After a very stressful week in uni preparing for tests on complex topics, I could finally relax and do some Codeforces again.

Honestly, I feel like I have definitively improved — by applying what I learned on priority queues from Leetcode, I could solve B faster than usual, leaving more than one and a half hours for problem C. For problem C, although I didn't manage to finish the solution, I was very sure that I was really close to the answer. I was stuck for a while trying to find a testcase on which my attempts got stuck, which I only found with around 20 minutes left. In the last 20 minutes, I was scrambling to fix the testcase asap, but I got lost in my thoughts while rushing through everything, until eventually getting mixed up in what I'm even doing. Despite only solving two problems, I think this round went great for me and showed that I am making some kind of progress. I also noticed that if I take my time to try out solutions on paper for a few more minutes instead of rushing to write the code for it, I can stop myself from wasting a lot of time writing bad algorithms, overall resulting in faster accepted answers. Hopefully, I can solve C in the next Div. 2 — I feel like I can almost do it now.

There's only a week left until March, so I must step up my game if I want to reach 1200 by then. I will try to grind as many problems as possible to maximize my chances of reaching 1200 in time, but if I don't, I'll just keep trying next month.

'til the next contest!