Failure_Resume.pdf
Inspired by my friend’s failure resume. Here’s mine (but in a sarcastic undertone):
TRANG DOAN
doantrang982@uni.minerva.edu | 9254941028 | New York, NYEducation
Vietnam National University 2019
Joined for two weeks then quit without telling my parents. I hoped it would be my back-up plan in case study-abroad won’t work out. But I couldn’t. Stupid or bold is based on perspective.
18/20 US college applications 2019
Dear American dream, I failed you hard. I’m happy about not having inferiority complex over America tho. Now it’s superiority complex.
UWC 2017 Admission 2017
Got into the final round and got rejected. They got 40 of us high school kid together and asked “What makes you stand you from the rest?”. I said “I don’t know”. Then they interviewed 5 on 1 and asked what do I want to do with my life? I said “I don’t know”. They asked “which UWC do you want to go to?” I said “I don’t know”. I think those are all the reasons I failed.
Professional experience
nano.dev May - June 2021
Developed 2 features within my one month there. I had horrible communication about my progress. I charged them for my learning time at a jarring rate (45$/h). I couldn’t finish the projects they handed me. I quit the job without telling them. Ooof I’m lucky my boss was chill.
RICE Production House June - Aug 2020
Lost enthusiasm to work towards the end even though I still loved filmmaking so much. I failed to do the small jobs decently. I failed to get the big exciting jobs. I failed to communicate what I wanted and get help. I failed to ask for a salary that can cover my monthly parking lot fee.
Countless interviews Always
it’s bound to happen. Sometimes I’m just tired of pretending to be excited about a random tech company.
Side projects
….that I want to continue at some point
Personal website May - August 2021
Never got published. I was trying to make an interactive 3D graphic personal website. I got this far:
I failed to connect the React-threejs framework to the Router, hence I couldn’t escape the landing page. Stopped working on it since.
Was (slightly) more interested in showing off and fun than delivering actual information.
Building a learning community May 2018
Gathered ~10 people after posting this. Didn’t know how to build a community and was scared that I might not be cool enough for people to want to form a community with me. Didn’t follow through. Wanted to just do something blindly (because gap years can be ego-driven like that) rather than actually driven by curiosity.
Cong Huong March-May 2018
Almost didn’t get ANY money to run the summer camp for 60 people. Got an angel connection ~3 days before the event. Couldn’t solve any teammates’ needs at the time but mostly complained and got anxious. Everything was super disorganized. Agonized about it for so long because I thought I was better.
Love
First semi-relationship March 2020-May 2021
held on to this person who had many red flags because I was so excited to even be in a romantic situation. He did tell me he didn’t want a serious relationship tho, I just chose to ignore it. But it made me understand why many people chose to stay in an abusive relationship - it requires some lying to yourself or clinging to false hope.
Divorced my best friend Sept 2021 - Dec 2021
friendship got stranded out of nowhere and I couldn’t understand why. She wrote me a 6-page letter explaining her anger (2.5 pages were full of love and hope). I got back together with her half a year later. Lesson learned: don’t assume I have to be an emotional trashcan/ friend telling emotional distress==me having to solve it.
Took family for granted Too many times
If I was my mom’s boyfriend, I’d be a terrible one. I never replied to her text on time, don’t pick up her phone, looked at my phone while talking to her, never asked how she feels. Gosh!
And basically didn’t care about dad for a long time.
Ate my niece’s food too often, just to tease her.
Others
Didn’t stand up against bullies in middle school 2014-2015
There was a girl in my class who got super bullied (boys hit plastic stools over her head, called her names, tore her books, etc). Didn’t stand up against any of that. Didn’t register how bad it was until years later. Haven’t apologized to this girl.
This is the blog #7 in 30 day publishing challenge I’m doing with MỞ - Mơ và Hỏi | Facebook’s course, Writing On The Net 2 (#wotn2). I’ll publish everything on this Notion page and Substack, and send a summary of 7 posts on Sunday.
To not miss anything, you can sign up for my newsletter on Substack.
Thanks for accompanying this journey! Till our paths cross again.
Oh how I love the vulnerability and the courage here!
such a cool concept!!!