What are you more afraid of? Rejection from a company you never have to talk to again OR your family being unhappy as a result of you 1) being unhappy with your

What are you more afraid of? Rejection from a company you never have to talk to again OR your family being unhappy as a result of you 1) being unhappy with your job 2) feeling like you aren't doing as much as you can or should. This might just be something you have to confront. But I think constantly confronting your fears is healthy, even if it's difficult and stressful. It sounds like you're genuinely enthusiastic about engineering and computer science. I think talking about your side projects (deep learning, blockchain, etc) will show this very effectively. Actually, having side projects to talk about is sort of like a secret weapon at job interviews. You'll find if you learn how to talk about these your interviews will go really well, so long as you can do a somewhat above average job on the technical questions (which can happen with practice and luck). That being said, I can't give much help on being shy as I've never really dealt with that. I did used to be kind of.... not the best with social situations, and I found that by being chatty and going out of your way to meet people randomly, you end up getting good at it pretty quickly. Of course I sucked at this at first, but I had a friend who was extremely chatty and whenever we hanged out in public he would always be talking to random people. By joining in I sorta got the hang of it, and that helped a lot. Also never be afraid of being silly. Making mistakes can make people feel more comfortable around you because they stop worrying about keeping up their own image of being a normal human being (what does normal even mean?). That works more for meeting people and MUCH LESS in job interviews, but meeting people will make you less shy, which in turn can help with interviews. Don't fall into the trap of believing you can't change yourself. Simply by acknowledging what you'd like to change about yourself, you've already begun the first step. I think you already know you need to do something. Hopefully this is the impetus. I've seen friends totally change personalities and go from being shy to confident, or silly to mature. You can overcome your fear of rejection. Just get rejected a lot so that it becomes a trivial thing you can laugh at.