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# rookie mistakes & gotchas

real mistakes and gotchas that young builders should watch out for. drawn from actual experience — hackathons, projects, events, college apps, and 30-hour debugging sessions. each one cost time, opportunities, or sanity.

items marked *(common gotcha)* are widely-known traps added from collective wisdom. everything else is from firsthand experience.

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## college & admin

- [[college-board-student-search]] — opt-in that floods you with fake "you've been selected!" recruitment spam
- [[naming-wrong-school-in-essay]] *(common gotcha)* — copy-paste "Why Us?" essays with the wrong school name = instant reject
- [[missing-fafsa-deadlines]] *(common gotcha)* — separate from admission deadlines, often earlier, first-come-first-served
- [[starting-applications-too-late]] *(common gotcha)* — 12 supplementals due in 3 weeks because you started in November
- [[stay-on-admins-good-side]] — bank goodwill before you need favors

## demo & presentation

- [[test-demo-before-presenting]] — individual pieces work, full flow doesn't. test the whole thing.
- [[restart-server-before-demo]] — showing stale code with old bugs on stage
- [[practice-presentation-once]] — one dry run is the difference between amateur and competent
- [[emphasize-live-demo]] — judges want to see it work, not hear you talk about it
- [[memorize-one-liner]] — fumbling "what does it do?" every time someone asks
- [[pitching-matters-as-much-as-product]] — bad pitch makes a great project forgettable
- [[slides-as-documentation]] *(common gotcha)* — packing slides with code and diagrams that nobody can read
- [[no-backup-plan-for-failed-demo]] *(common gotcha)* — live demo crashes, team freezes, judges move on
- [[jumping-between-features-no-narrative]] *(common gotcha)* — feature tour without a story = forgettable

## scope & execution

- [[perfectionism-over-hackathon-fit]] — spending 2 extra hours polishing when rough would've been fine
- [[match-the-theme-track]] — great project that doesn't fit the judging criteria
- [[building-all-in-one-product]] *(common gotcha)* — auth + dashboards + analytics + social in 24 hours = nothing works
- [[optimizing-for-scale-too-early]] *(common gotcha)* — kubernetes for a project with 3 users (the judges)

## team dynamics

- [[teams-without-shared-understanding]] — nobody knows the plan because there was no plan
- [[figure-out-what-you-want-before-partners]] — different goals (win vs learn vs network) create friction
- [[unclear-roles]] — three people on the backend, nobody on the pitch
- [[solo-vs-bad-team]] — a focused solo builder beats a dysfunctional team every time
- [[personality-mismatch-under-pressure]] *(common gotcha)* — great at a meetup, terrible at 4am when the API is down
- [[all-coders-no-communicator]] *(common gotcha)* — incredible project, can't explain it to judges

## networking & events

- [[get-contacts-immediately]] — "i'll get it later" = you won't. they leave.
- [[record-conversations]] — met 20 people, forgot half of what was said by next day
- [[how-you-introduce-yourself]] — labels trigger assumptions. lead with what you do.
- [[phone-on-vibrate]] — embarrassing and avoidable. vibrate is free.
- [[showing-up-with-no-plan]] *(common gotcha)* — wandering a conference without target connections
- [[not-following-up-within-48-hours]] *(common gotcha)* — warm connection goes cold in a week
- [[networking-as-extraction]] *(common gotcha)* — "what can you do for me?" energy repels people

## mindset

- [[ai-rot]] — hours of prompting without independent thought. step away every 10 minutes.
- [[fomo-trap]] — jealous of what it looks like, not what they're learning
- [[over-indexing-on-opinions]] — their advice is for their game, not yours
- [[ai-assisted-imposter-syndrome]] *(common gotcha)* — "did i build this or did the AI?" erodes confidence
- [[comparison-as-motivation]] *(common gotcha)* — borrowed energy that inverts into despair

## project planning

- [[over-planning-trap]] — four name changes, full PRD, zero users
- [[relay-build-fallacy]] — 16 friends, sequential handoffs, fell apart
- [[building-before-validating]] *(common gotcha)* — 3 weeks of coding, zero evidence anyone wants it
- [[just-one-more-feature-loop]] *(common gotcha)* — perfectionism disguised as product sense

## submissions

- [[check-what-you-submit]] — submitted the wrong video file for a final
- [[frame-impact-explicitly]] — one missing sentence about impact cost the win
- [[submitting-right-at-the-deadline]] *(common gotcha)* — upload stalls at 11:58pm, 500 others doing the same
- [[not-reading-submission-requirements]] *(common gotcha)* — great project, garbage supplementary materials

## technical

- [[esp32-debugging-saga]] — one line fix after 30 hours. the wrong assumption kills you.
- [[discord-bot-ban]] — automated friend requests = banned. read the ToS.
- [[hardcoding-secrets-in-code]] *(common gotcha)* — bots scrape GitHub for exposed keys within minutes
- [[not-using-version-control]] *(common gotcha)* — can't undo, can't find the last working version
- [[it-works-on-my-machine]] *(common gotcha)* — runs on your laptop, crashes on the demo machine