I'm Strawberry Blonde. Get It Right.

Awesome.

So tonight was awesome because I got a prom date and our sister hall came here and sang “I’m Yours” and “Our Song” and they’re awesome and I was the only person on hall that knew “Our Song” because that was the first Taylor Swift song I ever heard and it’s awesome and again they’re awesome and my prom date is awesome and everything is awesome including this run-on sentence. Awesome.

It’s a miracle

The PFM was actually halfway decent tonight. I don’t understand.

Wow.

So I realized some things today. 1) I am a complete jerk with a pretty bad superiority complex. Yeap. When people say that I’m good at math, I say something along the lines of “Ha yeah right” and pretend to brush it off because somewhere along the line I stopped actually being humble and started thinking that I was humble. But do I actually think that I’m bad at math? I found out today I don’t. I think I’m really good. But I’m not. So when they were announcing honorable mentions at Furman today, they said Austin’s name. My first thought was: “Wow we must have done really well. I wonder where I fell.” Then they said Wey-Wey, who was at his first math competition. My thought was: “Hey, I must have done really well.” Then they said Landon’s name, and my first thought was not “Oh, I must not have made honorable mention.” and was instead “Whoa, did I beat Landon?” Then it fully dawned on me when they said Velina’s name, and I haven’t been able to think about how much of a jerk I am ever since. Like seriously, Wey-Wey and Austin both beat me by several questions. Though Austin was not very humble about placing where he did, since he decided to immediately call his parents and try to convince them to get his younger brother to do math competitions, because “if I had been practicing for more than a couple of months, think about where I would be!” So while I definitely feel like a jerk for thinking like that, those kinds of things should never be said. Ever. That annoys me a lot. Though that is me being a hypocrite, because I obviously have my own superiority complex. Now for Wey-Wey, I love Wey-Wey. Who doesn’t? And I feel even dumber for just assuming that I’m better than him because he’s never done any math competitions or because in Math Problem Solving he didn’t know how to solve a lot of the problems that are routine to me because I’ve been doing competitions for years. But Wey-Wey has the one thing that I lack: thought. Because he hasn’t seen those problems before, he thought of creative ways to solve them. He’s incredibly smart, much smarter than me. And I feel really really dumb for assuming that he wasn’t, even without realizing that I was doing it. He had really nice solutions to problems that I just didn’t think about at all and just bashed solutions out of the ugly way. That let him do a lot more problems and get a lot fewer wrong. Too bad it took me until my next-to-last math competition of high school to realize that my approach was pretty much setting me up for failure. I’m also pretty disappointed in myself, because my bashing made me make a lot of really dumb mistakes and miss a lot of problems I should’ve been able to get. I did a lot better watching the round where the problems get projected in front of everyone because I forced myself to look at good quick methods to solve it rather than just bashing them, especially because I was doing them in my head. And again, while I was watching Landon do his part of that round because he got chosen over me, I was internally criticizing the fact that he only got one right while I got about five of his seven right from the sidelines. But that’s the point. I did them from the sidelines. I have no right to say that I would have done better, because I can remember choking on some pretty simple problems in that round during Mathcounts in 8th grade. It’s hard to think quickly when you’re in that position. And yet I figure I can do it better than him. If there’s one thing I really learned today, it’s that there is a lot that I really don’t understand that I think I do. And I guess that’s part of growing up. Too bad I haven’t gotten around to the whole growing up part yet.

Well now that’s out of the way, 2) Rash is amazing. I love traveling with him. He repeatedly made jokes about Wey-Wey being in the bathroom all day (I have no idea what he ate, but he was always missing). He is absolutely one of the funniest teachers on campus. He is just an awesome guy to be around.

3) I saw Josh Edwards today at the competition. I was the first person to pick him out when we passed him in the parking lot. A lot of people assumed he was there to hang out with friends, but I knew he would be there for the math competition. I got to talk to him after. I had forgotten how awesome he is. He’s doing okay, he  kind of regrets leaving, but it’s almost time for college anyway, so it’s whatever. He also really just doesn’t want to come back to visit just looking at it and remembering everything here.

Furman

So I watched the sun rise with Vipul. He’s awesome. And now I get to go do math. I got 23rd and missed honorable mention by one question at this thing last year, so maybe I’ll actually do something this year since I know some combo and number theory. :D

so my favorite self-centered junior came into number theory today a couple minutes late after everyone had turned in their graded homework panting and whimpering about not being able to print out the homework in the library. graves: “at least you’re out of breath, i find it harder to yell at students that are out of breath.” so awesome.

so i had two large shakes today at chick-fil-a. i think everyone on this trip thinks i’m insane now because of it. they were good though.

it was raining really hard when we got here. i don’t think i’ve seen that much lightning since i left florida. random thought i had.

i get to do math tomorrow morning. :D and i was doing some practice problems and there were two that i was able to do really quickly using stuff from the number theory book i got from the library the other yesterday. i’m already on chapter 5 in that book. and i slept most of the drive here. i’m not addicted or anything. yay math. :)

Numerical

Rash just said that the graded homework that everyone thought was due this morning is actually due by the end of the day. This class is amazing. Rash is amazing. That means I actually finished a graded homework more than half an hour before it was due for once. :D

Hmmm… just me, two math graded homework assignments, and a lot of blank paper. This is about to be a lot of fun. :D

Goals

So, I realized something yesterday. I realized that I had exactly one goal this entire year. That wasn’t to get into MIT or any other college, to get semifinalist on Bio Olympiad, or to get straight A’s. My only goal this year was to score high enough on the AMC to make AIME. And I actually did it. So no matter how many things decide to disappoint me these last few weeks, I can always remember that I achieved my one goal, and I’m going to go take AIME in just a few minutes. I’m going to get absolutely destroyed, but I got what I wanted: three hours with fifteen math questions. This is about to be so much fun. :D

White Day

happylittlemexican:

Einstein’s Birthday, and Half-Tau Day. 3/14 is just awesome.

Pretty sure he meant Pi Day. Oh, and MIT comes out at 2pi time! Oh god…….

hmmmm note to self: playing minesweeper while thinking about other things decreases your win rate.