“Romania has received the most gold medals in Olympiads.”

(Note – Olympiads = school contests; we’re not talking about Sports Olympics here)

There are some good reasons why Romania has a lot of very good results in school Olympiads.

• Why Romania Excels in International Olympiads;
• Why Romania excels in international Olympiads | Hacker News;
• Why is the IQ in Romania so low, but the performance so high? : r/AskRomania.

I think there might be another overlooked factor.

Let’s say you really like Physics, as a student/pupil. You learn, do efforts on this, study hard all things about Physics. But if you want to win National or even International contests, you need to focus a lot on the topic – perhaps skip some school days, only learn Physics, focus most of the time on Physics.

You can do such a thing in Romania, as I see it, much easier than it would be in a Western European system. If you go to a Western Europe school and say “I’m preparing for a contest, I won’t go to school for some weeks”, this will likely be unacceptable, while in Romania there might be some unofficial solutions for such a thing.

Taking shortcuts might bring you the medal, but it might not be focused on the overall formation of students.

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Sometimes, I go to see doctors.

What I like to do immediately after the visit is write down the suggestions the doctor had.

Sometimes, they are put in a prescription or another document, but I like having a backup copy.

Also, it’s much more clear to have it written down right after the visit to the doctor’s office.

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“Love and do what you will” – Blessed Augustine

Note: The well-known aphorism of Blessed Augustine, “Love and do what you will,” actually means: “Love God, and do what you will.”

Note:
Our Savior says that a good tree, that is, a good heart as well as a soul on fire with charity, can do nothing but good and holy works. For this reason, St. Augustine said, “Love and do what you will,” namely, possess love and charity and then do what you will. It is as if he had said, “Charity is not able to sin.”
— St. Angela Merici

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Still talking about school Olympiads – Romanians get very good results with Olympiads (Sciences and Social Sciences), but not with chess. We’re likely not the worst in chess, but certainly not the first. And certainly we’re not dominating pretty much everything, as we do with Olympiads.

Chess is easy to practice by pretty much anyone, and you can get away with doing two things at the same time – studying at school and practicing in your spare time. Also, to some degree, natural ability matters.

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