365 Day Streak and Recap of 2024
Overview
Hello Codeforces! Hope all is well. I just hit 365 days in a row on Codeforces! I attached an image, but if you want to see so yourself, you would have to be in a similar time zone to USA Central Time. I will be addressing questions you may have about it here, or in the comments. I will also go over what happened in the past year, to get me from 1357 to 1832 in the past year. This will include personal tips, as well as some things you shouldn't do.
365 Day Streak
Before you put this in the comments: "You only solved 800s!", let me get this clear to everyone that I originally did just go for 800s to keep my streak. It did help for my speed while solving the easier problems, but this isn't that important. However, it is very hard to keep a streak for the whole year. There are vacations, illnesses, and other things that life brings us that we can't predict, and it is harder than you might think. The goal of this streak was to keep me interested in coding, which I will go over more below. When I don't have school, I really try practicing problems of my level, in which the persistence really carried. If you have any questions about it, please comment it! I might have missed something that would be important for you to know.
Recap of 2024
Before 2024
I was learning coding from X-Camp. Shout out to them, as that was where it all started. My goal was to keep advancing through the USACO divisions. I passed USACO Bronze, but failed on the December 2023 USACO Silver contest. That was really depressing, as all of my friends had passed. It was a relatively easier contest too. That made me committed to pass Silver.
Early 2024
I decided to continue Codeforces as my method of practice. I was doing occasional contests while keeping up with school. However, I didn't prioritize coding at the time, just keeping my streak with solving 800s. As you might expect, I didn't pass Silver in any of the remaining contests. I committed to Codeforces, trying to improve there, so I wouldn't give up on coding. Not passing USACO Silver was sad, but I really enjoyed coding.
Summer 2024
As it was summer, I didn't have school. No school means I could practice coding a lot more. However, it is hard to stay focused on coding without other people to have fun and compete with. I really appreciate Alma_s for creating a Discord server to practice and improve, and it was working very well. The server still lasts and is active to this day. I made some good friends such as cowthecow and SpyrosAliv there, and we worked on coding a lot over the summer. We got pretty carried away. Shout out to Red0 for also helping me! The summer was a big improvement for me, as I practiced a lot. By the end of the summer, I got to around 1800. This, partly luck, but I was very satisfied with my improvement. (W cow gang)
September, October 2024
School had started again, and it was hard to focus on coding much. I kept my streak and did harder problems occasionally, but not much. I just had a few lucky contests that got me close to Candidate Master. I also went down occasionally, as I wasn't a real 1850 at the time.
November, Early December 2024
The USACO season was approaching, and I only focused on USACO Silver. It was very important to me. I spent my whole Thanksgiving break to work on it! Really appreciate cowthecow for working on it with me. It is hard to do be motivated alone! Recently, I passed USACO Silver on the December contest with a score of 800. The hard work payed off!
End of 2024
Since I passed USACO Silver, I'm trying to focus back on Codeforces, trying to improve myself to be CM. Shout out to everyone in the Discord server for being there for me! My goal is to keep improving, and maybe reach CM soon! Hopefully I can start going from solving 1800 problems to maybe 1900-2100 rated consistently? Would be nice :)
Overall Tips
- Be passionate about coding. It is hard to get anywhere if you aren't.
- Work with friends to improve. It is much harder without. You can find some friends on Codeforces like me if you don't have any local friends interested about coding.
- Never Give Up: We all have down times. If you give up, you will never get there. Keep pushing through!
- Seek help when needed: Codeforces is a great community. Me, as well as many other active Codeforces users try helping people when they post blogs on Codeforces. You aren't alone!
Thank you to everyone who has helped me along my way to passing USACO Silver, and to get such a respectable and consistent 1830 rating! I couldn't have done this without you. Thank you for reading, and have a good end of 2024 :D
A few links that you might want:
