019s when I joined Scaler\u2019s course. Before Scaler, I used to practice on InterviewBit and solved 150+ problems there. While solving these problems, my friend circle helped me a lot. We all used to practice together and help each other if we got stuck in any problem. <\/p>\n

During Scaler\u2019s online course, I got exposed to a whole range of different concepts. I understood them all quite well as the faculty was pretty good. The most different part was the inclusion of system designs. I wasn\u2019t even introduced to this concept in my college and I knew that freshers are usually not required to give system designs\u2019 round. Truth be told, I had initially decided to skip it altogether as it wasn\u2019t relevant to me. But when I started attending its classes, I understood exactly how important it was. Even though we weren\u2019t supposed to crack the system designs\u2019 round I knew that this kind of knowledge would go a long way for me. \u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the process of interviews started, the rejections naturally tagged along. Initially, I used to view these rejections as personal failures. But with the help of my mentor- Mr. Gaurav, my mindset changed. I started to realize that I was learning something from every rejection. It was because I took these rejections in my stride that I was able to learn which are the parts that needed improvement. I cracked interviews for a few companies and ended up at Compass<\/a>. <\/p>\n

On that note, I can\u2019t help but say again- always learn from your failures. They will only help you become a better version of yourself. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Always learn from your failures. This is the biggest lesson that my journey has taught me. I was a student who couldn\u2019t clear JEE Mains in his first attempt and later went on to receive 5th rank in a Pan India coding competition. Now that I look back, I am the sum of all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":3970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scaler-academy-experience"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13195,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions\/13195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scaler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}