Cristofor's blog

By Cristofor, 10 months ago, In English

Hello, CodeForces!

Recently, one of my students had a really bad contest. Even though he worked really hard in the last couple months, he could not pass an important qualifying round of an arguably easy, new, Romanian contest. The first 4 'official' contestants qualified, and sadly he was the fifth. He was really upset after the contest, and had a hard time gathering enough motivation/discipline to continue working, because there were scenarios in his head such as "what if this will happen in training camp?" or "what not passing had a really bad turn on my future?"

Today, I am going to share with you all a simple method that can help you get over a bad contest or just motivate you to work more in general. Keep in mind, I am not a specialist in this domain, I am only a teacher with experience, so there might be better methods out there, but throughout the years I have seen that what you are about to read worked best on many of the my students. I advise you to also read this great self deception blog, as it will surely help you too.

I am sure that many of you have had issues in the past having consistency in working, after all we are not perfect. From time to time there are just days in which we feel really bad about ourselves for no apparent reason, but keep in mind I said apparent. There is a reason behind everything, nothing is at random. I feel like the top three most common reasons for not wanting to work are: having a recent bad contest, getting bullied by friends based on past results, and too much dopamine in your brain. So, I will tell you how I would get over all of these scenarios.

Having a recent bad contest

This is a really common thing. Nobody can have a perfect accuracy in contest and always be the best, not even the top legendary grandmasters such as tourist and Benq. The thing that will help you most is upsolving problems / reading the editorial right after the contest. This is a relatively sneaky thing that tricks your brain into "coming at peace" with the contest. Not only does it do that, but it also helps you:

  • acknowledge your mistakes in-contest

  • see what you should have prepared better for

  • improves your mentality and mental strength, as having the courage to read editorials and upsolve right after a contest which you are sad about trains your brain to quit the sadness quickly, and turns it into productivity.

Getting Bullied

It happens in Romania a lot, but less in other countries. Result-based bullying can be the extremely destructive if it reaches to you. The best thing you can do is either work so hard you constantly outperform the bullies in contests, and use their bullying as your drive, or tell a parent/teacher/psychologist about the fact that you cannot take it in any longer. It is ok to not want to tell a person you know about this, so I have provided you with this hotline in case you feel more comfortable talking it over the phone with a specialist.

Excessive Dopamine

The worse possible one of the first three is getting addicted to random things. I am not only talking about substances like alcohol and nicotine, but also about short, brain-washing videos, that gradually decrease your concentration capacity, your motivation, your power of will, your results and even the ability to interact functionally and not get bored after 2 minutes.

To keep it short, when your brain sees something/does something it likes/wants, it releases dopamine (not oxytocin, that is released when loving a person, and it doesn't really affect you academically). It is the mechanism that creates addictions. Many people release insane amounts of dopamine when using their devices in the form of "entertainment". I am talking about that relaxed feeling you get, when watching a YouTube video on the couch Sunday afternoon, with nothing left to do. The sad thing is that for most children/teenagers, this "Sunday afternoon" is not only Sunday afternoon, but more like whenever they feel like somebody is not looking at them, might that be a teacher in class or a parent at home. The hardest part of quitting this is realizing this type of behaviour is from all possible points of view wrong and distructive towards your future, so try using this blog as a signal.

Whenever you feel like not practicing in your free time, and you want to entertain yourself on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or any other social media, just sleep. Lack of sleep is also an extremely common issue in peoples lives, so you probably felt tired and miserable anyway. Even something short like half an hour of good sleep can boost you concentration. At the end of the day, what do you get by staring on your phone without being able to stop? Nothing good! But by practicing CP, not only do you gain knowledge, but you also build a routine, you discipline yourself, and these sort of thing are an important quality in whatever else topic you work in / study.

Other reasons

This is on a more general note. I find William Lin's videos have a huge impact on my students, to some sort of extent, he is their idol. I have observed the fact that he is well known throughout the community, and nobody hates him. Seeing other people practice and succeed subconsciously tricks you into thinking the same about yourself, so if you set a goal to succeed in CP and you watch a couple of his videos, motivation should come to you in a flash.

This was quite about what I had to say about motivation. I repeat, I am not an specialist in this domain, I am only an experienced teacher.

Happy coding, and I am wishing you all a positive delta!

Cristofor

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +121
  • Vote: I do not like it

By Cristofor, history, 10 months ago, In English

Hello, CodeForces!

I am Cristofor Zaharescu, a teacher from Alunis, Romania. Very few of my more advanced students have started to solve JOI open, final round and summer camp contests. After not that much time of solving these sort of tasks, they have observed one thing — the fact that JOI editorials are pretty hard to find.

They tried looking on announcement CodeForces blogs, but not all problems have a really detailed user-made comments, which can sometimes be useless if the problems is really hard and some key details are being left out. Plus, translating JOI slide-shows by hand is also a non practical thing to do, as translations are commonly inaccurate, and text selection in JOI editorials does not allow you to select numbers in the slide-show's text.

I have decided to make this blog an organized place where anybody can find JOI explanations easily, but I need your help.

If you have the time to do this, please make a separate comment for every JOI problem you are willing the solution of, or comment a link that send to a good solution. I am going to be pasting links of comments I will receive inside of well-organized spoilers I will sadly not be reviewing the accuracy of solutions to the problems I did not solve, as that might just be the biggest spoiler one could get. Please alarm me if you notice a wrong, or troll-like "solution".

Layout of the spoilers : "JOI SOLUTIONS" -> Type of round -> Year -> Day (optional) -> Problems' names -> link to comment with solution.

JOI SOLUTIONS

This layout is exactly like the one on Kilonova.

Thank you for contributiong towards this project!

With respect,

Cristofor

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +18
  • Vote: I do not like it

By Cristofor, history, 11 months ago, In English

Hello, CodeForces!

I want to change my username on an alternative account, but I dont know my password.

Due to students working on my laptop from time to time, I don't use Google auto-save passwords on CP websites. But I have come to the realization that I forgot my CodeForces password. I usually press the "login with Google" button when logging in, so i don't manually type my CodeForces password every time I log in. With age, memory gets worse, and sadly it is also starting to affect me. Now, when I try to change my password, I can not, because entering the current password is a required feature of this website. Either that, or I am wrong.

Anyways, here is a screenshot I took to show you all what my "General" setting slide looks like:

Screenshot:

As you can see, there is no button saying something similar to "Send me a link to email because I literally forgot my password and need to change it." I hope that someone will help me change my password.

Maby I am just wrong, and if I am, please dont hate. If there is a solution to this I will this blog down.

Happy coding, and I wish you all a positive rating delta!

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +14
  • Vote: I do not like it

By Cristofor, 13 months ago, In English

Hello, Codeforces!

Wonderful news came to me a couple of weeks ago, about the fact that JBOI 2023 will be held in Skopje, Macedonia, from November 24th-27th 2023. Knowing the contest is not so far away in the future, what is your country's team?

Also, feel free to make a prediction about who will win the JBOI.

Have a pleasant day, and keep coding!

Cristofor

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +25
  • Vote: I do not like it

By Cristofor, history, 15 months ago, In English

Hello, CodeForces!

I am Cristofor Zaharescu. I am a teacher, in the Liceul Tehnologic Alunis. I was rather intrigued about the fact that not so many newbies get to examinate certain problems rounds, which in my eyes if quite a foolish thing for the future of the CodeForces community. I feel like normalizing Newbies test in rounds will succeed in the following things:

  • Boosting self confidence. Knowing you are important, and the fact that you can contribute in rounds, is something that can really upper your mettle in resolving wordproblems, making it easier to improve and having a higher chance to perform fairly well in future contests, as well as lowering the likelihood of giving up on programming competitively.
  • Experience. The fact that people get to test problems early on is quite meaningful, due to the fact that, when the Newbies will improve, go up a couple of colours, and need to test harder problems, the feedback they will give is going to be more appropriate, so contests turn out to be better.
  • Getting to know other people. Testing a round can be an "interactive" process, as there will not only be one overall tester. People can make new friends, work-buddies, and being aware of the fact that you are not alone in such a big subject helps maintain a healthy future. Also, working with other people in ICPC-style contests is enjoyable.
  • Difficulty of the first problem. I myself have seen numerous problems that, theoretically, are quite easy for beginers, yet that require some strategies one wouldn't know at that level. A study has shown that having an easier problem in a genuinely hard exam gets student to obtain higher grades rather than a less challenging exam where none of the problems are exactly easy. This happens due to the fact that, no matter how easy the problem is, solving a problem uppens your confidence and motivation during the assessment. For a better understanding, let me give you an example:

Let's say we have a test where there are 3 problems: A, B and C. The average student is much more likely to score a higher amount of points if the ratings are (800 — 1200 — 1600), rather than (1000 — 1100 — 1300).

Now, an obvious inquiry you might have is "Well, what if they copy all of the problems and participate on an alternativ account?". First of all, the beginner tester should only have access to the first one or two problems, which he could already solve in a relatively small amount of time, it would not make much of a difference. The first problems can be found on Telegram copying servers or YouTube anyways, so if a person has delusive intentions, they could achieve them anyways.

To shortly conclude all I have stated, this change in the community, from where I am standing, will do greater good than bad.

Thank you for taking your time to read my oppinion,

Happy coding!

Cristofor

P.S.: If I made any spelling/grammar mistakes, or repeated myself to many times, please tell me. My english is something I am willing to work on in the near future.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +40
  • Vote: I do not like it

By Cristofor, history, 21 month(s) ago, In English

I will keep this simple. For MikeMirzayanov : Unknown Language Round 1 editorial please!

For Tachyon : Unknown Language Round 1 editorial please!

I hope that you will see this message.

Cristofor.

Full text and comments »

  • Vote: I like it
  • +18
  • Vote: I do not like it