It’s surprising how much my emotions have fluctuated since summer break. I came onto campus on the first day of school with a pair of droopy jet-lag/pamspd-filled eyelids, ears blasted with Kpop, eyes of indecisiveness as I quickly walk to the library, my own world distant from the chatter and gossip of everyone else in front of the gym. I wasn't sure what I was going into. In the face of impending PSAT National Merit qualifying pressures, parents’s comparisons to other students, the knowledge that the rest of the grade spent the entirety of their summer on standardized prep test, 5 AP-level courses where my fate are almost entirely dependent on the teachers, extracurriculars and the paradox of being “well-balanced,” made me hover above the vortex of life, not knowing when or how to dive in.

All I knew was one thing — I loved math. It was my comfort; it was my joy; it was my frustration. If the vortex of life was in spherical coordinates, math was my origin. As this was the sole knowledge I accepted without a doubt, I held on to it, more tighter than ever, as I stood on the precipice of the pier, refusing to budge, staring as others, mostly in groups, dive in into the vortex.

I take a step forward. It’ll be a while before I figure things out, but hopefully, as long as I dedicate every living minute to pursuing my goals, the details will figure themselves out. That’s why, at least from now until October, introducing, the MOM program, a personalized program I’ve designed for myself which I started following yesterday.

What: Month Outside Math (MOM), essentially de-prioritizing math and spending less time on it as possible (apart from WOOT and the last 3 weeks of Interm NT)
Who: Me
Where: School and at home
When: From now until October break (Chinese national holiday)
Why: To explore areas of interest outside math, not limited to but including physics, chemistry, SAT prep, etc. to see what I want to do for my junior year
How:

-By blocking AoPS during the daytime to avoid being on it 24/7<li>
-Only checking the WOOT forums/my blog at night
-Be a more enthusiastic person in general at school
-Being more open to topics in my classes (esp. hunting down teachers after class) and see if there’s anything I might want to do for science fair (thinking about exploring some applied math)
-Doing an SAT reading test (one hour not including answer checking) every other day (or as often as possible)
-Try to be helpful and expand my influence in my school’s math community by tutoring and through my math club
-Don’t sleep; sleep is time wasted when you could be pursuing your dreams

Overall, I feel like I have a better idea of what it takes to succeed. At the end of the day, it’s not about motivation; it’s not about how much confidence you have; it’s not about how determined you are; it’s about how you spend every second out of the 24 hours. Cause at the end, it’s what you do that shape who you are. As mentioned in the previous post along with some other online resources, I’ve realized that discipline on a daily basis is what’s going to get you those USAMO qualifications, Intel ISEF grants, science olympiads’ semifinalists, perfect SAT scores, 4.0 GPAs.

So brace yourselves, I’m jumping in!