Well, the last month and a half have not been good to me, math-wise. In fact, this may be the worst string of math competition results I've ever experienced in my life (well, there have been some pretty good results sprinkled in the mix, but they're not competitions I actually care about).

I've decided to use this blog as a place to vent frustration, so I'll talk about these math competitions:

January TST:

After a December TST that went pretty well for me, I was scared of the inevitable early combo on this TST - and unfortunately this fear was well founded. Problem 1 was some gimmicky functional equation that I dispatched in a couple of minutes (once you realize that f(something/n) = something/n and try examples the Bezout method becomes motivated). Then I spent 3 and a half hours trying the combinatorics Problem 2. I failed to do even small cases, resulting in a guessed answer that was totally wrong. I didn't have time to look at Problem 3, and so I ended with a pretty pitiful 7/0/0.

HMMT:

The worst individual performance of my life. I did OK in alg, and then on Geo, where I had gotten 7 problems last year, I got 2/10. I'm pretty bad at combo and was in a bad mindset after that, so I did problems 1, 2, 3 in a minute (resulting in stupid mistakes on 1 and 2) and spent the rest of the time on problem 10, which I managed to get right!!! To be honest, I don't think I placed in the top 200 (well, maybe that's an exaggeration but it's close). After an awful PUMaC performance, I have to conclude that this kind of contest (1 hour or so, 10 or so hard problems) is really not my cup of tea.

However, there's a bright side! On team round, I helped carry the team to an unbelievable 4th place finish. We had a system in which I would tell my teammates how to do the problems and they would write them up, and with this system we managed to solve problems 1, 2, 3 (wrote up myself 'cause it was a two-liner), 4, 5, and 8 (this last one I was proud of and wrote up myself). Shout out to my teammate Jason for his brilliant three-line solution to 6 that got full points and was WAY better than the official solution. Also, number 7 was literally the Weierstrass Approximation Theorem and my teammate Savvy wrote a really nice proof. Unfortunately, despite sweeping the first 8, we didn't have time for the surprisingly standard 9 or the super annoyingly gimmicky 10. Given that our team was 1 MOPper + 2 USAMOers + 1 JMOer + 4 AIMEers and we only lost to PEARL (which had 7 MOPpers) and A* (which also had 7 MOPpers) and the Chinese team (from Remin University) and beat teams like Misery, Washington, WWP Knights, and Texas all with 2-5 MOPpers, this was pretty crazy.

RMM Day 1:

After this, I've really been considering how I should continue in regards to math competitions. After a very strong showing on the 2014 USAMO, a reasonable ELMO and TSTST, and a pretty good December TST, this time I definitely ended up near the bottom of the TST group. It was the Januar TST all over again - after quickly solving an easy Problem 1, I spent all my time fruitlessly attempting the Combo Problem 2. And after the test, I solved Problem 3 with a monovariant in only an hour!

Not only are my IMO chances nonexistent, my goal of finishing Top 10 in TST group seems completely out of reach. There re only two tests I care about left - APMO and USAMO. I want to finsih Top 10 on APMO (so that my score counts), but given that it's a lot faster than the other tests (4 hours for 5 problems rather than for 3), and that speed is my biggest problem, this goal seems out of reach. Winning USAMO, on the other hand, seems doable (relative to my other goals, at least!). I've been practicing nonstop (which makes these recent failures even more crushing), but to be honest, I think it might just come down solely to luck for me, given how many incredible people I'll be competing against.

The reason I'm pretty sad over these tests is, believe it or not, because of my USAMO HM last year. I know a lot of people in TST group (who are accomplishing the goals I've failed to) who's personal goal is to HM (pretty ironic actually, although I'm sure they'll achieve it this year). After I got the HM, I've been trying to prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke (I never dreamed that I'd make MOP or do anything like that, especially given that I started as a sophomore, so I've never felt really comfortable with my own abilities when collaborating with people who've made MOP since middle school, who won MathCounts, who qualified to USAMO before Grade School, etc...)

I was feeling better after ELMO, TSTST, and the December TST, but these last two TST's have thrown me of balance. Given that my math competition career is rapidly approaching its end, maybe I might just let it go and focus on debate or sports or something (this might just be temporary regret talking, though).

Silver Linings:

At least AMC went well! Also, I just came back from "ICTM regionals" which is basically a precursor to the silly Illinois state competition. Unlike the hilarious 2013 regional competition where I placed 5th (lol), I didn't make any stupid mistakes this time so got some nice bling. I had a deal with my math coach that when I came up on stage to collect my award, he would say "Carlos Danger" instead of my real name, but he chickened out

Also I convinced the math team coaches to get chipotle for everyone so that was a success.

Well, writing this has been sort of therapeutic. Good.

Also:

Congrats to the US RMM team which placed second yesterday!!! Every single team member medal-ed, and Brice Huang, Michael Kural, and Ashwin Sah got golds!!!