Hi from the problems people!

We answered some questions about competitive programming, lessons, and life, and hope it offers a glimpse into our being a post-competitive programmer in college.

### Favorite data structure?
- Peter: a bit (0 or 1, not Binary Indexed Tree)
- Sam: stack
- Alex: link cut cactus~~ slay tree
- Keta: vector
- Jason: was not at the meeting
- Claire: array
- Maria: treap

### Why do you do competitive programming?
- Keta: It's really fun to both solve problems and compete with people.
- Claire: I like feeling challenged and seeing progress. Also solving problems with others can be super fun!
- Peter: It's fun.
- Sam: Algorithms are weird and interesting.
- Alex: Because I'm a masochist
- Maria: For fun.

### What would you tell [yourself when you started programming competitively]?

- Keta: Enjoy the process and try to practice as much as you can. You will later be looking forward to holidays to have more time to solve problems.
- Claire: Practicing gets easier, starting is the hardest part, quality > quantity of practice
- Peter: Enjoy the problems and don't stress out over how fast you're improving.
- Sam: KEEP CORNER CASES (like n = 1) IN MIND WHEN DEBUGGING!! This is how you will lose 90 points during a USACO Camp 2022 contest!
- Alex: Stop worrying about how to train and just do more problems!!
- Maria: Do more virtual contests to develop contest strategy.

### How much time do you spend doing CP?
- Claire: I take contests on weekends recreationally, and try to make my minimal problem-writing obligations
- Peter: Less and less.
- Sam: Back in high school, I did problems regularly throughout the week, and would try my best to participate in most weekend contests. Now the time I spend on CP is a function asymptotically approaching zero...
- Alex: I did CP somewhat regularly during high school, but it was decreased quite a bit since college hit.
- Maria: not much.

### What's your biggest mistake in your CP career (so far)?

- Keta: Not practicing efficiently enough in 12th grade and skipping IOI. + avoiding solving constructive/mathy problems (EVEN DURING PRACTICING) and not working on my weak areas
- Claire: Strategically, being stubborn/not reading solutions earlier. More meta, attaching my dignity to my performance to the point where I felt guilty whenever I wasn't practicing.
- Sam: I always spend way too much time trying to find solutions to really hard problems and running out of time to do the easier subtasks in the process. Or I start coding a really complicated program and run out of time while debugging, losing all partial credit for the problem.
- Alex: Honestly CP has been great! There were things that I could have done better, but I am overall happy with where things are.

### Favorite CP memory?

- Claire: Solving problems on my bed during Zoom school; also staying up to take random contests with friends at ungodly hours
- Alex: Haha same with claire about the last point. Drinking coffee at USACO Camp at 5am and doing AGC virtuals with music blasting when there's another team selection test the next day (or I guess samw day!)
- Keta: Participating at contests with friends from KFC and OLYMPIADS (meeting people there >>) !!
- Maria: EGOI, since it was my first in-person CP contest. After the contest was over, I stayed up late (~midnight) with my teammates.
- Sam: Doing late-night contests at USACO camp!

### What have you learned or gained from CP, now that you're in college?
- Claire: resilience, confidence, coding fluency, friends
- Keta: Interest in algorithms, problem-solving skills and great friends :)
- Maria: Coding skills
- Alex: My awesome friends who I met through CP :D

### What's your vision or hope for M(IT)^2?
- Alex: Honestly, just seeing all the super cool CP ppl I've met online and meeting (and orzing) them in person is super cool. There has historically lacked big in-person CP contest like there are for math, and I really hope M(IT)^2 helps change that fact!
- Claire: Establishing a CP community and decreasing the barrier to starting