When I wrote this essay, it was for my future self. This was the moment after I lost at a hackathon yesterday. It was the first time I truly felt pain, frustration, and disappointment in myself. What happened there affected my life deeply.
At first, my friends and I did not want to win the hackathon. However, what happened on that day made us feel regretful and disappointed. This is my story and journey how a wonderful experience started, and how it came to an emotional ending.
I joined the bootcamp in early April, and it ended with the hackathon on the 16th, 17th, and 18th of May 2026. At first, we felt excited. We learned new knowledge, met wonderful people, and shared many experiences together.
Those moments were some of the best moments of my life. Every morning and evening from Monday to Friday, we walked around 4–5 km from MDEC back to the hotel. We laughed together, faced many challenges together, and supported each other during both happy and difficult moments. The six of us did crazy things, learned difficult topics, challenged ourselves, and gained unforgettable experiences.
One of my friends told me that it felt like we were doing an internship during that month, and I agreed with him. Every day, we traveled by train, learned new things from 9 AM until 5 PM, and only rested on Saturdays and Sundays, just like adults working in a company. It was a very different life compared to my university life. For the first time, I felt like I understood what my father and brother go through every day when they work to earn money for life.
Sometimes, while sitting on the train surrounded by strangers returning home from work, I would think to myself:
“Is this the life I choose to live?”
Working every day until the age of 50 just to survive, pay bills, and support a family.
“Is life always going to be like this?”
That question kept running through my head. But maybe this is simply the life many of us are chosen to live. We are not rich like the children of millionaires who can spend money without worry. We are ordinary people who need money to continue surviving in life.
Every day, I learned valuable advice from different people. I learned positive thinking and a stronger mindset, something I had lost before joining this bootcamp.
One piece of advice affected me the most. It was from Sir Ahmad Shahriman Mohd Shariff, the CEO of CIMB Islamic Bank:
“Don’t run, go learn. Don’t give up on your life because it is a lifelong journey.”
Those words stayed in my heart and taught me to keep moving forward.
The day of the hackathon, Saturday, became one of the hardest days of my life. From the morning until the end of the day, everything felt heavy. But I kept taking deep breaths and telling myself:
“It’s going to be okay.”
We were given seven problem statements, and only two groups could choose the same one. At first, my friends and I decided to create an agriculture web application because we already had experience with that idea before. However, everything changed after we met a mentor at night. He told us that another group was also doing a similar agriculture project, and he said our problem statement did not fully match our project idea.
We took his advice seriously and started searching for another solution and another problem statement. At that moment, I felt like all our hard work had been wasted. We had already completed around 50% of the project. The UI/UX was almost done, the flow diagrams were prepared, and even the backend development had already started.
My mind became blank. I felt stuck and lost. I did not know what to do anymore after meeting the mentor.
My friends kept asking me:
“Should we continue the agriculture project, or should we find another idea?”
But I stayed silent because I did not know the answer. Eventually, I accidentally fell asleep, and my friend invited me to rest at the dormitory. The next morning, we came up with a new idea: an AI agentic system for students called StudentCopilot. Once we agreed on the idea, we immediately rushed to build the project because we only had 17 hours and 40 minutes left before the submission deadline.
There were many challenges we faced during the hackathon. My laptop suddenly froze and stopped working. My friend accidentally put my laptop to sleep for almost one hour before the deadline while I was setting up the backend. The backend suddenly went down at the last minute, and several bugs appeared one after another.
But we faced everything together. My friend, Ipan, always supported me and kept saying:
“It’s going to be okay.”
In the last 10 minutes before the deadline, we finally managed to submit our project. We were satisfied with our achievement because we solved every problem we faced. That night, we went to sleep happily because it was our first hackathon, and we successfully completed and submitted a project within only 17 hours.
The next morning was the day of the results announcement. Deep inside, we knew we had a very small chance of winning, but we still prayed for a miracle. During the pitching session, each group had only four minutes to present in front of four judges. Our group was the fifth team to present. The other groups were amazing during their presentations. They made us nervous and scared.
When it was finally our turn, another technical problem happened, and we lost almost one minute trying to set everything up. I still remember Ipan standing in front of the judges, shaking nervously while waiting for the system to work.
I kept telling him softly:
“Relax, Ipan.”
After the problem was solved, Ipan continued the presentation and introduced our product and project. However, time was chasing us. And I still remember some of the questions from the judges:
“What makes your product different from others?”
“How can you prove that it is unique?”
“How much would you charge per user?”
I answered the questions spontaneously without thinking too much. Sometimes I regret some of my answers, but at that moment I just tried my best. I noticed that the judges looked slightly unsatisfied, and at that moment I knew we had fallen into a difficult situation.
After we walked out from the pitching session, my friend told me that we did not have enough time to explain all the functions of our system. We only managed to explain the core functions and one or two small details. Still, I tried to comfort him by saying:
“We’re going to be okay. We already did our part. What happened cannot turn back time.”
When the award ceremony finally started, we felt nervous but still had a small hope that we might win something. But unfortunately, it was only false hope. We did not win any award. The most shocking moment was when another team with an agriculture project won first place. That moment made me angry and frustrated because we had also spent many hours building an agriculture project before changing our idea.
I kept asking myself:
“If we had stayed with the agriculture idea, would the outcome have been different?”
“Would we have won too?”
Those questions kept spinning inside my head repeatedly. I lost hope. I felt like the world was cruel to me, as if all our effort meant nothing. The only thing I wanted at that moment was to meet my mother and cry. And yes, I did.
I cried for almost 24 hours as if everything had ended for me. I even argued with my mother when she saw my condition and she asked me:
“Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in qadr? Who do you want to blame for this?”
And in anger, I answered:
“Everything.”
“Why did they win while we couldn’t?”
At that moment, I lost my rational thinking. I stayed alone in my room for almost five hours, feeling disappointed and empty. Then, while scrolling through TikTok, a video suddenly appeared. It was a speech by Tuan Zainal Rashid Ahmad. He said:
“Allah does not delay our success to punish us. He delays it so that when success finally comes, we are truly prepared for it. If Allah has not yet given you the success you measure as achievement, perhaps He is giving you knowledge instead. If Allah has not yet granted you success, perhaps He is building your strength. And if Allah delays the moment for you to succeed, it may simply mean that you are not ready yet. That is how Allah shows His love for us.”
That speech felt like magic to me. Those words became my strength to make a comeback in my life. I woke up and started writing this essay so that I would never forget the pain I felt and my goals, my targets, and what I truly want to achieve in life. I promised myself that I would no longer take failure as the end of everything. Instead, I would treat it as a lesson to continue growing and keep moving forward in life.
I do not know who will read this essay in the future, but I am writing this for my future self and for anyone who may need inspiration during difficult moments in life.
First of all, I would like to thank Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the organizers of Sekodlah for everything they gave us. The experience and knowledge we gained were truly golden moments in our lives. If we had not joined this program, maybe we would have remained inside our comfort zones like many others and never changed into better versions of ourselves in the future.
I also want to thank all of our mentors, Sir Nurzid and Dr. Suhazlan, for their advice and support whenever we felt tired, lost, or disappointed.
No matter what happens after this, we will continue moving forward in life. We will keep learning, keep fighting, and continue facing every challenge without regret. One day, we will become successful people in our own way.
Shahidsaharudin