Let's start here.

What’s been going on?

After an exhausting week of finals and wrapping up the school semester, I’ve been busy with this and that. But as I study more and more about programming, I start to realize how broad and difficult the subject is, and that I’m not as good as I think. This really hit me after participating in this year’s KOI - which I wasn’t originally planning to. I was unconfident about 3 months ago, before I became confident again about a month ago after trying last year’s exams and scoring a really good score of 300/400 in 3:30 in a 4:30 exam. Turns out that I was probably really lucky with the problems in that specific year’s test, because this year, in my live participation, I managed to score a fatass 0. It’s clear that I need to try harder, and I’m definitely not putting as much effort I keep telling myself I am.

In short, I want to be good, but my efforts fail. I think I lack willpower in a sense, and I overestimated myself. But here I am, trying again after what I consider a canon event, and hoping to make changes. It all starts here, again, and it feels like I’m at ground zero now with a new perspective.

What’s the purpose of this blog?

I personally view the main purpose as to teach myself about certain topics one more time while giving others the opportunity to learn something, even just a little bit, from me. It’s always about learning by teaching and teaching by learning. So I’m hoping that this blog will help me keep track of what I have learned along with my general progress, all while publicizing some of my perspectives on topics like general algorithms or specific problems. I also want to think a lot about my cognitive process itself, and attempt to manifest that towards better focus and pattern recognition.

I also want to note things in my daily life I find amusing or different. I feel like the quality of my life has increased exponentially since I’ve picked up something to actually put effort and hope into, and I want to remind myself about how life is good. I guess it’ll appear in the form of weird postings about music I’ve been into, school stuff, other fun projects, and thoughts I just have in my head. Also shout out my man Tay for helping me up at my lowests.

What are your goals?

I mean, I honestly don’t know how high to aim. I definitely want to reach candidate master by the end of this year, and hopefully master by the end of next year. USACO is going to be pretty important for me the following 2025-2026 season, and I’m hoping to reach platinum and do well there as well. But it’s not always about accolades and ranks. I also want to find myself enjoying programming or math more than I currently do, and find fun inside complex thoughts. Hopefully an extension of that will be that I arrive at new thoughts and publish a paper before I graduate highschool.

But nothing’s for sure, and these goals are ambitious. Still,

//let's start here
int main(){
...