I Was Terrified of LeetCode. Here is What My First 10 Problems Looked Like.

If you are an engineering student right now, you know the pressure. It is the monster under the bed that follows you from your first year all the way to placement season.

"You are nothing without DSA."
"If you aren't grinding LeetCode, you are falling behind."
"FAANG doesn't even look at your resume if you haven't solved 300+ problems."

I heard these phrases so many times that they lost all meaning - and yet, they paralyzed me.
For the longest time, I simply refused to start. The thought of opening that LeetCode editor made my stomach drop. I looked at the "Easy" problems and thought, "If this is easy, what does that say about me if I can't even solve it?"
I didn't want to fail. So, I didn't try.

The Breaking Point

One day, I was scrolling through LinkedIn (as we all do to feel inadequate), and I saw a post from a junior. They were celebrating solving their 100th question on LeetCode.
It wasn't the number that got me. It was the pure, unfiltered pride in their caption. They weren't a prodigy. They were just consistent. And they had something I didn't: proof of their effort.
That was my wake-up call. It hit me that the only person I was embarrassing by not trying was myself. I decided right then that I was going to start. And I wasn't going to worry about the "hard" problems, or the "mediums," or the company tags. I was going to start with the very basics and swallow my pride.

The Brutal Reality of My "Starting" Log

I decided to start keeping a journal. Here is exactly what the first stretch of my DSA "redemption" looked like. It is ugly. It is honest. And it might look a lot like yours:
My very first attempts:

• 1757. Recyclable & Low Fat Products (Easy):Accepted. Okay, this was SQL. It doesn't really count as DSA, but I needed a win.
• 584. Find Customer Referee (Easy): Accepted… after 5 attempts. I forgot about NULL values in SQL. Five. Tries.
• 2667. Create Hello World Function (Easy): Wrong Answer. I got a "Wrong Answer" on a "Hello World" function. I wanted to close my laptop and walk into the sea. After a break (I took a long pause out of shame):
• 1. Two Sum (Easy): Accepted. The holy grail of beginner problems. I finally got one.
• 344. Reverse String (Easy): Accepted.
• 125. Valid Palindrome (Easy): Accepted. The next stretch:
• 9. Palindrome Number (Easy): Accepted.
• 13. Roman to Integer (Easy): Compile Error. Compile Error. I couldn't even get the syntax right.
• 14. Longest Common Prefix (Easy): Accepted.

The Takeaway

Look at that list. Out of my first 10 problems, I had a Compile Error, a Wrong Answer on a "Hello World" problem, and a problem that took me 10 attempts to pass.
I am not sharing this to brag about my "stats" (because frankly, they are embarrassing). I am sharing this for the student who is reading this right now, terrified to click "Submit."
Here is what I realized:

1. The "Easy" tag is a lie. Easy problems are only easy once you have seen the pattern. Until then, they are just hard problems with a better PR team.
2. "Accepted" is the only stat that matters. It doesn't matter if it takes you 10 attempts. The site doesn't remember your compile errors. It just remembers that you finished.
3. Compare yourself to yesterday. Don't compare yourself to the senior who has 500 problems solved. Compare yourself to the person who couldn't write a Hello World function without an error. I am now a few weeks into this journey. I am still bad at it. I still look at "Medium" problems and feel a wave of nausea. But I show up every day. If you are reading this and you haven't started yet, this is your sign. Go solve "Two Sum." Get it wrong if you have to. Just start. The only way to be "nothing" is to never try.