Competitive Programming memories from University

Looking back on the days in college where I felt very elated - happy and confident solving programming challenges as a sport.

NMPC was one of the contests, abbreviated from NIST Monthly Programming Contest. It was introduced in my third year at college and was organized only 3 times in 2 years even though the name indicated otherwise. The Sankalp coding contest on the other hand, was an yearly contest and was organized without fail.

Sankalp was a 2 day festival and the coding contest was held at night on the first day of the event. Participants would enjoy the cultural activities during the first day and then have a light dinner and get ready to spend the night at the computer lab. The coding club members would have made all necessary arrangements. It was held on the hackerrank platform during my time. In the first year, I remember trying to find out as much as possible about the event as I was neither allowed nor capable of participating. The event was open to students from 2nd year onwards.

In my 2nd year, I took part in the event. Before the contest, there were a few known names from the third year students who had the highest chances of winning. They were just on another level. I went into the contest feeling like a champ on my own and having no pressure and nothing to lose. Over the course of the night, I was not only performing the best from my batch, I was for some time in top 3 on the leaderboard. By the morning hours, the seniors surpassed me. I cant remember accurately but I may have taken the 4th or 5th position. This gave me huge confidence and I remember the walk from the computer lab to the hostel in morning at 6 AM was an amazing feeling.

In 3rd year, I was already part of the coding club by the time of the contest. I had favourable odds to win the thing that year. There were others from my batch as well who had equally solic chance as well. So I went in with lots of anxiety, pressure to perform and expectations to meet. This year I didn’t enjoy any of the rest of the cultural festival arrangements. The night was a hectic one and the there were a lot of ups and downs in the leaderboard throughout the night. Somehow by the morning hours, I was on top and took the first position even though it was a close call till the last 30 minutes in the morning hours. The walk home after winning was even better. When I went back to my hostel, I remember waking up my roommate to tell him that I won. The second and third positions were grabbed by my fellow coding club members.