For the past few weeks, I've lived alone, quit procrastination, and yet, I'm still nowhere near where I want to be.

On weekdays, I live by myself on a random hotel room above a random noodles shop next to my school for time-saving purposes and also to enjoy the thrill of living by myself. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I go back to my weekend home. My time spent by myself has been almost completely productive. Apart from the daily ~15 mins I reserve for myself to watch NBA highlights, I've been using instant lockdown to block websites like Facebook, Youtube, and sometimes even AoPS. Usually, apart from eating dinner, all the rest of my time is used effectively, and I've still managed to reserve about 6 hours to sleep.

Most of my time for the time after winter break until last Saturday was spent prepping for the SAT. Adding on to my winter break count, I completed all the Ivy Global tests, and 4 College Board tests. In particular, after I realized a key strategy to the reading section, my section score shot up by 20-30 points (don't want to divulge, sorry). As a result, I'm fairly confident my score will be > 1530, maybe even > 1550 if my ill-timed bladder didn't end up affecting my accuracy on the writing section.

Truth is, I've never felt this in control of my life ever before. Everyday feels like living on the edge; every movement feels deliberate, with no one to stop me besides myself. In fact, even myself can't stop I. Every minute not working feels agonizingly painful, almost sinful as if I'm permitting crime from happening.

Socially, I've also learned to better manage my self-esteem. After getting first on the Canadian contest, it appears I've become the topic of many dinner conversations across the school. Unfortunately, being famous for math contests and being famous as the captain of a varsity sport are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Instead, I simply let irrelevant things roll off me. I've learned to respond to comments like "Michael is such a math genius" and "This class must be so easy for you" with a simple "Thank you" or, increasingly common, jokes like "and yet I'm still single." This is a huge improvement from last year, when I feel the need to escape the spotlight by degrading myself with comments like "I'm actually bad" or "Omg I was probably just lucky" or feel too awkward to reply and simply avoid such comments. Overall, I don't think I have any "close" friends; I just feel more natural around people.

Club-wise, AoPS club and Mu Alpha Theta are both running fine. For the latter, I hope to play a more active role by writing problems for upcoming intra-school contests. I'm also planning to run for president for next year. Promoting passion in math is difficult and sometimes even self-sacrificial, but I hope I do get elected; I really do hope to use my last year as a senior to make a positive change in the community.

Just be yourself, and everything else will work themselves out accordingly.

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On the other hand...

Looking ahead, I'm actually in some deep ****. For yesterday and today, I've had to drive to a faraway international hospital in downtown Shanghai for a health checkup, hence taking away a huge chunk of time. As a result, I didn't have chance to study and just today, I received a horrific C+ on my stats test. I also received a B- on the Multivariable quiz on 3-variable function gradients and tangent planes (though the test will later replace it). We're learning Lagrange multipliers now though! I also got a 50% on my first physics lab; AP Chem is now increasing exponentially in difficulty. There's also an English essay that I've yet to start. And did I forget to mention neither are AP Comp Sci, and Chinese, walks in the park either. To top it off, I'm 100 pages behind on my APUSH readings and may have to read summaries instead.

Competition math-wise, I haven't even had time to do WOOT problems (still haven't done mock AIME 2). The only highlight here is me getting a 129 on the 2011 AMC 12B (even counting 2 sillies), which means I've officially run out of AMC 12s to mock (all the 2012+ final fives have had videos made by Richard, and I've watched all of them each at least 10 times over the course of the past 2 years). AIME-wise, I'm still on 2001, though none of the earlier years' final fives have posed much difficulty.

You guys may also note I've stopped posting on my other blog: partly it's because I'm starting to compile a list of nice AIME problems from 1983-present (basically the ones I find nicest or most instructive), which I might release as a post on the C&P forums come contest time. The other reason is cause it simply takes too long to type up solutions to problems (also darn AoPS for timing out every 30 seconds on my crappy wifi).

Other maths' wise, I'm flying to the Philippines to meet cjquines over CNY break for ISEF, after which, I'll be flying to Hong Kong to take the AMC 12A. Apparently 3 other people (2 of which are girls) from my school want to join me; darn. Our ISEF project is going well (though cj is the main mastermind behind the project). Hopefully cj will be patient in teaching me the relevant knowledge that I'm missing when I get there. The school advisor, also my physics teacher, is rather anal with details like the research plan I drafted as well as all the forms I have to fill out.

Summer camps wise, I've decided to prioritize Ross and SuMAC (I'm applying to the Alg/NT program), PROMYS is priority number three (which is a good thing cause it has the latest deadline). I've knocked out the first 2 problems for Ross already and the SuMAC ones all look doable. Nevertheless, the problems are quite interesting in their own rights and I want to see if I can generalize some of them.

Cheers to a productive CNY break!