Early app SUBMITTED last Thurs so I felt a huge weight off my chest.

Writing college essays felt pretty natural to me, partly owing to the fact I've been writing intensively on this blog for the past 2-3 years, so I've developed the useful skill of being able to spew out a high volume words in a short period of time. Unfortunately, that was only about 10 percent of the process, as the remaining 90 percent consisted of editing, revising, and asking myself existential questions like "What's important to me? Why do I like math?"

In particular, one supplemental question regarding intellectual vitality prompted me to think very hard about what makes me do math. The thing is, I don't like math because it's math, the same way I don't like blogging because I enjoy preaching about things and expressing opinions simply for others to listen - I actually enjoy the process of writing, adding similes, metaphors, etc. and finding creative ways to express ideas.

In truth, most of the reason that's compelled me to do so much high-density math the past few years is simply because of a love of problem solving. As a result, the book that really stuck out was ACoPS (Art and Craft of Problem Solving), where, unlike all the other books that used a problems-honing approach or had me drinking from a hose, formulated problems via certain common problem solving tactics that made it really enjoyable. Word of caution: For those who want a rigorous Olympiad training, ACoPS, as people on fora have said, isn't the best since it's kinda the analogous of a highlights reel for a sports game as opposed to giving you a comprehensive treatment of topics, for which PSS and PFTB are better. Anyhow, a problem I recall is this:

It's really straightforward, and doesn't require anything beyond PHP (as the n+1 and n suggest), but it's all about using a simple tool in a creative way. Math to me really means how we can use symbols and theorems and formal language to make ideas "connect."

I think AoPS Club at school this year reflects this mantra well - I would usually just put a good puzzle on the board every meeting, get members to attempt to solve it, then explain it nicely at the end. This approach as reflected by our attendance records seems to much more productive than just lecturing knowledge.

At the end of the day, I realize, it's quite intimidating to think (I learned all these theorems, lemmas... for what?). This becomes more prevalent when competition starts drowning people (I've seen and heard about this too often both on forum and in person and I'm sure those in elite competitive districts in the US have seen it far more). Then we start overloading ourselves with "I'm going to do X, Y to achieve Z" but in reality this is counterproductive, esp. if you're not even sure what about math it is you like.

I've suffered from this quite a bit as well but then every time I recall the reason why I enjoyed doing it in the first place and all is good.

OK, so mid-semester (ED/EA grades) week has finally passed. My school practically relived an apocalypse movie - an acquaintance almost broke down in front of the library, another suffering depression, and many more figuratively camping outside the school's grades site with their browser windows. My table-mate in Chinese class comes to every other class red-eyed from writing AP Lit essays to 4 AM the morning of.

Students have all gone rogue (a notorious video-gamer "somehow" finished a CS test that most of the top students take an hour to finish in just 30 mins. Hm...). Teachers have gotten annoyed (though some teachers react accommodatingly, this is definitely not the case for all...). As a result, more students go rogue and the feedback loop continues.

I had a debate with my dad in the case of when I should take the easy route and just cheat with it (for the records, I have not cheated a single time in HS, the exception being a time of a quiz when everyone else cheated and the teacher couldn't care less). My dad keeps telling me to learn the harsh ways of society and do it for the sake of survival, but personally, my principle is this will sound harsh. From a self-interest perspective it's easy to take the highway route, but if everyone can't bother to uphold the pillars of society, what's the point of society?

I'm sure many of you can relate to this (perhaps a certain notorious school in NC).

I managed to scrape by with a B and the rest A's (though I'm a bit less sure on the college-level math course I'm taking online. My counselor proctored me a 3-hour midterm last Thurs and I'm only fifty-percent confident about it).

Fortunately, now that mid-semester has passed, things should finally get a bit more manageable.

On the academic side of things, I don't really plan to return to contest math, with the exception of perhaps AMC, which my school isn't offering this year again (such surprise much wow). The other ones my school does offer are really just bashy computational problems with at most a few tricks or gimmicks that I've seen far too often before. In addition, I'm kind of on the vice principal's parole after missing too many classes last semester so I had to call off PUMAC and HMMT.

I have been looking into contests I can do - I have an awesome counselor so he might be willing to proctor me. F=ma sounds fun - since I'll be done with two semesters worth of college mechanics by then, so does USACO, but I might just do it for the fun of it.

I have been looking at contests possibly beyond - MCM/ICM seems awesome, I might get a primer on modeling second semester and getting a team in college to participate shouldn't be hard, the only downside being the problems seem open-ended, so I'd balance it out with more technical contests like Google Code Jam and ACM. Even though I still plan to major in math I might as well hone some strong programming skills for job security, just in case, you know, lol.

Of course, shiningsunnyday will still stay relevant via the Putnam (best of luck to those competing this week, though) considering all the math courses I'll take in college.

So apart from contests, I plan to use second semester to LEARN LEARN LEARN. My current things-to-do-after-college-apps list consists of a lot of math and CS books - hoping to learn a lot of algorithms, combinatorics. If time allows, librian2000 and I plan to develop an iOS game - a good way to earn some bucks before entering college. There's a lot of app-making academies, like Make Academy, that I plan to apply to.

Definitely needed every bit of those extra calories to get through mid-semester