There's a funny thing that happens when you study system design.
You start with one goal: pass the interview. You grind, you cram, you optimize every answer for the interviewer sitting across from you.
Then you get rejected. Enough times that something in you just... lets go.
You slow down.
And in that slower pace, something shifts. You already know the job hunt is half luck — a coin flip dressed up in a suit — so you stop racing. You stop performing. You just read.
That's when it gets interesting.
Somewhere between giving up on impressing anyone and just showing up for yourself, the material starts to click. The concepts stop feeling like weapons to survive interviews and start feeling like ideas worth understanding. You catch yourself going deeper than you need to, following curiosity instead of a study guide.
You're not learning to get hired anymore. You're learning because it's actually fascinating.
And then a strange thing happens to how you see interviews — they stop being interrogations you need to survive. They become something closer to a conversation about interesting problems. A chance to think out loud. Even, occasionally, fun.
The job stopped being the point. And somehow, that might be exactly what makes you good at this.