Mathematics  Computer Science  Engineering

I don't really believe in regrets.  You need to make mistakes in order to grow.  That said, I wish I did more competitive math as a kid.  For a long time I felt like I was behind because I didn't have all the problem solving practice many of my friends from high school had.  It occurred to me, nothing's stopping me from getting that prep.  So I started working through Art of Problem Solving on my own.  Their entire curriculum (just about everything from pre-algebra to group theory) consists of about 5000 pages.  I covered about 3000 of those pages in about 4 months.  I think I averaged a book every 3 weeks (I was putting about 30 ± 10 hours a week into problem solving).  I covered their Intro Algebra, Intro Combinatorics, Intro Number Theory texts completely and I also did parts of their Intro Geometry, Intermediate Algebra, and Intermediate Combinatorics.

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At first I was just doing it for fun, but rapidly it seemed like I had a chance to prepare for the Putnam, so I started taking it more seriously.  Ironically, that's probably what caused me to burn out.  I tried to do Intermediate Algebra and Intermediate Combinatorics at the same time and it was just too much.  Regardless, it was one of the best experiences of my entire life.  If you want to see some of the stuff I covered, I recommend you skim the table of contents on my notes document.  The actual notes themselves aren't great.  It's mostly just a giant collection of links to specific problems that I thought I should redo for review.