Someone dmed me and asked me how I was doing. First off, today was a great day, with a long break due to high school in the States, thanksgiving has allowed me to do some codeforces rounds!

At first, I dropped quite a bit in rating (even going back to newbie!). However, I pushed through and today it paid off. All the stars aligned. It was like magic. I didn't even get a single wrong answer. It was almost too easy.

137th without unofficial, and 62nd with only trusted individuals. Pretty awesome.

As for training, after I had school, I would try to push myself and do some challenging problems. Also, I started reading more. When I was waiting in my school's lunch line, I would read about anything computer science-related. Binary Tree, Heaps, Hashing, things that are not just competitive programming related, just to have fun. I think a lot of people look towards results too much. (As do I) But especially with this year, I've learned to really enjoy computer science.

As for the contest itself, I used many different algorithms. I tried a binary search, sliding window, bfs, all of these were used in the contest. I had a lot of fun. (D has a complicated problem statement lol) There was a sense of feeling "hot". I love basketball, and when you start making a bunch of shots you feel a hot streak. Same thing here. It felt amazing.

If you feel stuck, keep ongoing. (The hardest part is the beginning) But wait till you get that hot streak and you'll love programming and solving problems.

As for where I was, I had to do school lol. I have SATs to study (it's a standardized test for many students in the states), and AP classes to cram. I'm not a super super bright student, but I really want to go to MIT and meet some of the greats like Benq, Ksun, Ecnerwala, and William Lin. So, I really push myself in anything programming-related. I love computer science and hopefully, I can do my best in whatever setting I am given.

If you wanna see me in video format, check out my Youtube Channel, where I talk about stuff going on in my school concerning computer science. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to contact me in any way.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8JIgUYIazvuC4REzNlTOcg <- Youtube

Happy Coding! And Have a great Holiday Season!