This post is to remind myself to stay positive. Failure, failure, failure. This is the word I would use to summarize the time after I finished my exchange in Chapel Hill and came back to Hong Kong. As a senior, there are too many random variables to care about, and most of them didn't work out. At the start of 2026, I told myself my bad luck was gone and that everything would be alright, but it didn't happen. I still screwed up many of the things I had very high expectations for. I lost count on the number of days that I felt too ashamed to get out of my bed and meet people. Every day, I just lay in bed, kept scrolling my phone, and called it a day. It wasn't until I listened to a podcast about the concept of signal-to-noise ratio that my perspective began to change. This idea, originating from the world of science and engineering, has a very interesting and powerful meaning in life. [This is not the exact notion from the podcast but rather my own view that stemmed from there.] For humans, our emotions can essentially be modeled as a mathematical function $f:X\rightarrow Y$ that maps some information $x \in X$ into an emotion $y \in Y$. Going back to the definition of signal-to-noise ratio, one first identifies the goals that they would like to achieve (assume this is achievable through some emotion/ state of mind $y^* = f(x^*)$). The definitions of signal and noise are then straightforward: $x$ is signal if $x=x^*$, noise otherwise. This idea totally reshaped my perspective on what failure actually is. Losing a competition, being rejected for a program, or receiving negative comments are NOT failures. These are merely some inputs. The true failure happens when you are negatively affected by these inputs and let them alter your state of mind, blocking you from chasing your dreams. In simple terms, learn to not give a f**k, focus on what you want to do/ need to do/ have to do. Writing this reminds me of a song by Charmaine Fong that I used to play so often. Let's end the post by embedding its Spotify track. Ciao. 28th April 2026, 2:03 AM