9/5/2026
I like to think that I have grown a lot over the past year due to all of the circumstances I've gone through. But I'm still pondering whether I really changed that much, or if a lot of that growth has been undone by the developments over the past few months, as I find myself on a deja vu of where I was twelve months ago.
It's looking like the Latin American Astronomy Olympiad won't be held this year. It feels kinda ridiculous that the two times I should've made it to an official olympiad team I am unable to go because said team only goes to a regional olympiad and said olympiad is not held that exact same year after having a good run. It's so ironic how at one point I thought of pivoting to astronomy and now I won't even compete in anything astronomy related, and I'll most likely not work on anything astronomy related as I got rejected from the only summer internship I had been able to apply, probably because whomever was selecting the students realized that I wasn't an astronomy main and maybe because they don't care that much about olympiads in general.
Those two unfortunate developments, coupled with choking BL4S due to overcooking leave me without all of the main things I had planned for this year at the beginning of it… and I’m only left with the one I was trying to avoid just 5 months ago. IPhO has, as I wanted to avoid, taken over my mind, again. There have been some small positive signs of improvement with regards to last year in my prep. Therefore, after writing thousands of words as a cautionary tale to myself on why I should avoid ferociously clinging onto the hope of a competitive result as a matter of life and death, I seem to have yet again clung onto the hope of a competitive result as if it was the most important thing in my life.
I enjoy solving problems and getting better at it, and I think that this whole unexpected grind has actually been quite good on a purely personal level due to forcing me to structure my thinking in a slightly better way. So I’ll do my best to be wise; focus on problem solving, learn physics and chill out. I am, in some way, scared of hope, but even though I know how much it can hurt there might be a way to be contempt with all I already have and still look forward with high hopes in mind.