nontrievial | jasonzeng124's blog

that this might be my last year of competitive programming

it's been a good run

As I went to test a cf round, I went to go make a folder for 2026. And then a realization struck me: this might be the last time I do it. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 jayjay:~ [exit 0] $ j cf...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 17, 2026

robotics season started

interesting game for sure

The 2026 FRC robotics game released yesterday. I was busy doing USACO so I haven’t had time to think about it until today. First, some preliminaries: We still don’t have a technical captain. AP i...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 11, 2026

USACO

scuffed ahh contest

Written on Sunday, unpublished until (tuesday, probably). Took USACO yesterday. Long story short: scored 350, distro was full / 1 / 0. A rough chronology of how it happened: (timestamps are prob...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 11, 2026

USACO is tomorrow

it might be over

USACO is tomorrow. I am not prepared at all. I’m like, really washed. Probably worse than I was last year, which was already pretty bad. My goal is camp. Surely, that is possible with a bit of luc...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 9, 2026

reflections on teaching robotics

little kids are annoying... but perhaps insightful?

So I have this job teaching little kids (like elementary school students) robotics. Well I had this job (I’m leaving due to robotics season). prelude Teaching (well more like babysitting is what ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 5, 2026

too much to do

and no time to do it

Today I went over to visit relatives and played tractor all day. Anyway today is the 2nd. School starts on the 5th. USACO is on the 10th. Not a lot of time, huh. What I need to get done: read...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 2, 2026

on blogging

what to write about

Over the past month I’ve been writing a lot of blogs. The reason I’ve had so much to write about is because I’ve built a cache of ideas I want to rant about, as I get tilted go through life I add t...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on January 1, 2026

ioi 2025 day 1

first virtual in like a year

Today I virtual’ed ioi 2025 day 1. tl;dr: would be 40th day 1, which is like high silver. my log: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 3...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 31, 2025

imposter syndrome

i'm actually pretty bad at physics

Everyone thinks I’m good at physics. That I’m like really top 40 in the US in physics. I’m not. I’m really not. Their reason for these claims is my USAPhO gold result, which is true, I did scor...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 29, 2025

winter break

rip

This winter break, I was planning to do some CP (like 1 USACO/similar problem per day), and idk, do some exercise or something. Unfortunately due to (very valid) reasons I didn’t really do anything...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 29, 2025

memories of USACO server

back when...

I first joined USACO discord as early as Aug 7, 2021 (according to discord, but i think it may have been earlier). For reference, I was silver at the time, and my first codeforces contest was aroun...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 23, 2025

post mit decision thoughts

现在，我想干什么？真的想要干什么？

“post mit decision thoughts” no there are no thoughts Well, turns out xdr was right, and I did have some thoughts. The past few months were spent mostly, ish, grinding college applicatio...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 17, 2025

mit decisions came out today

tl;dr i got in

Ok, I got into mit! Anyway, how it happened: on my way home from school, i check discord and see rfu sending me the portal astro. i open it and it’s ac, i tell my mom. i go home and inadvertently ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 16, 2025

every timeline I've had on AI has been wrong

including my current internal timeline, probably

Exigence for writing: this year’s AMC cutoffs are ridiculous (I didn’t qualify). DHR almost 150, almost 300 perfect scores, etc. This year also is the first year where GPT is good enough to AK. Co...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 15, 2025

join zjs fanclub for updates

TL;DR join the zjs fanclub discord https://discord.gg/ur4WwfJspm for updates on the blog. I decided to make a more systematic way of publishing blog posts instead of copy-pasting to all my friends...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 14, 2025

college apps, part 2, i guess??

so i was looking at some gaokao tests...

A while back I looked at gaokao problems for fun. TL;DR something like gaokao seems like a nice thing to have, even if the china system puts too much weight on it. But before I start, some thoug...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 13, 2025

musings on teaching

harder than it seems

sometimes during physics class, the teacher explains something, and everyone nods about, and then he asks if anyone has any questions, do they understand, etc, they nod too. then the teacher contin...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 10, 2025

M, IT, IT.

the best in-person competitive programming contest

I went to MITIT this weekend, on a team with JW and RX, both campers. Saturday: I get to MIT at like 4, and at like 5 I find one of my MIT physics friends T and hang out for a bit, he gives me a t...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 9, 2025

some notes on alex's discussion of cp community

"nothing works when you're in high school..." (maybe?)

So, I’ll just jot down some interesting things that happened in the last 30 minutes of discussion (when I popped in). There were a lot of orz TJ kids. I think they bussed in like a few teams all t...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 8, 2025

my physics journey

from failing fma 3x to usapho gold

So I’ve been learning physics for quite a while, and this year I got USAPhO gold. Here, I’ll share some thoughts on my journey in physics for anyone interested. To be honest, I don’t really rememb...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 5, 2025

what are colleges really looking for?

tl;dr orz != admit, but rng = admit

Here, I have two hypothetical college apps awards. One took me the greater part of 3 years of grinding, and the other took me around 5 minutes. Can you guess which? USA Computing Olympiad ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 3, 2025

PUMaC 2025 results

:facepalm:

So results came out! We are worse walrus, div B. Power round: 125 points, 17th div B, 40th overall. Team round: 19th. Overall team rank: 24th. Pretty good. We did a lot better on team round tha...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 3, 2025

PUMaC 2025

my last HS team math competition, ever, probably

Above: 1564 tigers can fit on the first floor of Nassau Hall. Some redactions have been made, should be unredacted after Jan 16th 2026 (remind me if it is after Jan 16 and you see this). On nov. ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on December 2, 2025

its been a while

"i really regret not blogging"

title, really. I plan on reviving this blog actually. Looking back at my past blogs, it’s kinda nice to know, like, kinda what i did… and looking back, I do regret not blogging at all. I’ve been ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on November 25, 2025

thoughts on sat and fbhc

does life ever get any better

road map after sat: first, FBHC Round 1 So, did sat and fbhc today. Kinda tiring ngl. SAT was fine, not gonna say much but kinda trolled reading mod 2 and math was kinda trivial (de...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on October 5, 2024

CNOI 2024 day 2 thoughts

did so badly...

Just virtualed CNOI2024 Day 2, did pretty bad (110 today, 202 total for CNOI 2024 = barely above silver cutoff :sob:) my log: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5:...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on September 8, 2024

CNOI 2024 day 1 thoughts

didn't do too badly...

Just virtual’d chinese NOI 2024 day 1, did ok (202 total). my live log of what happened: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 05:00 read A 04:33 mindsolve 12pts on A, th...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on September 1, 2024

thoughts before noi virtual

im dumb im dumb im dumb im dumb im dumb

Ok, did a bit of nontrivial stuff between the last blog and now. School is fine, mostly worried about apush, ap lit, and ap chem. My ap lit teacher likes poetry and half of the stuff he says goes ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on September 1, 2024

finally somewhat productive

contest failures ono

Oops looks like I didn’t blog for a week… Didn’t really feel like it, plus nothing really to write about tbh (tl;dr is got sick for a few days and didn’t rly do anything lmaoo) ucup was on saturda...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on August 25, 2024

another weekend of idling

Didn’t really do anything last weekend besides play card games ig. It feels like everyone around me is grinding, and I’m not. I’m actually not grinding at all now… There are people who have done m...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on August 13, 2024

Some faq about usaco, for all your usaco q/a needs

why does everyone ask me for advice aaahhhhh

Since I have gotten an influx of USACO questions lately, here goes (will try to update): First, your question is probably answered in USACO Guide or the USACO Rules Page. Please read those first, ...

Posted by jasonzeng124 on August 6, 2024

no time

or just too much to do.......

Summer is almost running out… Since the last blog post, I haven’t done any math/physics/cp. And there’s so much I still have to learn. Instead of grinding, I’ve been working on image preprocessing...