#4 Gratifying Experience

It was my 2^nd year of stay in my high school at Philippine Science High School- Central Mindanao Campus when one of the subjects that I needed to tackle was computer programming. Of course at first, I didn’t know a single thing about programming. I was absolutely empty minded on what to do. After a few lectures of that subject, I did felt that I was really into programming. All I needed to do was to read in advance to gain more information about it. Well, I did literally read a book or two cover to cover just to have knowledge on how programming really works. After I finished reading it, my mind started to tack ideas from the book like from simple “Begin and end statements” to “recursive functions” and so on. Well, my teacher didn't expect me to learn those many kinds of idea in just a short period of time. He did applauded me for the excellent performance that I was giving him in the field that he was teaching us.

                The performance that I had been showing off gave me an opportunity to join in computer programming contests. Well, that was too much for me to handle because I would be one of the contestant that will bring the name of ourschool along with my teammate Danica. There was an event held in IIT called ICCF (Iligan City Computing Fair, I’m not really sure if that is what ICCF stands for). One category for the contests of the said event was computer programming. A week before the contest, me and my teammate did a lot of practicing in solving programming problems. Of course at that time, we were so confident that we will win the trophy. But a few moments before the contest, we were informed that college students our opponents would be college students. That lowered my confidence in winning because at that time, I was still in 3^rd year high school and I was competing with college students already who  have more knowledge about programming than I do. When the competition started, my hands were shaking because of I was really nervous. I can’t even concentrate on what to do and how to manage my time properly in answering programming problems. In short, I was devastated at that time. At the end of the competition, my adviser was really disappointed for my performance but quitting didn’t occur into my mind. I swore to my adviser and to myself that I will win the next competition that I will be joining.

                Few months later, my adviser told me again that there would be another contest that I would be joining that would be held in Davao City. The moment I received the news, I did practice harder in solving programming problems from dawn to evening, That was how so disparate I was to win the contest. While traveling, I questioned myself, what if I still can’t win this time? If I will lose again, this will just prove of how a failure I am. Still, my confidence didn’t go off that I would not return empty handed. So during the contest, a set of programming problems were given to us. As I opened one by one the papers being handed to us, things rushed into my mind on what kind of problems would come out  and how difficult the problems could be(by the way, my opponents this time are high school students). As I read the problem, I knew that I can solve this things right away because I have already encountered similar problems like this. As a matter of fact, I was the first one to finish solving the problems. While other students were still solving, I just played minesweeper and solitaire on the computer in from of them just to pressure them. That was how confident I was that I would win that time. At the end of the competition, winners were announced and as I hoped that I will win first place, I didn't. But as the second placer was announced my name echoed. I really don’t know what didn’t went right in solving those problems. Still, I was happy because I did win in that said competition. Well that same thing still happened on the national level of the said event. Being so confident yet clumsy, I just ranked 3^rd place. Lol.