Haha copium go brrr

Day 1:
T-10 minutes. Nibbling on one of my 7 Rice Krispies, I was nervously chatting to some friends, claiming that we were “gonna gain X-Ray vision and see each others answers through the computer” and whatever. You could smell and taste the huge amounts of copium in the air, but it was ok. We were all freaking out anyways.

T-5 minutes. Time to chow down those Rice Krispies. My plan had been 5 before the test and 2 during the test in order to prevent sugar crashes(I had talked to my CM beforehand and he said I could eat during the test as long as I didn’t spill anything on my computer). However, having just eaten breakfast an hour ago, I had absolutely no stomach room left to intake another 40 grams of sugar. I only ate 3 Rice Krispies before my stomach said no to any more, so I quickly started preparing my setup. Make sure that everything is optimal. Make sure I’m feeling comfortable. Not too cold. Not too hot. Scratch paper in the perfect place. Computer in a place where I can click fast. Locked in.

T-1 minute. Locked in? Never heard of it. AM I GOING TO QUALIFY FOR AIME?! AHHHH PLEASE BE A GEO-HEAVY TEST. I NEED GEO!

T-30 seconds. Alright time to start performing my prayer ritual. Pray to the gods. RNG gods please please… Bow down thrice. Head up hands clenched look up at the sky. Back down. Repeat twice. I’m ready.

T-0 seconds. “Alrighty ya’ll. It’s 8 o’clock. Begin whenever you’re ready.” Time to lock in. Time to focus. Time to use those 24 grams of sugar. Let’s get it.

The test began. I wasn’t sure what to think of it. Problem 1 was really easy. 2 and 3 were fine. Then came problem 4. This is where I wished I just had more motivation earlier in the year. More time to prepare. A stupid conversion problem. You’re kidding me. I skipped Problem 4, and my mind started telling me “oh no this is not good. You’re already skipping problem 4 bro? Ah heck nah, you’re done.” The 5% of hope left in me fueled me. I ended up skipping a couple more problems before hitting problem 16. Checking my watch(I didn’t trust that AMC portal timer from minute 1), I realized that I was slightly behind my pace. 25 minutes to do 1-20, 25 minutes to attempt 20-25, 25 minutes to check. Oh yeah, I’m not doing great on pace.

Hitting problem 16, I immediately gained confidence. It was like one of those water break stations in a marathon. Seriously, a trivial Vieta's problem for P16? That’s… crazy. With the regained confidence, I tried doing P17. I ended up getting it wrong, due to a lack of carefulness and a wrong assumption(I assumed only etc were the only solutions…) Problem 18 came about, and immediately I was intimidated. I decided to try to do something, finding out that the total number of degrees rotated was and that it had to be congruent to modulo 180. I looked at the answer choices, selected the smallest one that fit the criteria, and prayed that I got it right. After that fakesolve, I looked at problem 19. Interesting problem… I tried figuring out what LCM(1,2,3,...,17) was, but immediately quit after realizing it was too big. I finally wrote out the prime factorization, made a huge realization, and solved the problem extremely quickly after taking 5 minutes in total(4.5 of them were spent trying to calculate LCM(1,2,3,...,17) in the beginning -_-). I looked at P20 and immediately felt like it was pretty easy to bash out. I had absolutely 0 luck in doing that, and bookmarked it for later.

I saw that I had 30 minutes left, so I skipped the last 5 problems and started checking. Right before checking the majority of the problems, I quickly ate a Rice Krispie after feeling like I was crashing a bit. I fixed a lot of my answers to the first 10, which probably saved my already really trash score. I was really nervous and I was checking the next 10 problems when I realized that I had 5 minutes after checking all my answers.

Only 5 minutes. Let’s see if I can speedsolve problem 20. No avail. I started having a mini-rage, and all I heard was this kid next to me chuckling. I’m done. I still couldn’t guess out the two sequences. Problem 21 arose, and I immediately saw how free it was. Guess who had no time, though? I was extremely unhappy about it, and tried to get as far as I could, but just didn’t have enough time. The timer jumped from 3 minutes to less than 1. I freaked. SHOOT I HAD FORGOT TO CHECK MY WATCH AFTER I HAD FINISHED CHECKING TO GET THE ACTUAL TIME LEFT! I speedwrote my answers down, barely finishing in time. I clicked the review tab and filled out the honesty agreement thing just before time ran out. I submitted everything, knowing that it was over. What a flop. I half-closed my computer, with disappointment in my eyes. So many should’ves. So many if onlys. No way to change what had just happened. I immediately saw WFeng, who had also written down his answers. He and I had two problems with different answers(he had answered 16 and I had answered 17): #4 and #17. I immediately realized that I had most likely gotten both #4 and #17 wrong, and so after a bit of careful calculation, I got a 102.

Distribution Here:

I wasn’t sure what to think. WFeng and I discussed what we thought the cutoff was, and we both agreed it would be around 96, maybe even lower. We were pretty hopeful that we would make AIME, and I was extremely pleased that I had only made one silly(I usually make like 5). After a little discussion, I realized that my CM had unregistered all of the 12A people mid-test. I felt extremely bad for brianzjk and speedyfaclon, who had done extremely great on the test and seriously deserved to make AIME. Hopefully, they do good on the 12B.


Day 2:

It’s the day of discussion! For some reason, AoPS decided to absolutely troll us by unlocking at 11 AM EST? What in the world happened to “next morning…” Last time I checked 11 AM isn’t morning…

I immediately started giving out the solutions to problems that I was decently confident in. I answered problem 18, which ended up opening the eyes of a lot of pro aopsers, who had just skipped the problem because they had seen reflection and translation. I think I still fakesolved it, but it was really nice knowing that I made a valuable contribution to helping the AoPS community. I also ended up being the first person to comment on the AMC10A thread, which was both surprising and weird, because I spent a good 10 seconds waiting for someone else to post first…

After seeing the “what did you get” thread and posting my horrible score, I immediately got extreme anxiety. Holy crap these people are pullin up with 120s on AVERAGE. NAH MY AIME QUAL CHANCES ARE OVER BRO 120 CUTOFF WHAT THE HECK?! I immediately closed my computer and went out to lunch, trying to ignore the thought that I was extremely borderline now. I avoided group chats for quite a while, and the anxiety in my body was just absolutely peaking. I talked for a little bit with laura.yingyue.zhang about the test, and we both had some serious anxiety. She had been avoiding gcs and aops the entire day after her friends had told her their scores the day before. She “flopped really bad” and, after I told her I could check her answers for her, responded with “i don’t want to let you see how bad i flopped.” Personally, I feel like as mathletes, all we do is worry much about nothing. It seems so perfectly normal and fine to us, but it’s definitely really weird and concerning to those who don’t necessarily sweat math and care as much about math. I have friends who are telling me that I did fine and that it’s alright. Samson said that our main problem is “yall look at them answers and be regretting like yall aint get it right.” I completely agree with them, yet the process of writing down answers and shattering our self-esteem while checking them just seems so normal and so fine, even though it’s not. This is my second-to-last year of taking the AMC10, and I don’t want to leave the competition knowing that I made no progress and failed every time. I personally relate to everything that v4913 is talking about in her blog posts, and even though I may not necessarily be looking at the younger ones and seeing how they’re all beating me, I can certainly relate to the thoughts of being ok with failure and how that’s not ok at all. I highly recommend any of you guys that are reading this to read v4913’s posts, because they’re actually really well-written and inspirational. I’m still extremely anxious right now, and I’ve pretty much been coping the entire day, whether that’s by eating minor amounts of junk food, or just lying down on the couch trying to not think of the AMCs.

I appreciate all those who are saying “oh you still have the B” and whatnot, but in reality, I personally don’t find that helpful at all. They’re trying to give us motivation, and usually those who say that are the people who don’t need the B because they’re already guaranteed AIME qual and whatnot. Every time I hear that, it makes me feel more pressured that I need to do good on the B and that the B means so much more because it’s a B(ackup). At this point I’m coping and praying that everything goes alright. I’ll probably make another post about the AnxietyMC12 … B(ro I’m literally going to choke so hard :sob:)

“I been on my grind every day, don't believe in takin' breaks. I ain’t stoppin’ till we chillin’ at the top” - Polo G

Thank you laura.yingyue.zhang for giving me the motivation and inspiration to make this post.