There’s a quiet assumption that once you’re accepted into a program, an internship, or a new opportunity, things are supposed to click. That confidence should come automatically. That the struggle somehow ends at the door.

It doesn’t.

Lately, my struggle has been feeling like I should already know more than I do.

I’m an intern working with a large codebase that was unfamiliar at first. On the surface, everything looked final, I read the documentation, followed discussions, and tried to understand the flow. But when I began contributing, I realized that understanding a codebase and working inside it are two very different things. Functions referenced other functions I had not seen. Libraries behaved in ways I didn’t fully understand yet. I spent hours chasing what seemed like a simple issue, only to realize I misunderstood something basic.

What makes this harder isn’t just the technical difficulty, it’s the voice in my head. The one that says, “Everyone else gets this faster.” The one that whispers, “You’re behind.” The one that asks, “What if I disappoint the people who believed in me?”

That voice is convincing. Especially when you’re surrounded by smart people who ask sharp questions and navigate complex topics with ease. It’s easy to compare your confusion to their clarity and conclude that the problem is you.

But here’s what I’m slowly learning: struggling is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign of being in the right place. Every time I get stuck, I’m forced to read more carefully. Every time I ask a question, I learn something I wouldn’t have learned alone. Every mistake shows me how the system actually works, not how I assumed it worked. The struggle is uncomfortable, yes, but it’s also doing real work on me.

I’m also learning the difference between struggling silently and struggling with support. When I finally ask for help, the response is rarely judgment. More often, it’s reassurance: “Yeah, that part is confusing.” Or, “I struggled with that too.” Moments like that remind me that nobody arrives fully formed.

Everybody struggles. Even the people who look confident. Even the people whose code you admire. The difference isn’t who struggles and who doesn’t, it’s who keeps going despite it.

So if you’re in a place where things feel hard, where progress feels slow, where doubt shows up uninvited: you’re not alone. This is part of learning. This is part of growing. And this, too, counts as progress.