I'm approaching the end of my master program and I was thinking what I've done in the past two years.

Obviously, I didn't waste my time. I got myself used to french teaching courses, I made a few friends in the college and I got good grade in the exams.

But I just feel something is not right. Why is the sadness always around me? I didn't find it out until I saw some young graduate students interview in my own country. Honestly, I'm ten thousand miles aways to these young talents. These guys have already created well-known open source projects or published high quality articles, but I, an old man on his 30th, have even no confidence on programming. I learnt so many algorithmes and math theories, but I just can't relate them to my daily job. I've been programming since first year of college and I learnt a douze of programming languages, but one of them could be declared mastered . And I've been doing a lot of colleges projects, but none remember them after the damn presentation.

People might say that you should get some more programming practice after class, but that's what am I doing everyday!Normally I end my day at 7pm and finish dinner at 9pm. Then I stick to self learning/programming until midnight. I followed many technical books on C++/PHP/JavaScript and design pattern and upload them to my Github.

Despite the effort I made, I still feel so despaired when I look at the source code of an open source project. The beautiful code and elegant design seems too far to me. Could I ever made this level? I keep questioning myself. If not, why am I trying so hard? If I would never be able to compete with the genies, was my life a kind of waste? So is my life worth living anyway?

I guess that I might not get myself an answer right now. There is still a long way to go and I still have hope. But I will keep this question in my mind, and give you the answer some time later.