So your first mistake I believe is to think the interviewer is just testing you on a narrow exercise. Approach it differently: most of the time they are rootin

So your first mistake I believe is to think the interviewer is just testing you on a narrow exercise. Approach it differently: most of the time they are rooting for you! Hey you might be their future colleague. That in mind, focus on tackling the exercise showing how you think about it. That's mainly what they want to see and if you are transparent with them about the fact you don't know well this layer so it might be a little bit handwavy it is fine, manage expectations and when you guessed or rebuilt something existing right it might even play in your advantage. On the passion side of it, I have to be blunt, it is a self fulfilling prophecy here. If you are not interested by the field and related fields, the lack of curiosity will impede your growth. You won't get the next interesting wave, you'll stay on mainly boring things and this will reinforce your feeling that the field is boring. Computer engineering is a non stop learning endeavor.