Reflection | Three Years Later, I Decided to Try Again

"You have to make peace with your past eventually — but some things you need to end yourself."

During a contest last year, a teammate suddenly asked me: “Why do you do competitive programming?” I answered without thinking: “To get a job, obviously. What else is a medal good for?” He paused, then said: “Can’t you just like it? Isn’t it fun?”

I hesitated for a second, then pushed the question aside. After the contest I went back to preparing to study abroad, grinding language tests, grinding my GPA, thinking about research and career plans. The meaning of competition no longer seemed to matter. And so that question got buried in a corner of my memory.

It was only recently that I remembered it — and realized I had never actually answered it.

I suddenly thought of myself at thirteen or fourteen.

Back then I wasn’t thinking about rankings, or about what competition would do for my future. I was simply absorbed in the pleasure of solving problems. At night I would lie in my tent tracing ideas on the wall with my finger, running possible solutions through my head. Free period after class, evening study hall, the midday nap — I was always racing to get to the computer lab. Even meals became rushed, because my head was almost always full of problems. My scratch paper was covered in contest formulas and half-finished trains of thought, and I lived for that moment of shouting “oh my god, that’s beautiful” when a solution finally clicked.

But as the contests got more serious, placement and results started to dominate everything. I stopped enjoying the satisfaction of solving a problem and started being anxious about winning and losing. Competition was no longer a pure challenge; it became one battle after another that I could not afford to lose. I was afraid of failing, afraid the effort wouldn’t pay off, afraid I wasn’t good enough.

And then I lost one important contest after another.

My high-school competition years ended in defeat. Not because I lacked talent, and not because the environment was bad, but because I never gave everything I had, never kept my composure, never reached a level I could look back on without regret. Maybe I was afraid of failing, maybe I just wasn’t resolute enough back then — under the pressure and the anxiety I slowly stopped moving forward, and in the end I walked away unsatisfied.

In college I tried to look ahead and told myself competition was in the past. I put my weight on studying abroad, GPA, research, job hunting. Along the way it felt like I had made up for the disappointment of the gaokao, like I was heading in the right direction. But competition stayed an unfinished story — a book closed in a hurry, with the ending still unwritten.

Lately, though, I’ve noticed something. Whenever a pile of tasks and pressure builds up, when I don’t want to study but don’t want to waste the day either, I instinctively pull out a problem to think about. Even with no ranking or score to train for, I still enjoy the collision of ideas.

"Maybe I was never tired of competition. I was tired of the pressure the old me was carrying."

Three years have passed. I am nowhere near the level I was at back then, and the road ahead is still uncertain. Research? A master’s? A PhD? An internship? A job? The practical questions have to be faced sooner or later.

But maybe, before I make the final choice, I can try once more, and finish the competition road I left unfinished in high school.

"Some roads, you only find out what's on them by walking them."

This time I just want to feel the pure joy of solving problems again, and to see whether the person I was back then had really reached the end of the line.

Whatever the result, this time I want to give myself an answer.

Mostly inspired by this article: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/12107259459 ↗