How did I get my first 2* badge in CodeChef ? | How difficult it is to get 2* ranking in CodeChef ? | How to Improve in Competitive Programming

    So, I have recently achieved 2* ranking in CodeChef. but, I'm not incredibly excited or happy about that. because I think getting 2* wasn't much difficult at all. 

Que: How much work I'd put in to get 2* in CodeChef?

    Tbh, I made my account in CodeChef in 2018 when I entered in the first year of my college degree.

    I wasn't serious initially till this very year that is 2020. I was living in a hostel and as all the hostellers know and non-hosteller would've perhaps, heard that it's quite a difficult to focus and concentrate towards your goal seriously. because every day you face a lot of distractions all around you. you've PubG to play with your friends all day round, sometimes you just play cricket the entire day, someday you won't be feeling like anything productive to do. You just want to sit in your room for the whole fucking day because you've habituated a freaking lazy living in a hostel. 

    Even after these many distractions suppose you've decided to focus and a moment later your friend shows up and asks you for hangout and boom..all your decision-making algorithms suddenly stop working out and you become ready with/without hesitation. 

    Anyway, I started practicing seriously only some months before after lockdown's laid on. so, I'd just practiced around 3-4 basic problems and still my rating was 0. But, in this May 2020 Long challenged I participated to check my level and I almost solved the first problem COVID19. where it asked to find the maximum infected persons from corona and it wasn't much hard too. and I was getting the correct result in ide but after submitting it showed WA. So I tried for the next 5-6 times. but all in vain. it was still showing up WA. so, I stopped it altogether. and when I opened my account after the end of the contest to check the editorial I was amazed! as I show the message "Congratulations Tirth, You've earned 2* badge" and the reason it was showing was that for my engagement in CodeChef. and a considerable amount of time that I spent reading articles and editorial. 

    So to conclude, Participating in the contests esp. long challenges and solving problems helps a lot for improving the rank even if your solution got WAs. and putting aside this ranking thing. I think the most crucial aspect is LEARNING that you get. even if you solve 0 problems, the very fact that you tried your ass off separated you from 80% of engineers who don't even start. And frankly speaking the experience of Upsolving the question once the contest ends, improves your coding skills considerably to the great level.

    So keep patience and keep practicing daily without losing momentum and that coding spark, that spark will ignite you every freaking day.

Happy Coding. :)