What this 19-year-old learned when Apple rejected his app for a scholarship

Photo credit: Andy.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” -Samuel Beckett

Every year, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) takes place in San Jose, California. The conference is a showcase of Apple’s new software and technologies.

Here, attendees can join hands-on discussions with Apple’s engineers and watch the creators of Apple’s developer tools explain in-depth how the tools work and how you can use them.

There are two ways to get into the conference:

• You can register yourself for an opportunity to buy a ticket and see whether you’re randomly selected. If you’re lucky enough to win, you have to pay US$1,599 for the ticket.
• You can try to win a scholarship. In this case, you get free access to the conference and you may even get travel assistance.

This year, in order to get a scholarship, applicants had to submit an application using Swift Playgrounds, a platform Apple uses to teach Swift.

The decision

To better understand my story, here’s a little bit about my background.

I’m a 19-year-old Brazilian who’s been a part of an iOS developer program since the beginning of this year. In early March, when I was in my first week in the program, I heard my instructors talk about WWDC. As soon as I learned of it, I felt compelled to join the competition.

But I wasn’t confident. I started to make excuses about how I wouldn’t be able to win because I didn’t have any knowledge of how to use Swift Playgrounds or how to build a proper iOS application.

Most of my excuses revolved around the following:

“I’m in this training program from 9 am to 5:30 pm and in college from 7:30 pm to 10:45 pm. I’m not going to spend the rest of my time in some competition where I don’t have a chance to win.”

Every human being knows how hard it is to go after something you want and how comfortable it is to stay in the same place. You can always find excuses and complain about how you don’t have the time or the ability to do the things you always wanted. But that’s exactly the path to achieve nothing in life.

My idea

The process

The result