So recently (actually ever since winter break), I've been, to some extent, mad about school. The amount of busy work, the constant pressure of not turning in a late assignment, nonstop quizzes/tests, teachers chasing after you for late assignments, are just neck-breaking. Only recently have I been realizing that not only does school take away time for math, it makes my mind and problem solving skills deteriorate.

This shouldn't be that big of a surprise since in school, you're told to do all tasks systematically, every "good" student using some kind of app, including to-do lists, step-by-step instructions on things to do once they get home, as well as an organizer including a nonstop list of events. The assessments/assignments kill one's creativity further, as one believes that things have to be done the exact way the teacher said in class, not what you feel will create the best product. Everything needs to be memorized, the facts accepted without a chance to question the intuition behind it.

All of this goes directly against the core values of AoPS. Experiment, play with unconventional ideas, learning to be creative in choosing from which angle to attack a problem, understanding the true motivation behind each step, understanding the "why" behind each problem you solve (see the last paragraph).

As I entered lockdown AIME mode, I can't help that every night, coming home after a mindless day of work, my brain just... stops. functioning. I would catch myself dozing off in the late afternoon. Worse, I don't even have the energy to open up the latest AIME I'm working on without drinking coffee. In fact, my highest scores on mock tests all came on weekends, which was when I got my highest ever score (12), along with a couple of 11's, 10's and 9's (though keeping in mind they're easier than modern day AIMEs).

Just this past week, I've had even more concrete evidence. At home last week, whenever I pull out a 106 Geo problem to work on, I become absent-minded. I keep feeling the pile of school work I haven't done yet, slowly shifting away my attention. As a result, I could just end up staring at the diagram I've drawn for 15-20 mins making only trivial progress, all at the same time thinking questions like: "Oh god the English essay is due tomorrow." "Ugh I forgot to do my Calculus homework again should I bother?" "What's the schedule tomorrow?" "Wait is that bio content quiz formative or summative." Feeling that I should do homework first, I stop doing math, grind through mindless busy work. By the time I can do math again, my mind is already way too exhausted to do anything. By the time last week ended, I had about 3-4 attempted but unsolved problems. On Saturday morning, I revisited these diagrams, and rivers of ideas began pouring in. Aha! ABCD is cyclic, given by the angle conditions as motivation. Oh! Menelaus kills this immediately, why didn't I utilize these ratio conditions earlier? Huh... maybe bisects angle , which is plausible as we can then do blah blah blah to finish. Why was I so stubborn on refusing to believe this earlier? In just about 20 mins, the 3-4 problems which I collectively had attempted for 2 hours are solved.

Once I adopted the AoPS way of thinking, my grades dropped drastically (my GPA mid-semester-2 was a 3.4). I keep asking myself, why I am grinding through all this busy work? Does memorizing the names and dates of FDR's New Deal reform acts or knowing which author wrote the Spoon River Anthology make me feel enlightened? Memorizing everything only to be forgotten after one of those exams? My trauma of semester one revisited me (see http://artofproblemsolving.com/community/q1h1184942p5752376). Recently, my APUSH teacher told me that I actually did get an A last semester, so apparently, I now have a 4.0 for semester one. But after that emotional roller coaster of last semester, the 4.0 on paper feels... meaningless. Last semester, I managed to force, with pure will, my physical and mental health, to commit suicide, but did I really become a better human being in getting that 4.0? The world lied to me. I mean, last semester, when I had a 4.0, I was a highly respected classmate and friend; I thought my life was complete, until now. Ever since I discovered my true identity as a problem solver. As I chased in pursuit of more and more problems, my friends drifted away, my classmates thought I was just another math nerd, my teachers frowned, and my family even drifted away. (This lack of support was the biggest reason I failed to make JMO.) Even my dad, the person closest to me, began violently discouraging me from doing math. Why do everyone around me revolve their entire lives around that number out of 4, that number out of 2400. Are they orchestrating a play, all of them trying to fool me? Or is this the reality of elite college admissions and society, having to lie to yourself and throw away your identity?

Do you guys feel the same way?