OMG I'M TOTALLY NOT USING A PARTIALLY CLICKBAIT TITLE!!!

The day started out pretty well, minus the fact that my legs were super sore from swim practice the day before. Hence, I packed a protein shake, which was received by some confused and concerned looks loll

I'm going to be honest, this year's DMM was not as interesting as last year's, so uhh sorry if you were expecting 200% more action than last year.

My coach ended up wearing an "NC State Alumni" shirt, which I guess is less atrocious than wearing UNC merch on Duke Campus, but Enloe felt like that was pretty funny.

In the morning, there was someone whose last name was Bhargav (from his TJ VMT sweatshirt) (oh his name is Samarth), and he was like "Oh wow mathnerd one oh one I've heard about you. Nice to meet you, man!" uhh yeah very out of the blue but nice to meet you Samarth! It was also way too early and I already forgot how I responded, but it was probably something along the lines of "That's crazy."

Next up, I met quasant (or maybe I met her before? My memory is a little hazy). We said hello, and she introduced me to the ECG team, which was pretty cool. I swear I've heard of Karen before, but I forget... as forgetfulness is a common narrative when it comes to me. We talked a little bit before SSM came, in which WFeng basically had a meet-up with his former classmates, and "clowned" on them (read: Said hi and called them opps). By that time, I decided to talk to BY because we hadn't met in a while, before shirking away and rejoining quasant and just messing around.

During all of this, TJ VMT was like 2 feet away from us, so WFeng and quasant were pressuring me to talk to VMT, but once WFeng left to "clown" on SSM people, it was kind of just quasant and I left. I ended up being there while quasant somehow struck up a conversation with laura.yingyue.zhang. Dude, I have no idea how quasant is so good at starting and holding onto convos... what in the world? Mad respect, she might have to teach me someday because I was really close to just straight-up leaving because I'm really awkward in public, and can't start a conversation unless it's about academia... #introvert moment... laura.yingyue.zhang and I ended up laughing at VictorHeYoutube's complete inability to produce valid AMC10 scores, as he was like "oh yeah I got a 62 on the AMC10A last year", followed by clowning him, "oh wait no sorry it was a 64.5," followed by even harder clowning. It was pretty fun and funny (oh, and Victor, you said you wanted to be mentioned a lot, so here's your moment of fame!)


Finally, the Power Round began. We did pretty well, albeit "pretty well" means "mid" in terms of our goal of placing Top 10 as a team. We solved, though some were completely fake solves, all but one or two problems.

Next came the Team Round, which we sold so hard (why did it just take me 10 seconds to remember how to spell "sold"). Like you might as well call the Enloe A team the Enloe Merchants because we were selling like there was no tomorrow. After brianzjk made some questionable time decisions (not his fault, though), and the rest of our team was extremely brain-dead, we just didn't perform well, and the one question (Question 9 of 10) that I solved ended up being wrong... By this point, I was kind of the motivator. I was telling everyone to look forward, and not look behind. Usually, whenever you look behind, you end up losing the mental game, which is just such a crucial aspect of competitive math.

While talking to TJ during lunch, we realized how hard we had sold, and I got really frustrated over my wrong answer on problem 9. It was the one problem that I helped contribute to the team, and I flubbed it. At that point, I just wanted to beat myself up, but I knew that I had to think forward, and not backward.

Samson said some really interesting pick-up lines for the second year in a row, but he was quickly shut down by our "coach" (I frankly have no idea what to call him. Team leader? Not sure...) because our coach had heard enough of these pick-up lines during class (our coach teaches at Enloe, and Samson just so happens to be in his class). I don't quite remember the exact quotes, but there was something about "My velocity [something] because I accelerate towards you" or something like that. During lunch, VictorHeYoutube kept on trying to rizz me up by lifting my chin, but it never worked LOL. Here's a speedyfalcon shoutout because I believe he wanted to be included in this post (though I'm not sure if this was a joke or not))

Next up was the individual Round. I don't want to talk about it. I got 1 and 2 and then sillied the entirety of 3-6, but then I got problems 7 and 9, so I managed to double my score from last year!!! I guess my only flex is that I beat both speedyfalcon and brianzjk because I fake-solved a problem by measuring using my pencil LOL. WFeng also ended up getting a 4 because he guessed a problem right (funnily enough, he guessed number 2 correctly on the set, and I guessed number 1 correctly). I was ready to just quit, but we had the Relay Round left.

Yeah, uhh Relay happened... I ended up selling 1.1 because I could not combo, and I had lost the mental game already. 1.2 was actually kind of hard, and I never ended up being able to solve it. Looking back at 1.1, I'm so mad that I sold it.

I talked to quasant and laura.yingyue.zhang as well as Abhi Palikala about Individual and Relay scores. quasant also ended up selling, and she got a 3, whereas laura.yingyue.zhang and Abhi, in true TJ fashion, gatekept their score from me, saying "No comment." They probably got like an 8 :sob: If laura.yingyue.zhang or Abhi is seeing this, if your DMM score was your age, how old would you be? Regardless, we ended up flubbing both Relay questions.

I ended up socializing a bit during Devil Round and writing a random answer as the answer to every single question (I actually got 2 right!!!). In the end, we stayed for the awards ceremony, though h41.zh0's mom was waiting because she came early, so we had to leave before the ceremony ended smh. peace09 got 1st (obviously), and TJ swept 1st and 2nd (smurfs smh). laura.yingyue.zhang was a really good sport throughout, and she kept on saying "noo you got this" and whatnot. I guess she's one of the limited people in the math community who aren't "toxic," I guess?

During Devil Round, I saw jatloe12345, so I was like "oh my god it's jatloe one two three four five" when I was right in front of him. He either didn't hear or was like confused I'm pretty sure he had no idea who I was, but that's ok. I like flying under the radar.

Anyways, that's a wrap on 2023 DMM. Hopefully, I'll be able to see more people at February HMMT! I'll probably make a post on it, assuming that I can go.

Plan on future posts: Thanksgiving break (November) (I forget if I'm doing anything interesting), Christmas Break (skiing in CO yayy), February HMMT (I'll be able to meet v4913(maybe), and peace09 will be on my team yayy)

As I am making this post, VictorHeYoutube is reading through it in a Discord VC, making sure that he gets credit for "trying to rizz me up," although he evidently failed. He wants to be talked about more, so yay here you go I guess.

My legs are so sore right now. For what reason, I don't know. Maybe the adrenaline fueled me during DMM, and now I'm crashing. I should not have stood for so long today. I'll make a mental note of that for HMMT.

Edit: Enloe A's goal from the very beginning was T10, and I can very happily claim that we actually got 10th LETS GOO WOOO