Hey everyone! This is my first blog and I'm not a native speaker so I'm sorry for any grammar mistakes I might make here.
I've tried to start in competitive programming at the end of September after the ICPC South America Brazil, but i was so bad at this that i got frustrated and i gave up pretty quickly.
Some time later, in October i started to study it and try to get better at this for real. Today is the 100th day I've been doing problems every single day (I personally didn't think i would get this far but here we are). I had a personal goal to become pupil by the end of 2025 but i couldn't make it by then. BUT in the Hello 2026 for the first time I've done 4 questions in a global round and reached it!! (i ended up falling to newbie again in the last div.3 but its alright)
Why I'm posting this blog
Well, apart from celebrating my achievement, i want to encourage some people that might be starting in CF by now. SO here are some tips and advices from someone that a while ago was struggling to answer a 800 rated question.
Resilience is almost everything. As I said, at the beginning i struggled even in the easiest of the questions, and i won't lie, it was frustrating. but i knew i had to get through that to do better in the ICPC this year, and kept moving, answering questions. And the time went by i started doing the 800 rated with ease, getting used to do harder questions. The satisfaction of getting better is much greater than the frustration of being stuck. If you feel it once you'll know what i'm talking about. So please, DON'T GIVE UP.
Treat this as a hobby you love I've found out that if you treat something you like as a duty, you'll end up not liking it and the time you spend here won't be as productive as it could. Of course having discipline is the best way to get better, but if you don't feel like doing a question in the time you always do, just do it later. It will be more pleasurable and you might even get more hyped to do more than one in a row.
Participate in Contests I see some people thinking, "I'm not good enough to take contests", but bro... just do it, it will only make your experience better, and show you the next step you need to do. It doesn't really matter if your rating goes down, you got there once, you can do it again. And if you know your rating you can know exactly what to study to get to the next step. So don't be afraid, and enjoy the contests!
LAST BUT NOT LEAST DONT USE AI OR CHEAT IN CONTESTS! you're not fooling anyone besides yourself.
Where i am now and my goals to this year
So... today i'm doing problems rated from 1100-1400 and feeling like i'm getting better everyday. I most of the times can do div. 2 ABC, so i hope to get better enough to do D consistently soon. My main goal this year is get to Expert by September for the ICPC this year, it will be a hard path, i know, but i'll try it anyway. And of course, i want to keep my streak going for as long as i possibly can, so that's it.
Thanks everyone for reading it.
