2024 & 2025 Rewind
I know, I’ve been very absent the last two years, and now I’m so close to take the award for “Latest Year in Review” from Tania Rascia. But why? Let me try to remember what in the world have I been up to in 2024 and 2025. Google Photos will help.
My 2024
The first half of 2024 was marked by the second semester of my first MSc year, which was definitely the best time of my MSc.
It was marked by teaching the Algorithm Design seminar for two first-year groups, but also doing things like holding exam preparation sessions for the entire year of students, as well as correcting many, many, many course exams (for free, I might add). As a proof, check out this poem from one of my student’s exam papers:
Which translates to:
Like a screw loosened from God,
Threaded into the wave,
Deep, my ever-little core
That floods me with life— I didn’t learn for the exam.
It was pretty cool most of the time. However, it burned me out a bit, and also considering the microscopical pay, I had to choose not to teach that seminar again the next year.
I’ve also been to to Osijek, Croatia as a coach in a 12-day ICPC camp (OCPC). This was my second foreign country I have ever “visited,” after Spain (during an Erasmus+ project). There, I went to the Osijek zoo and, for the first time, to an escape room.
During this semester I finished my year-long mentorship with a 12 grade student, who started with no competitive programming experience, but has actually managed to reach the national phase of the Olympiad, so I’ll take that as a win on our side.
Speaking of competitive programming for pre-university students, I took part in the scientific committee of the National Olympiad for the 6th grade, after many months of preparing the problems alongside a team of teachers. I authored the hardest of the three given problems, which was fully solved by only one person 
Autumn came and I went to the third — and for the moment, besides Moldova, last — foreign country I have ever visited, Poland. This was with the occasion of another ICPC camp, in Wrocław, sponsored by Huawei. This camp was different, since it required a lot of work from my side. I spent my entire summer preparing the set of ~12 problems for one of the three days of contest, all by myself. After that specific contest, I was also the one presenting the solutions.
In November I went to my last ICPC camp, this time as co-coach — the South-Eastern phase of ICPC itself, in Bucharest. One notable thing was going to a football match, which was again something new to me.
Let’s wrap up 2024 with a photo from my second to last participation in the CloudFlight Coding Contest. They had to cancel the next year of rounds due to a lack of funds. And a general, continuously growing lack of interest in competitive programming from the big industry players, I might add.
What About 2025?
It was full of research work for my useless MSc thesis, which was rated with a grade of only 9.5 out of 10, due to a lack of “practical applicability.” This characterization was not wrong, but it’s not like all cryptography papers lead to immediately applicable results. On the contrary.
I barely managed to get a paper on it published in a low-quality journal, and thanks to this achievement, I get daily spam emails from predatory journals.
Wait, let me check my email. Maybe there is another one waiting for me…
Dear Oleniuc, I.,
The platform’s 300+ open-access journals provide researchers with a global outlet to share their work across a diverse range of disciplines. Over 180 journals have achieved a milestone of continuous publication for ten years.
The international journal, AJCST, provides a platform for the vibrant exchange of powerful ideas among professionals and academics.
Invitation to Contribute Your Manuscripts/Abstracts
Since your article “Secret Sharing Limitations Over Boolean Circuits” has been commonly recognized, your submissions of any unpublished original research works in your specialized or interested field are welcome.
There you go.
What other things have I been doing for college that year? I have trained useless neural networks for an insurmountable amount of hours for some meme classes.
What do AI classes have in common with my “cryptography” MSc thesis? I still don’t know. What I know is I had no real option but to choose them.
After this terrible year, I just had to abandon my PhD ± teaching dreams and turn to industry.
Time for job applications came. Some interviews here and there, mostly rejections and straight up ghostings. I guess my last two years of no relevant college or industry experience were a deal breaker.
Anything New in 2026?
Besides my current “full-stack” job and practicing kickbox, not much.
But I am more determined than ever to restart learning web dev and new programming stuff on my own.
And working again for InfoGenius AlgoGenius.
And blogging here with new little things I discover while coding.
So let’s see where this takes me.