My story of AoPS(part 3)

First of all, I was said that I was too dramatic in part two. Whatever.




Here I am in the environment where I feel like I had failed. As if fail wasn't strong enough. I was struggling on my NT homework. Barely making it through every week. Having my sister constantly reminding me put more pressure. More pressure that I forgot to study for MATHCOUNTS. And the result was bad. Very bad. Very very very bad. I had done decent on the first test, but not on the second.



I don't have a single trophy. Not. Even. One. I think about this every single day. I won a very small math contest? I achieve a medal. I win a science season project? My parents acted like winning was a piece of cake and all I got was a prism. All through my life there were chances where I thought that I would win a trophy, but I didn't. Although I had won a small math contest, I felt very sick inside. Slamming my fist on my pillow when sleeping. I'm telling you, it's hard to be constantly learning Interest problems at the same time as mod problems. Because one side tells you to use tables, while the other side tells you to forget about tables. I once wrote mods for a mixture problem. Other than that, It feels good to win. I had always wondered what it was like to score a buzzer beater, and that moment happened two days ago. I was in a contest where I was in a team with Timothy Gao and Eric Chen, and the other team was just two people which was Nathan Hu and Emerson Yu. We were tied and there were three problems left. I asked Dennis what a derivative was, and he explained it to me. The mini competition ends at 5:30 and it was 5:20. I stepped up to the white board and began to explain the problem. I still remember the problem: Find d(d(3x^5)) which I got an answer of 60x^3. Dennis stared at my work and I felt a stream of nervousness go down me. Timothy and Eric felt the same, and as soon as Dennis said "4 out of 4" We shrieked with happiness. I felt it. It felt so....Heroic. It's hard to explain the feeling, but the most I can say is that it makes you feel so so happy. I kinda felt bad for my sportsman ship though.. Our team was screaming YO WE WON. But we didn't know what we were saying until we calmed down.

If your my sister or mom or dad reading this, than don't make me feel good by creating a fake contest and letting me win on purpose just to hand me a trophy. No, I don't want any of that, because one day I will find out that my trophy is fake, and I will be furious. I want a feeling that I won a trophy myself.

My NT class was awesome. Olena Blumberg is an IMO gold and the top staff of AoPS. I was really lucky to have her as my teacher. Her username was square_16 and yesterday was her last class she was going to teach us, since the next class she wasn't going to be here. I don't know why, but I felt like crying when

She replied to me. You guys probably don't understand how much those words meant to me. Although this was just a silly little message,

This felt like a trophy.

Not everything has to be visualized. 

Lyrics of the post: All I know

is where I go I'm going home

Voicians-Seconds