My story of AoPS

(Note: Gamemaster402 inspired me with his story)

It all started with alcumus. It was the summer of 4th-5th grade and I was introduced to this learning system called alcumus. I have heard of AoPS before from Beast Academy but I never knew that they had this whole entire website to themselves. So i started off doing prealgebra in alcumus. I quickly got addicted to trying to earn the achievements and quests. I remember every Wednesday would be called “achievement day” meaning that I would try to earn the achievements. I remember perseverance was a hard one. So as the ones where you need to get the problem correct at the right moment.

I would watch the videos every day and master at least one topic every day. I took alcumus so seriously that if I was in the middle of a streak and I got a problem wrong, I would cry. By the end of the summer I have passed all the topics in prealgebra and when I got the achievement that you need to pass all the topics of prealgebra I felt so proud. I felt even more proud when I mastered all the topics. But then summer ended.

I would move on the the fifth grade and I felt that having school wouldn’t bother me that much for alcumus, but it did. One of the biggest reasons that I stopped doing alcumus for a while was because I was stuck on this topic called inverse proportions. I suddenly forgot about alcumus but with the constant reminders of my sister, I moved back on. I went to learning algebra in alcumus and I did quite well. I did not do that much alcumus that school year as the summer before. I only mastered about a topic in ever like two weeks. Then I decided to take a math class instead of doing alcumus.

I don’t remember that much about the math class but I do remember learning from it. 5th grade passed by fast and then It was Summer. I did little alcumus that summer but what I discovered was the forums. I discovered that there are many people like me and I was addicted to the forums. I didn’t do much of the math forums but I played a lot of the fun factory games. I also talked about basketball with other people who loved math just as much as me. But the summer passed by fast and now I was in middle school.

Middle school was really confusing on the first day. I didn’t grasp the concept about walking to class to class. And I couldn’t find a lot of my classes. I think I did even more chatting on the forums the school year. I would do some alcumus, but not much. Anyway, Middle school wasn’t bad. I got used to it, but it sucked how we had to run the mile every friday.

It was one day when I was exploring the forums. There was a forum on AoPS classes. I have heard about it before. I was looking at what they were talking about and I found it interesting. I wanted to take a class. I spent a lot of time on making a decision on doing either Algebra A or Algebra B. I soon made a decision to take Algebra A. I asked my parents if I could take it and they said Yes! I was so happy.

The first AoPs class, I didn’t know how it worked. I thought it was cool about the moderating thing. After about three weeks I made friends with Cholla2004, wx_family, Lynnsaratoga, applepie3.14, panacea_jwu, and Dyoder13. I learned that there was more to the AoPS class. We had a group PM and forum about when to meet in the classroom and we would solve the problems together. There were also writing problems. That is when I discovered $\LaTeX$. I explored AoPS wiki about LaTeX and learned a lot about it. Right now, I’m in week 10 of the AoPS class. I have a goal to learn Asymptote some day. I also took the AMC 8 and got a 14.

Right now, I am starting to get really addicted to AoPS. I got 300 posts in less than a month and the first thing I open when I turn on my computer is AoPS. I also really enjoy greed control and reaper.(15 in reaper and 75 in greed control) One of my goals is to win a Greed control game. I have been close before(6th place) but never gotten it.

The online class is almost over now. I’m done with algebra A, which means after this summer, I will learn CNP. Since I made it to Mr. Lomas’s class next year, I will be ahead a lot. So next year will be like a review to me. While I learn CNP which will help me a lot in competition math.