Career aspirations: Pokemon master, yo-yo (this was really hot in China) master

...er kind of self explanatory.

Career aspirations: Pilot, anything involving planes

At one point I remember just started to become obsessed with planes of all kinds - esp. ones with luxury interiors for some reason. I also thought owning and driving a car/plane was the coolest thing ever.

Also, since I had no friends (wow what surprise) I spent most of my recesses in the library alone, reading up on random stuff like tornadoes and renewable energy - anything science-related basically intrigued me.

In retrospect, the fact I spent most of my time alone were important in that years later, it made me genuinely believe that I could, if I wanted to, outwork and out-succeed everyone else if I wanted to.

Career aspiration: Aerospace engineer or scientist

Aerospace engineer...so apparently that's what it's called, according to my dad. It was also this time I got introduced to the name of MIT and how it's the best engineering school. "Is this the best school to go to to study planes?" upon which my dad replied yes. This was the first time I set my dream of making MIT.

Other than that I just spent most of my time (6+ hours everyday) Skyping my crush, gaming, and watching anime.

Also I did get influenced a lot by popular culture - esp. the movie 2012.

Just like the Cessna that sailed above the ash-filled clouds in the movie, I wanted to sail above everyone else.

Career aspiration: Scientist

As I grew up, I slowly lost interest in just planes. Also, I realized that engineering is too hard - it involves a lot of socializing and using my hands, which I was REALLY bad at. For example, I remember the time we had to built a circuit and my partner and I were the LAST group to complete it (I also ended up breaking the battery (!?) and instead spent my time eyeing girls and trying to act foolish/funny with my partner).

**Fast forward 3 years: I'm still REALLY bad at using my hands. Just a month ago I broke a test tube, accidentally poured ethanol over my shirt, and accidentally poured melting wax onto the bottom of a beaker where it solidified and had to be trashed. (The seniors never looked at me the same after that)**

I envisioned myself in a lab, working in a white coat. Movies like World War Z (wait or was that later) and Resident Evil were extremely inspiring.

Nevertheless, I spent as much of my time as I can playing Skyrim, watching Naruto/Fairy Tail, Modern Family, and Big Bang Theory - my days before high school starts were diminishing.

My goal was to get into Harvard, mainly so I can be popular and talked about by everyone at my school - "Did you hear of Michael? He got into Harvard! I wanna date him!" - (I really cared about this kind of stuff). I didn't really care about what I wanted to do after I got there, just getting there was enough, after which I could YOLO for the rest of my life.

For some reason I also got interested in philosophy - watching Naruto and reading a lot of books like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm - got me constantly philosophizing whatever I see in real life. For example, watching Naruto made me realize the fact that society makes people evil and war is always inevitable.

Career aspiration: Physicist or astrophysicist

So I learned this word called "physics" -- which seemed like the non-engineering counterpart to aerospace engineering. TV shows like the Big Bang Theory (which I stopped watching after season 7 cause I made a pledge to not watch a single tv show in high school) were also interesting. I felt a strong connection to Howard and Leonard (esp. regarding issues of girls and social awkwardness).

I also began investing a lot of my time daily watching random videos on Youtube - scifi, vsauce, crashcourse, etc. - and also got interested in aliens.

Movies like Interstellar were also extremely inspiring.

This was also the year I got introduced to the AMCs, and I quickly rose the ranks from a nobody to top 10 of math contest contestants (just some stupid Canadian contests) out of my school. ...so I realized I'm actually good (as in not just above average) in math (which before I regarded as somewhat esoteric, annoying, and hard).

Also, physics seemed to involve math, as opposed to biology or chemistry.

I also had an interest in chemistry - esp. after all the time spent cramming over Quiz Team and Chem Olympiad (which I quitted due to me feeling disrespected by my teammates).

I ended up learning the hard way that all of this was pointless as I will take AP Chem anyway (which my school doesn't offer to freshmen and sophomores despite me self-studying a lot).

In addition, no one cared or had a clue about this stuff.

...so this began to slowly fade...

Career aspiration: Physicist?

I was still somewhat interested in physics. This interest slowly died off as I realized the hard way the school provides ZERO opportunities in this area - the f=ma exam was not offered, neither was AP Physics. I did half of the book Introductory to Mechanics by Morin and got really interested in USAPHO. Once again, the lack of resources/mentor caused my interest to slowly fade...

On the other hand, I spent most of my time doing AMC/AIME problems (it was really the ONLY STEM-related competition my school offers).

I also entered depression this year, as I realized the amazing world out there that I can't be apart of - Science Olympiad, Science Bowl, Physics Bowl, HMMT, ARML, PuMAC, etc. When I told people at my school about these competitions, they watched me like I was speaking Arabic.

...all these amazing opportunities that I can't be apart of.

I sulked and cried, only to be heard by no one.

Career aspiration: Applied/pure mathematician, computer science (!?)

Physics is now one of my least favorite subjects, and having a B+ in the class is extremely encouraging - after 2 months, we've only learned kinematics and adding vectors (one of the worksheets which I got an F on for not showing work).

...neither am I interested in Chem and Stats anymore (B+ and A- respectively), both subjects of which I originally had interest of going into. It's amazing how much influence over your future high school teachers have but choose to not care about. It's esp. sad this kind of intellectual demoralization is happening (sub-consciously) to so many students across the nation every year.

Great job school!

As I exhausted all venues of opportunities, I realized the only one left was math competitions.

(Currently, AP Comp Sci is my favorite class (it involves problem solving) and I'm realizing how "real-world" it is).

...math is all I have. Since I'm not as interested in theoretical mathematics as opposed to real world problem-sovling, I figured applied mathematics is probably the way to go. Math is truly prevalent everywhere, so I realize that even if I don't figure out a specific field to go into before college (physics, computer science, architecture, whatever), I could always start majoring in mathematics, switch majors later, and have my skills transfer over as well.

Recently I've noticed that people have told me, "Even if you can't take the AMCs you could still enjoy math."

While this is a valid point, this does not apply in my situation.

The reason is because that I obviously want to study mathematics at the highest level in college, and these days I have my targets fixed upon the names of MIT, Princeton, and Caltech.

This is why I must, in one way or the other, find a way to demonstrate my passion and talent in mathematics.

While science fair / HMMT are possibilities, I'm only getting started as a junior (and time is ticking fast), so I doubt this would be fruitful.

Math camps are another possibility, but once again, they're extremely competitive, and you can never guarantee admission into them.

Since most of my school's budget is spent on sports and fine arts, the AMCs (the only competition worth mentioning) is the only chance for me to demonstrate said passion to colleges. This is the reason why the USAMO, to some extent, is my only venue to success.

Therefore, I've decided, after writing this entire post, that even if it takes a total of 4 round trips to US and back (AMC A, AMC B, AIME, USAMO) in the midst of the busiest semester of high school and countless logistical issues (among other factors), I will do it.

Also, I hope the readers of my blog realize how fortunate you guys are - to be able to participate in math teams, have a nonempty number of friends who like math, math circles, AMCs, MathCounts, PUMAC, ARML, HMMT, math clubs, USACO, USAPHO, USNCO, Science Bowl, Science Olympiad, etc. - or at least a nonempty subset of the above.

I've also realized how true the statement that "A person is the product of his/her environment" really is. One of the many examples of this in my school is this: remember that student I was tutoring? As rumor got out that AMCs is no longer offered, our connection has died - she no longer reaches out to me like the first 3 sessions, and looks extremely awkward passing me in the halls.

As I tell my dad, if I had fallen in love with math 3 years earlier (starting in 6th grade with MathCounts as opposed to solving my first math competition problem in the middle of 9th grade), I would be already be a MOPer now, period.

If I had never discovered AoPS, I would've never discovered my interest in math. What's extremely frustrating is that I will never know whether or not I'm gifted in other disciplines, because there is no AoPS-equivalent resource in these other fields.

This is also why I'm going to send Emory to a top-tier school district in the US as early as possible, so he won't have to go through what I did.

Nevertheless, if I ever do qualify and achieve decent results on the USAMO (and be the first ever in my school to take it), I think I should probably write an essay like Holden Lee did - hopefully my story is worthy enough to deserve one?