I started CP during my college along with the development. During those days, I used to solve many problems on platforms like CC, CF, GFG, and LC, also I participated in Google Kickstart and got a world rank under 800. Participated in many hackathons, and won 1st prize in some of them. Was actively participating and project mentoring in many open sources like SWOC, KWOC, GSSOC, and CW. Learned a lot of backend and frontend languages, and made good projects.

Then I got a placement and started my corporate life. After some days, I had to drop all these due to time constraints. This was one of the worst decisions that I took in my life. But now, I want to restart CP again because:

• I've noticed my mind isn't as sharp as it used to be.

• I miss the thrill of solving tough problems and want to enjoy that feeling again. Improving my CP ratings will be a rewarding challenge.

• I don't have any good friends in the Bangalore location so just getting bored on weekends.

• I want to switch my job and I feel I have forgotten a lot of concepts.

Sharing my story here is my way of finding the motivation to dive back into competitive programming with renewed energy. Maybe you will not find this post very interesting but whenever I will see this post and comments, it will motivate me to do more and more CP.

Here's a piece of advice for college students: never stop doing competitive programming (CP) even after you will get a job. It's easy to lose touch with CP once you're in a job, but if you ever want to restart CP or switch jobs, you might find it surprisingly hard. Even solving the simplest problems can feel like the toughest one, that's what hurting me the most.