Passion leads to victory.

(Baonghean)The head of the judging panel, Associate Professor Dr. Bui The Duy, commented on the entry for the primary school category of this year's National Young Informatics Competition: "I was very surprised by the entry of a contestant from Nghe An. Many of the multiple-choice questions were difficult even for adults, yet his entry was perfect, achieving 99/100." That was the entry of Ha Huy Cong, a 5th grade student from Truong Thi Primary School, Vinh City, who won first prize.

Ha Huy Cong received an award at the closing ceremony and awards presentation of the National Youth Informatics Competition.

From a young age, Cong showed himself to be a "multitalented" boy, possessing many skills and talents, including singing, storytelling, and especially foreign languages. From the early years of primary school, Cong was always the class leader in English, and by the 5th grade, he had achieved a TOEFL score of 400, an internationally recognized English certificate – a score even adults would find difficult to achieve. Therefore, when he applied to Dang Thai Mai Specialized Secondary School, he was exempted from the English exam.

When asked what led him to study Computer Science, Cong replied: "My homeroom teacher taught me about algorithms in Computer Science. I found it as interesting as Math and also new, so I went home and tinkered with it, and suddenly I became passionate about it without even realizing it."

Ha Huy Cong (on the right) at the Closing Ceremony and Award Presentation of the National Youth Informatics Competition.

In this year's elementary school competition, in addition to the multiple-choice questions on computer science and the internet, the general competition for elementary school students also included a drawing section using PowerPoint. This section generated much excitement and was considered an open-ended test to assess the creativity and general knowledge of society of the contestants. This year, the drawing topic was the environment, and Cong chose to draw about environmental pollution with 5 impressive slides. For the slide "The Earth Cries," Cong thought: "The Earth being polluted is like a person who is sick and needs to go to the hospital for treatment, and I drew an ambulance carrying the Earth, writhing in pain and crying!"

Achieving a perfect score of 99/100 in the general competition for both primary and secondary school students, Ha Huy Cong surprised not only the judging panel but also his teachers. At the provincial-level Young Informatics Competition, Cong won second place, and as the host team, he received special consideration from the organizers. This special consideration motivated Cong to work even harder and diligently prepare under the guidance of his teachers. Cong said: “Only the drawing questions were based on what I had prepared for; the algorithm questions and the multiple-choice questions on IT knowledge required careful thought and planning. I was very confident in my performance, so there was no favoritism towards the host team!”

Next year, Cong plans to create educational software to participate in the provincial-level Young Informatics Competition. This is a dream he hasn't been able to fulfill yet because he needs to acquire a lot of knowledge about high-level programming languages ​​to prepare for the software development. For him, all his plans are still ahead of him because he is passionate about all subjects. He revealed: "In the future, I want to become a primary school teacher and teach all subjects: Math, Vietnamese, Informatics, and English."

Besides studying, Cong also takes advantage of his free time to help his mother take care of the vegetable garden.

Text and photos: Thanh Nga