Was it hard? — Yes, very hard.
Was it exhausting? — Awfully exhausting.
Would I do it all over again? — I definitely would, without hesitation.
The life of an olympiadnik is really complicated. Not difficult, no, you can’t call it difficult. It is arduous. Wiping you out every single day till you are crawling under your blanket feeling that you’ll fall asleep the very second your head touches the pillow. Then, while already half asleep, you remember you still have 300 words left to learn, take your phone with Anki open and learn till they are all finished. Only now you know the day is finally over. You close your eyes, knowing you’ll wake up at 6 AM to add new words and head to school.
Sounds frightening? I agree. But now, looking back at what I’ve managed to gain this year, I know all the sleepless nights spent learning words and Country Studies were not in vain. I know, that if I had a chance to repeat it all, I would not hesitate and would indulge in learning at monstrous paces once again.
Learning is addictive, especially when you have a goal set that’s constantly in your mind. And I had a goal that kept me moving on. It found some space in my brain and, like a minuscule seed, started to develop, to grow so quickly, that I had nothing to do but to try and reach it. The goal was obvious and clear. The goal was VOS.
I’m not the type of person who lies on the couch thinking “Oh, it’d be cool to have a VOS diploma.” If I have a goal set, I am ready to move heaven and earth to achieve what lives in my head. The idea itself was crazy. I, of course, had been an olympiadnik for two years already, and had four diplomas, have been a RE winner, but my level of English was somewhat not enough for being on top of the world (and VOS). Radical changes in my ways of studying were needed, and I knew what to do.
Each Marathon task, each little bit of information in my proximity was perused and learnt. Each unknown word met on my way was written out and added into Anki. Not only I needed Upwego tasks, but I also used my own sources (books). I needed Advanced and Proficiency vocabulary, so the decision was made — 50 words per day, and no going back. I survived 2 months adding new words at that pace, and don’t think it was easy. By the end of that period, my daily due count of words in Anki reached 1800 and I had real troubles having any sleep whatsoever with such a number of words to learn. I was awfully tired. Often I slept on the shoulder of my classmate at school (thankfully, he did not mind and only always told me I need to sleep more). When it became totally unbearable, I started gradually decreasing the number of words (thanks to Kate Yakovleva, mostly, because without her explaining to me that dead Alice is no good, I would never give up on my idea myself). By the end of January, I had 40 new words per day. Then 30, 20. Beginning from March I have 10 new words per day and am quite happy with myself.