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-# rookie-mistakes
+---
+visibility: public-edit
+---
-catalog of all wiki pages. update on every ingest.
+# rookie mistakes & gotchas
-## pages
+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.
-(none yet)
+items marked *(common gotcha)* are widely-known traps added from collective wisdom. everything else is from firsthand experience.
+
+---
+
+## [college & admin](/wiki/college-admin)
+
+1. **College Board Student Search Service** — opt-in that floods you with fake "you've been selected!" recruitment spam
+2. *(common gotcha)* **naming the wrong school in your essay** — copy-paste "Why Us?" essays with the wrong school name = instant reject
+3. *(common gotcha)* **missing FAFSA and financial aid deadlines** — separate from admission deadlines, often earlier, first-come-first-served
+4. *(common gotcha)* **starting applications too late** — 12 supplementals due in 3 weeks because you started in November
+
+## [demo & presentation](/wiki/demo-presentation)
+
+5. **not testing the full demo end-to-end** — individual pieces work, full flow doesn't. test the whole thing.
+6. **forgetting to restart the server before demo** — showing stale code with old bugs on stage
+7. **not practicing the presentation once** — one dry run is the difference between amateur and competent
+8. **not emphasizing the live demo enough** — judges want to see it work, not hear you talk about it
+9. **not memorizing a one-liner** — fumbling "what does it do?" every time someone asks
+10. **pitching matters as much as product** — bad pitch makes a great project forgettable
+11. *(common gotcha)* **slides as documentation** — packing slides with code and diagrams that nobody can read
+12. *(common gotcha)* **no backup plan for a failed demo** — live demo crashes, team freezes, judges move on
+13. *(common gotcha)* **jumping between features with no narrative** — feature tour without a story = forgettable
+
+## [scope & execution](/wiki/scope-execution)
+
+14. **perfectionism over hackathon fit** — spending 2 extra hours polishing when rough would've been fine
+15. **not matching the theme/track** — great project that doesn't fit the judging criteria
+16. *(common gotcha)* **building an all-in-one product** — auth + dashboards + analytics + social in 24 hours = nothing works
+17. *(common gotcha)* **optimizing for scale before you have users** — kubernetes for a project with 3 users (the judges)
+
+## [team dynamics](/wiki/team-dynamics)
+
+18. **teams without shared understanding** — nobody knows the plan because there was no plan
+19. **not figuring out what you want before finding partners** — different goals (win vs learn vs network) create friction
+20. **unclear roles** — three people on the backend, nobody on the pitch
+21. **solo > bad team** — a focused solo builder beats a dysfunctional team every time
+22. *(common gotcha)* **personality mismatch under pressure** — great at a meetup, terrible at 4am when the API is down
+23. *(common gotcha)* **all coders, no communicator** — incredible project, can't explain it to judges
+
+## [networking & events](/wiki/networking-events)
+
+24. **not getting contacts immediately** — "i'll get it later" = you won't. they leave.
+25. **not recording conversations** — met 20 people, forgot half of what was said by next day
+26. **introducing yourself in a way that misleads** — labels trigger assumptions. lead with what you do.
+27. **phone ringing at events** — embarrassing and avoidable. vibrate is free.
+28. *(common gotcha)* **showing up with no plan** — wandering a conference without target connections
+29. *(common gotcha)* **not following up within 48 hours** — warm connection goes cold in a week
+30. *(common gotcha)* **networking as extraction** — "what can you do for me?" energy repels people
+
+## [mindset](/wiki/mindset)
+
+31. **AI rot** — hours of prompting without independent thought. step away every 10 minutes.
+32. **FOMO trap** — jealous of what it looks like, not what they're learning
+33. **over-indexing on respected people's opinions** — their advice is for their game, not yours
+34. *(common gotcha)* **AI-assisted imposter syndrome** — "did i build this or did the AI?" erodes confidence
+35. *(common gotcha)* **comparison as motivation (until it isn't)** — borrowed energy that inverts into despair
+
+## [project planning](/wiki/project-planning)
+
+36. **the over-planning trap (Nosce/OnCue/Axon/Tellwell)** — four name changes, full PRD, zero users
+37. **the relay-build fallacy (Build Chain)** — 16 friends, sequential handoffs, fell apart
+38. *(common gotcha)* **building before validating the problem** — 3 weeks of coding, zero evidence anyone wants it
+39. *(common gotcha)* **the "just one more feature" loop** — perfectionism disguised as product sense
+
+## [submissions](/wiki/submissions)
+
+40. **not checking what you're submitting** — submitted the wrong video file for a final
+41. **Congressional App Challenge presentation** — one missing sentence about impact cost the win
+42. *(common gotcha)* **submitting right at the deadline** — upload stalls at 11:58pm, 500 others doing the same
+43. *(common gotcha)* **not reading submission requirements** — great project, garbage supplementary materials
+
+## [technical](/wiki/technical)
+
+44. **ESP32 30-hour debugging saga** — one line fix after 30 hours. the wrong assumption kills you.
+45. **Discord bot → account ban** — automated friend requests = banned. read the ToS.
+46. *(common gotcha)* **hardcoding secrets in code** — bots scrape GitHub for exposed keys within minutes
+47. *(common gotcha)* **not using version control (or using it wrong)** — can't undo, can't find the last working version
+48. *(common gotcha)* **"it works on my machine"** — runs on your laptop, crashes on the demo machine
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