As I alluded to, it was in the same nightmarish room as last year's II: the same tiny desk, the same tiny chair, the same rude local kids. Except this time, I kept entirely to myself, not taking in any of the surroundings except the paper in front of me - the 8 pages of paper that's been neatly stapled together with 1, 2, ..., 15 written on each face.

Shockingly, the proctor announced that we can only use the scratch paper provided by them - which apparently is a tiny a5 sized gray chalk paper that doesn't even look large enough for a geo diagram.

Strategically, I chose the last desk and upon finding a comfortable way to zig-zag my legs under the desk in front of me, proceeded to set up camp - compass, ruler, colored pencils, alarm clock, protractor, graph paper, etc. The other local kids, who all came ill-prepared, gave me weird looks, in response to which I gave them a glare.

Once the test began, I proceeded as planned - knock out problems one by one. Problems 1, 2, 3 fell pretty quickly. As I was scratching my head on problem 4, my careful line of thought was interrupted when the hot proctor came and told me that I wasn't allowed to use my own paper. In response, I used my best flirtatious voice and pleaded, "Please, sister, I have dyslexia and for every AIME the past few years I've always numbered my scratch paper in order, as otherwise I can't focus. Pleeasseee." Thankfully, she bought into my charming physique and trod off.

I mustered out an (incorrect) answer on 4 and proceeded to knock out 5 and 6 which were both standard. 7 and 8 both took me a while. I got stuck on 7 as I forgot the fact you cannot take the log of negative numbers. Similarly, I initially thought I might have to pull out some fancy modular tricks from BT's number theory handout to solve 8. I suspected the answer to 7 was -500, -499, ..., -1, 0, 8 and put down 508 (double-silly on one problem!) before moving on to 9, which thankfully broke down soon (I made an arithmetic error unknowingly at the time). Fortunately, 10 was quick with coordinates and fell quickly.

At this point, an hour had passed and my bladder was about to burst with all the coffee I drank prior, so I went to the stench-filled bathroom and took care of business. I must've been so deadlocked in thought I accidentally walked into someone in the halls oops.

I revisited 8, dismissing the idea that any fancy theorem will be necessary, and combined denominators before realizing breaking down 720 is the way to go, and problem 8 fell quickly.

Not wanting to start checking, I read the final 5 and noticed 13 was basic counting. Fortunately, careful casework allowed me to find three possible values of n fairly quickly (though I suspected there were more, which I later managed to dismiss), so I put it down and began my checking sweep.

As I got to 7, I realized I was being stupid as 0 doesn't work, and that I couldn't count - so I carefully fixed my reasoning and got the correct answer.

In 9, I realized I was off by a multiple, and proceeded to solve the problem another way (by doing casework on colors instead of numbers), which fortunately proved successful, and I fixed my mistake.

Reading 11, 12, 14, 15, I guessed the answer to 15 was probably the centroid, so it sufficed to bash coordinates (fortunately I didn't do this as my prior experiences bashing AIME geo 15s managed to convince myself otherwise). Not seeing the PIE solution to 11, I considered bashing cases, but I was so sick of casework by then I decided not to.

Fortunately, this brought me to question 12 - one of those problems that looked covered with a thick layer of smokescreen but is actually easy. Listing out the first few terms, the geometric series became apparent and I got this in the knick of time.

At this point, there was about half an hour left and I realized I am so, so, close to a USAMO berth and potentially a 12, which would put myself alongside my role model MSTang. I pushed aside these thoughts and turned my emotions into anger - no way on earth am I going to let ANYONE take away a single one of my 12 babies.

So as opposed to attempting the remaining 3, I entered rage mode and checked every problem a third time. This proved to be fruitful, as I found a case error on question 4 to get the correct answer.

As the hot proctor told us the test was over, I felt incredible angst. It didn't seem likely I would silly 4 problems, but nevertheless there were so many close calls. I winked at my proctor and she gave in to allow me to leave with my scratch paper. On the car, I immediately turned on personal hotspot and VPN while jotting down my answers. Then I sprung onto FB not noticing it's 7 AM eastern in the US and spammed everyone I know who took the II asking whether they can confirm answers with me.

The first "early bird" up was my homie agbdmrbirdyface.
In the meantime, the next early bird up was WhaleVomit, who didn't take II but was kind enough to pass my answers to someone who did; 5 mins later, he responded with the same number as birdie did: 12. Finally, I triple-checked with droid of TJ to confirm my 12, and just like that, I told others in the car with disbelief. My dad almost began crying as he blew up the phones of my relatives, family friends. I also passed the message to my college counselor and contest coordinator, and I guess we all know what happened next.

OMG MY MATH BOOKS AND THE DROPBOX FOLDER OF ARTICLES I'VE MISSED YOU GUYS SO MUCH