All these blog posts about how people went from rank X to rank Y in Z days/months/years has been very inspiring and absolutely not at all overdone. However, (almost) every person whose post I've read has completely missed the point: their rating went up instead of down.

Think about it — would you rather be in 3000th place in a competition or 1000th place? That's right — lower is better. End of story. Codeforces even rewards you for having a low rating! What is the colour of AC? Green. What's the colour of the "pupil" rank? Green. Coincidence? I think not.

Now, time for my story. I went from 1500 to 1357 in just 10 days! No need to be jealous — I will now describe precisely how I did it.

My first contest was the 2018 Lyft Level 5 Challenge. As a newcomer to competitive programming, I had no idea what to expect.

Miraculously, I solved 1 problem. Was it pure skill? Was it beginner's luck? I guess we'll never know. But what we do know is that a single problem was enough to bring my rating from 1500 to 1403.

Not quite enough to become green, but I didn't lose hope.

My next contest was the 2018 Mail.Ru Cup. Again, I solved 1 problem. This time, it was enough to bring my rating to 1357 — comfortably in the green range.

This story proves that no matter who you are and what experience you had, you too can become green.

(Unfortunately, my skill has deteriorated significantly in the past 2 years and I am now orange — the colour of RTE)