Hello, I want to talk about an ongoing curse in Turkey. I am the most recent victim of that curse at it's 9th year. Let's start with the beginning.
2015-2016
Curse starts with kalimm taking 5th place in 2015. After that year, he tried his best and was in the team in 2016. But because of some reasons Turkey team wasn't able to participate IOI 2016. After that, the curse has started. You can look at this blog for details.
2017
I don't know who was at 5th place that year. But probably curse was active.
2018-2019
In 2018, TahsinEnesKuru got 5th place. 3/4 of that team was at their last year so he had a high chance of being in the team at 2019. But he didn't know, he was already cursed. He missed the team with a difference of 3/700. He also has a blog about it.
2020
At that year, AhmetKaan got 5th place. He was at his 1st year and he had 2 years left. But unfortunately, he already got the curse. In the next 2 years, he was at top 8, but not 5th. Because the curse has passed to someone else...
2021
Here, my story starts. I was at our junior olympiad before, and I got 1st place in almost all of junior contests. I had very high expectations of myself at my first year, but I was relax because I had 3 attempts. Our first contest is like a joke, and I won't talk about it. So I am starting with second contest. There are 4 gold medals, 8 silver medals, 12 bronz medals normally in that contest. I got 5th place because erray accidentally got some subtask and got 4th place. Our difference was little but I can't remember. That was closest I got to the gold medal.
In 2021 team selection contest, I got 5th place. Difference was really big, and I don't think I would have performed better than any of them at IOI. This year is the most boring part of the story. Someone has to be the 5th right?
2022
And this year is when things starts to get worse and worse for me. Last year I saw the great difference between myself and the ones that went to IOI. None of them graduated, so I was depressed. And the second contest of that year really didn't help. At first day, I misreaded a simple thing about a problem (replace and swap is similar in Turkish) so I wasn't able to solve the easiest problem of the day. I got 3/100 in that problem, and like top 20 got 100. I was at 18th place and that really shocked me. I dropped from high silver to low bronze? I know, it wasn't about my cp skills, it was about my reading skills but results were there and it was really depressing. Anyway, I performed kinda normal at second day and got 10th place. I was really depressed for a few months but I tried my best for Team Selection Contest even though I thought I was way behind the last years team.
One of the 2021's team members wasn't able to participate in team selection contest, so when contest started, I thought I had a chance. I got 3rd place first day, and another member of last years team performed really bad(we had around 100 points of difference), so if I don't be so bad at second day, I was at team. But guess what happened, I was sooo bad. There were 4 problems that day because idk, maybe they wanted to give a chance to people who performed bad at first day? Well if that was the plan they were successful. I solved the 4th problem really fast, because it was too easy. But after that, I made more and more mistakes. I found a solution for 1st problem in the first hour, so I started to write it. After that, I wasn't able to make it pass because my complexity wasn't intended and it had high constant. But instead of trying another problem or finding another solution to that problem, I tried to optimize constant. (After the contest I learned it wasn't even close) That took me around 3 hours. At last hour I was stressed, I just got some easy subtasks from 2nd and 3rd problem and my time was over. After the contest, I was at 6th place. Everyone solved both 1st and 2nd problem. I just couldn't accept the situation. I was really an idiot. And other annoying thing just happened. 1st place owner decided to not go to IOI, so 5th place was going instead. I had a 9/700 difference with 5th place. And that just made my 2nd 5th place.
2023
Finally my last year. I was doing olympiads longer than anyone participating at this point. But I had no hope in anything. Because last years tst really broken me. I am now at 12th grade and I also need to study for our university exams. I wasn't 0 at school lessons so university exams wasn't a problem for me. But I still had some desire to prove myself. I didn't wanted to end my olympiad life without achieving anything. Soo that years second contest came aaand I got 9th place. :p
Anyway, second contest isn't nearly as important as team. I learned lessons from my pervious experiences. At that point I didn't want to go to IOI. All I wanted is getting into team and proving myself. So first day happened and it was a joke. 1st day literally had no effects at results. Because 5 people got 300/300 and other 8 people got 278/300. 2 problems were at div2C level, and 78 points of the last problem was really easy. I got the last subtask but wth, it was only 22 points? Btw even people who wasn't at 278 was around ~250 so after the first day, only thing changed was we now had a 1 day tst.
So second day, there were 4 problems like last year but I don't want to say 4 problems. One of them literally was at div3A level. I don't know the purpose of that problem. Most of the participants solved it in 2-3 minutes. (But I needed those 2-3 minutes) I was able to solve one of them pretty quickly. And my favorite friend just returned for 4th problem. Misread. I solved the problem for subsequences but it had to be subarray. I was trying to solve a harder version. I failed at first and I fell into despair. At 3.5 hours, I was at 200 points. I was so stressed. And at one moment, I just cleared my mind. I tried my best and got 46 points from 3rd problem, and solved the harder version of the 4th problem. After I wrote it, I had only 5 minutes left, and I just realized I was solving the wrong problem. Luckily, for solving the subarray version i just needed to delete some lines, but while deleting probably I made a bug and my code got only 61. I only needed 5-10 minutes probably. And we started 5 minutes late because of the system. Anyway, after the contest we were asking for results, and I just realised I might be at 5th place again. And today results were announced, I am indeed at the 5th place.
Ending
This is where my story ends. 1st time was sad, 2nd time was devastating but 3rd was just funny. After that contest my 5 year old olympiad life ended. I am really happy, I was able to join this community. I couldn't managed to break this long ongoing curse but I am trusting next generations for it. Do your best, and be careful. Lastly I want to thank all of the people I met during this 5 years for making my high school way better. (I wanted to mention them, but I realised I needed to mention around 300 people so I just gave up)
-erkam (2018-2023)
