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.
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jayjay:~ [exit 0]
$ j cf
/home/jayjay/dev2/comp/oj/cf
jayjay:~/dev2/comp/oj/cf [exit 0]
$ ls
2023 2024 2025 prac2023 prac2024 prac2025
jayjay:~/dev2/comp/oj/cf [exit 0]
$ mkdir 2026
jayjay:~/dev2/comp/oj/cf [exit 0]
$ cd 2026
my terminal screen as of 5 minutes ago
I’ve been doing competitive programming since 2022, and this might be the last serious year that I compete (maybe, I’ll still problemset or something?). At least, I’ve resolved that if I go to MIT, I won’t compete anymore (there are so many other things that are probably better for me to spend time on; And I won’t make ICPC anyway).
My parents have been telling me to quit competitive programming for a while now, probably since I camped actually. And indeed I have been grinding significantly less compared to sophomore year. But I’m still going to do USACO, and try to camp (or ioi???) one last time. Perhaps it is due to some sort of nostalgia for camp? After all, I don’t really feel the same way for physics (where I also have a chance maybe) and I don’t care about IOI all that much either. Extrinsically, camping is really not that useful for me, after all 2x camp \approx 1x camp for most practical purposes. But I don’t really care, I’ll go for camp anyway.
For the past 4 or 5 years, competitive programming has been a large part of my life. I spent a lot of time discussing problems on usaco server, and did a lot of cp competitions with friends (or solo), and spent a lot of time grinding, and problemsetting, and etc. Most of my friends are/were competitive programmers. I’ll certainly miss all of it after I go.
Over the past few years I’ve definitely done a lot more in cp than I ever expected to, or was willing to put in the effort to do. Maybe I should try for GM (I once promised a friend I’d get GM before quitting) but div1s are too few and I usually sleep through them. Or IOI, but it feels like too much effort to grind and my chances are pretty low, anyway.
Doing CP has taught me many things, and has many benefits. Perhaps one of the biggest is that logic and reasoning and problem-solving, which you learn in CP (I think more than any other olympiad), generalizes very well to other domains (eg math, physics, chem, etc), which helps a lot.
Another thing you quickly get to know very well is that there are always people better than you, no matter who you are. When I was like silver I was like “how are these plats so strong”, and then I got plat and I was like “how are campers this strong”. And then at camp “rain is so strong” and then you look at ioi leaderboards and see zky ak’ing IOI in like half time. In any case I’ve had to learn to live with the fact that there are people better than you and you’ll never be as strong as them. Which is ok.
And perhaps one thing honors students in high schools somewhat internalize is that it is a competition to see who is better, and it’s important to win this competition and get into a good college and do well in life or something. And this is not a good thing to internalize, because it is not true. So you really shouldn’t try to be the best in your high school, or get into 4 different international olympiads, or become the next trillionaire. It’s much better to focus on getting better yourself.
And the cp community is also really nice, I’ve met a lot of good friends there. Perhaps, as they say, “blah blah blah friends we met along the way”.
