Pretty Bad Practice

Today we had another practice (with Purdue and Duke), we got 3rd getting only one problem. Purdue and Duke both managed to get two. I think we did poorly versus what we could have done on the problem set.

Alan dove into a simulation problem that he probably should have planned on paper more. That basically took his entire five hours. Celestine and I worked together on H and got it. On D I thought I had it but didn't manage to solve it. We didn't put much work into problems we could have gotten, and a lot into problems we didn't have a chance on.

I think that this is a good time to have this learning experience for us. Going into world finals we can't change which problems we will be able to solve and how long it will take us to solve them, but we can change how we play the game. I think that we will go in with a focus on playing the game correctly.

This also really helps because we know what it is like to get our asses kicked by a problem set. We aren't going to just get frustrated by how many other teams are solving.

I am still worried about what sort of mind set I will be in during the actual contest. I think the key is really in the first 30-45 minutes. We need to get started with the correct problems in the correct direction. The first problem we start on needs to be the easy problem, and we need to knock it down. In soccer it is always important for the goal keeper to get a good touch on the ball early in the game, we need the exact same thing.

The one thing we can't really simulate is the intensity at an actual competition. You really want to go full steam ahead, but we need to slow down and get things right. It isn't about saving 5 minutes of console time here and there. Our one and only goal should be to not make the huge mistakes, like miss reading problems, trying a hard problem, or jumping into a simulation too early.

I'm ready to be in Stockholm and not have to worry about any of my homework for a few days. CMU is great, but the workload coupled with lots of 5+ hours practices is really draining.