How it feels to practice for IOAI in Iran

An Iranian high school student recounts preparing for the inaugural International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), covering the self-study path from Andrew Ng's ML course at 2x speed to the 100-page ML book, while navigating paywalled local prep courses costing ~10 million tomans. The account offers a ground-level view of how students in Iran access AI education through Telegram channels and free online resources when formal preparation infrastructure is thin.