Long story short, I'm feeling fed-up, defiant, satisfied, exhausted, excited, and lost all at the same time.
Long storyFor the past month, almost every night I've had the following
conversationMe: This is all pointless! Lincoln's ten-percent plan, Teapot Dome Scandal, New Deal reforms, what's the point? All of this will be forgotten after the exam anyways!
Michael: I agree.
Me: History is not meant to be crammed in the form of facts. History is subjective, not objective! I mean I think history is interesting, and I have ideas on my own, and yet, they're wrong simply because they're not the arguments College Board expects you to have. Why must all these ideas be condensed into the form of right-and-wrong answers, in the form of a :swear: exam, it's wrong!
Michael: I agree.
Me: I hate this whole system. College Board has it all wrong! People treat NUMBERS like they mean EVERYTHING, but they have no clue that you as a person mean so much more. All of them! Fools! When in 30 years, all that you remember about APUSH is the countless nights spent in solitude, pouring over meaningless facts, will that be something you're proud of? No!
Michael: I agree.
Me: Then, why, if I'm correct why must you continue to torture me? Why do you keep on feeling obligated to do all of this, even if this goes against everything you stand for?
Michael: Because I have no other option.
Me: But-
Michael: Enough with your complaining, I've got a lot more things to memorize.
If this isn't spiritual torment, then I don't know what is.
with myself.
May 6, 8: 30 AM
I wanted the exam to end the moment I went into the testing room.
But I willed whatever energy I had left of myself, and forced myself to read the questions.
Wait, who was that guy who did the thing with the slaves again? I JUST READ THIS LAST NIGHT. When writing my essay, as I was looting whatever vague historical facts remained in my depleted mind, I literally heard my heart scream:
enough is enough. In just one night, it appears I've forgotten all the names of people, events, acts, movements, etc. that had happened. I continued looting my mind.
Nothing.
I want to go home. I want to go to a corner somewhere where no one can see me and just cry. I can't even bring my hand to move at first.
Write. Anything. Just write.
During the break, everyone was enthusiastically discussing, excited for the second half. I stood to the side alone: solemn, broken,
destroyed.
As I handed in the scribbles full of nonsense otherwise known as my responses, my mind had nothing else but the desire to leave the room.
Leave me alone. When we were dismissed, I abruptly exited the room, didn't talk to anyone. "IT WAS SO EASY! HAHA!" a few girls shrieked. "Five, definitely a five" I saw a classmate of mine hold his five fingers high up for everyone to see, grinning in confidence. I closed half of my eyelids, forcing my tears back.
I've known from the very start I'm horrible at history, that no matter how hard I study, it will be extremely difficult to get a 5. And yet, half of me screamed in desperation every second I don't have an APUSH review book in front of me. The feeling as I gulped down coffee and red bull late in the night was guilty satisfaction.
For the second time this year, I've torn out my soul, betrayed my own heart, and committed spiritual suicide, in return for nothing...
Sometimes even I feel I'm ridiculous, a sadist. I know very well I'm a weird person, extreme, no balance. Oh well, if you enjoy reading my blog you're probably weird like I am.
After the AP, I came home, hoping that my dad would be
understanding of me.Dad: How did you do?
Me: I failed.
*Silence for a few mins*
Dad: *in an extremely dark tone* Don't worry, you'll have a
fantastic future in Carnegie Mellon
(which he considers a bad school).
I know he wants me to do everything he tells me to do, and he thinks being sarcastic and making me feel worthless will accomplish that, but I've gotten used to it anyways, so I just went into my room and locked the door, no one to console me except myself.
...But it's over, and I'm thrilled. It's all over. School no longer
matters.Until I realized that I've missed 3 days of school and all the teachers are hunting me down. Also my GPA is still like 3.5 and I have only 3 weeks to salvage it.
That night after I came home and the next day, in attempt to regain some sanity, I started working on this year's Sharygin Olympiad Correspondence Round problems (I've printed out like 3 months ago and it's been at the bottom of my backpack for so long). Note that all the AP drama has rendered my brain practically imprisoned, so my skills are probably extremely rusty now.
Problem 1 wrote:
A trapezoid
with bases
and
is such that
Let
be the midpoint of
Prove that
SolutionWhen we start direct angle chasing, we'll realize we can't find a way to use
The trick is to extend a line through
![[asy]
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[/asy]](//latex.artofproblemsolving.com/d/6/0/d604881393c354bbe59a641930a6ca05de32761d.png)
Note that the result we want to prove follows if we can prove
is isosceles. If we can prove
is a parallelogram, then
and we're done. But this is obvious since triangles
and
are congruent from
(
), implying
So we're done.
Problem 3 wrote:
Let
be two altitudes of an acute-angled triangle
be the projection of
to
, 
be the projection of
to
be the common point of
and
Prove that
SolutionSo I was being dumb for trying to angle chase, which doesn't work since say you want to try to prove
it will just circle back eventually to
the original assumption. Instead, we'll work with similar triangles.
![[asy]
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[/asy]](//latex.artofproblemsolving.com/d/e/9/de9262222339375ef3be8fcae773e4aed3afcd34.png)
We want to be able to get
Note that
Uh-oh, this introduces
what can we do with that? Note that triangles
and
are similar, giving us
To combine
and
note that
This implies that triangles
and
are similar, hence
and we're done.
Then I got stuck on Problem 4. D:
On a separate note, summer is coming and I guess that's something I'm looking forward to? I probably figured it's good to draw up a few goals for me until summer, so... here they are:
Math GoalsFirst, a formal apology to my math books.
106: Oh, now you remember us?
103: Sine... Just cos you got other commitments don't mean you can leave us like this!
Interm CP: Yea! What's up with you and that Calc book recently?
108: You better be more cauchy-ous next time!
104: It certainly wasn't nice when you just left us on the
!
102: Wait what is this I just got here.
106, 102 (hopefully) and 108, I'll make sure to do one problem from each of you every day. Interm CP, I'll get back to doing those challenge problems of yours. 103 and 104, I'll read some theory of off you guys whenever I have time. Finally, I'll do some HMMT/Sharygin problems in my spare time, and last but not least, I want to be more active on AoPS, doing whatever problems look good in the HS and Olympiad forums.
In total, hopefully I can devote 2 hours a day to math.
Well, what can I say, hell is not over yet.
I need to have a talk with my bio and possibly APUSH teacher, cause my grades are abominable, good thing APUSH and BC classes are now replaced with two more free periods. I want to try to salvage my bio and English grades to a B+ or possibly A-.
The problem is that I'm quite cynical of my school. I know the "right" thing to do is to follow your heart, and I know that if I see purpose in what I'm doing, I'll be willing to try my best. It's hard caring so much about my grades when it goes directly against my heart. Plus, my teachers are also quite disapproving of my slacking off, and practically I have no friends/peers to connect with (school is certainly less mind-killing when you have peers around to help).
I guess I have no other option but to keep running on empty...
Life GoalsGood thing next week we have no school. Instead, school makes us go on trips in-or-near China. I'm going cycling in Suzhou. The good thing is that I get to burn a lot of fat (cycling can get extremely tiring). The bad thing is that it means 5 days without math, and also because once I get back, I'll not only be exhausted but panicking about the billion school things that will be thrown onto me once school starts (I've missed the past 3 days of school).
My main goal for this trip and all the way till summer would be to lose 8 KG of weight. I'm running on my treadmill whenever possible.
Also, to be most efficient, I will probably stay in my school's library from 3 to 6 PM everyday, since I'm most productive with schoolwork there. Then I'll sip half a cup of coffee (not too much), and hopefully finish all homework by 9-10 PM, so I'll be able to shower, chill, and do math so I can sleep by 1 AM, which would give me a solid 6 hours of sleep.
EDIT: I'll be gone for the next 4 days, so I won't be able to post anything new, though I can still reply to any comments.
This post has been edited 3 times. Last edited by shiningsunnyday, May 8, 2016, 10:48 AM
by shiningsunnyday, May 7, 2016, 12:59 PM 
with bases 
and 
is such that 
Let 
be the midpoint of 
Prove that 
The trick is to extend a line through ![[asy]
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[/asy]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/d/6/0/d604881393c354bbe59a641930a6ca05de32761d.png)
is isosceles. If we can prove 
is a parallelogram, then 
and we're done. But this is obvious since triangles 
and 
are congruent from 
)
So we're done.
be two altitudes of an acute-angled triangle 
be the projection of 
to 
, 
be the projection of 
be the common point of 
and 
Prove that 
it will just circle back eventually to 
the original assumption. Instead, we'll work with similar triangles.![[asy]
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[/asy]](http://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/d/e/9/de9262222339375ef3be8fcae773e4aed3afcd34.png)
Note that 
Uh-oh, this introduces 
what can we do with that? Note that triangles 
and 
are similar, giving us 
To combine 
and 
note that 
This implies that triangles 
and 
are similar, hence 
and we're done.
!
May 2018
April 2018