Welcome to SDBlogs - My most memorable contest

As you probably know me from my main website, I have a long experience in the field of problem solving, as I am one of the most renowned competitive programming, data structures and algorithms coaches in the world, my work has reached out to thousands of students worldwide both directly as well as through the projects I coordinated and took part of. With this blog, I want to showcase various aspects of my work which are not known to the general public, but also talk about various other hobbies and passions I have, including traveling, sports, games but also various life lessons and events I didn't talk about before yet I am remembering them fondly to this day.

As this is the first post I make here, I will use it to talk about one of the most memorable days I have ever lived in my career as a seasoned competitive programmer, when I came back from a really dire situation to earn my first top 10 finish in a Codeforces Round and gain the title of Master for the first time ever.

It was a random Thursday in late October and as it was customary at that time, I was getting ready for the day's Codeforces round, a Educational Round which had been at the time one of my favorite types of rounds because I was doing better in them compared to other formats Codeforces rounds take place at. I have been trying for the last few months to reach 2100 rating and I knew this can be a good opportunity to get closer to the goal while also having a good performance along the way. Little did I know what would happen next.

The round started well, as I have always been good at solving easy problems fast and this round wasn't an exception. However, as I was trying C and D, I got stuck on both of them and as time passed by, I was afraid that I will not do well and I started thinking in circles which is not ideal, so I decided to use the fact that the weather was mild and sunny to take a brief walk around the house and breathe some fresh air. Obviously, the round was only two hours long so I had to get back to the screen but something remarkable happened. After that moment, everything started clicking and I managed to solve C and D quickly, and E not long after.

The remaining problems were too hard, but the result was looking great, as I managed to solve 5 problems fast without any wrong attempts, which allowed me to have a really strong result and potentially my dream coming true.

After waiting for the hacking session to pass (while checking my codes anxiously as I had bad experiences with getting hacked in these rounds in the past, thus losing important points -- there will be a blog about this later as well), the party began and one day later, the change was official, as I became master for the first time!

Even more so, it was a top 10 placement in the round which made it even more impressive as I managed to perform better than almost anyone at this level, something I could only manage to do a few times during my career.

Here is also an image as it looked like back in the day!

Even though this contest seemed to be just an ordinary good performance, it taught me so many valuable lessons, making it a story I mention with pride years later, be it to my students, to anyone who is looking for hope even in less than ideal situations and in general, for anyone who wants to believe more in themselves.

Probably the most important thing to learn from this is to never give up and to always take a step back to assess the situation when things seem to never have any solution. Sometimes, thinking twice and using another perspective to deal with whatever comes in our way is better than rushing to find a solution without success.