Homecoming. Blah.
It was my first and last homecoming of high school, and while I know that I would have greatly regretted not going, I also can't say that I had the great time I was hoping for.
Since I don't have my driver's license yet (in fact I was the only person in our group without a license), I had to get rides from Luke (thanks!). Of course, that's not to say that everyone was able to drive. Parents apparently get in the way.
Well dinner was pretty good, but it was stupidly expensive. I blame everyone who voted for Italian for causing this...including myself. Regardless, the bread was really good, but I was basically full when we got our entrees. How people could still eat dessert is beyond me.
After dinner, we went to the dance. It was okay, except that we were waiting outside for Jason for about as long as we were at the dance...miscommunication ftl.
Luke's afterparty looked to be redeeming. There was a lot of food, although I was still mostly unable to eat after the dinner. I managed to eat a small piece of mooncake...and a couple of chips. That was about it. We played melee for a while. First round I decided to play Jigglypuff (she's so fun to use :)) and got second behind Lenny (who has been playing melee instead of bridge...grrrr). Next round I played ice climbers, since the last time I had played melee was at Ved's house and I went about 1-8 in 1v1s...with the 1 win being from ice climbers. Well, that happened again, and I somehow won, even though we were playing on flat zone, so nana got KOd basically instantly every time I spawned. I'm probably the only person to be best with ice climbers.
Then the poker started. Each person started with 210 (10 1s, 10 5s, 5 10s, and 4 25s), and we started with 1/2 blinds. I managed to be the first one out (blargh). Here's the last hand I played. I call preflop with KJ suited.
Flop: AQ10 rainbow
At this point I have 39 left and an ace high straight, so I go all in and get called.
Turn: 8
River: A
This looks pretty good for me. I confidently flip over my KJ showing my straight and my opponent shows pocket queens. Not only did I get completely screwed on this hand, I was the clear favorite until the river came up. He NEEDED the board to pair to win that. Ugh.
So then at this point Luke kinda stopped playing and he's short stack anyway, so I take over and lose all his chips. On one hand I picked up KJ suited and jokingly told him that he was going to get eliminated on that round. Didn't quite happen, but it was pretty close (I took a pretty big hit from that one). So then after that I managed to lose again. Yup. Out of a 10 person poker game, I was both 9th and 10th.
Renjie got out next and we played some melee. I think I went like 2-5 or something like that against him. Not a good percentage for me.
Anyway after the poker died out I was pretty much meleed out, so I got up and watched stuff happen for a bit. Then I realized that I was REALLY tired (it was around 3, I think?) and started to go to sleep. I forget whether Amanda came before or after I had gotten out my sleeping bag and was lying down...oh well. I know she came in before I actually went to sleep though. Part of that was because while I was trying to fall asleep, people were talking loudly. I wouldn't have minded, but they were talking about homework and college apps. Ugh.
Well eventually I fell asleep. I was vaguely aware of some of the activities that went on while I slept, like cleaning up Luke's pool table and more conversations that annoyed me. As I started to regain consciousness, I listened to the conversation that was going on. It was not so bad, but I decided to just stay lying down and not officially "wake up" for a while. When I did, I was pleasantly surprised. I had gone to sleep being annoyed at some of the people at the party, but when I woke up it was a smaller crowd and the conversations were more fun. Regardless, I still can't say that the homecoming party was amazing. It was fine, and I know I would be feeling much worse if I hadn't gone, but it could have been better...for those of you who don't know why, I'll let you imagine what I might be referring to. GLHF :)
When I got home I was still feeling kinda bad after the afterparty. No offense to Luke, but last year's parties were a lot more fun. I got home around 10 and just went to sleep until probably 2 in the afternoon. When I woke up I was still had some residual annoyances with our class, but not nearly as bad as it was during the afterparty.
I'm still really annoyed at a lot of the people in the class of 2010. The combination of laziness and hypercompetitiveness is unbelievably irritating. If you're going to be lazy, don't bitch about your lackluster college application. If you're going to be hypercompetitive about college apps, don't be lazy in your extracurriculars (*cough* math team *cough*). You know why TJ's math team has sucked the past three years? I'll tell you why. It's because of the class of 2010. Look at last year's rankings. Look at how many 11s (the class of 2010) there are in B and C team. Think about how much work you would want people to do to make the B team for a school like TJ. If everyone on math team had done that much work then we'd probably win ARML easily. No joke. The class of 2010 is extremely talented, but their laziness is only compounded by the fact that they can just slide into the TJ B team without working for it, and therefore don't work for it. And now basically all of them have stopped working toward doing well on math team altogether. Here is the top of last year's ARML rankings after removing seniors.
Brian Hamrick
Dan Li
SeungIn Sohn
Jimmy Clark
Renjie You
Now look at the skill gap that appears somewhere in here. For the first math team practice, we did an old Mandelbrot that wouldn't count for anything but lettering, so Renjie and I decided to do it without paper: the only thing you're allowed to write down is the answer. On the 14 point contest, I got 13; Renjie got 6. That's the gap in our top 5. When you get down to 15th, people just suck massively. We got two fours at ARML last year - out of TEN. Everyone on TJ A should be getting 7 MINIMUM.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to spend all their free time on math team, but the people who say that they care about math team should care about the math, and they should be competent at it. Ugh.
At least the freshmen look promising ^_^. Seriously, the best thing that could happen for math team right now is that enough freshmen qualify for our HMMT teams that all the seniors from 15 down on ARML rankings don't get to go. Maybe that will shock them enough that they might become good enough to win ARML.
At least some stuff is going well...kinda. Ugh.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
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Woo I wrote this entire post during school. Some classes are useless. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteConcur with Brian. This year seems alright for now, but last year was amazing. For the record, we will be having parties during Winter Break, so its all good =P
ReplyDeleteAs regards laziness, again concur with Brian. @Jenny, you say there are people on Math Team who try and don't do well. But trying doesn't just mean coming to practice and competing seriously. It doesn't mean even coming to lectures regularly. Even doing the problems during lectures really isn't enough. You have to be willing to go home and work, whether its on short answer problems or proofs. If you need problems, there's always someone to give them. There's ample opportunity, but so few of us ever took it. When I look back at hs, I don't regret social stuff: I had a lot of fun, enough fun tbh. I regret not working hard enough, not learning enough.
I fully admit to being one of those lazy math team-ers.
ReplyDeleteSo, I don't want to go all oh-i'm-a-college-student-so-listen-to-me on the class of 2010 (and whoever else chooses to read), but this seems like an appropriate place to do it.
It's not even possible to describe how much I regret not taking math team more seriously. I thought it was just ... something to do for fun, a place where I could pick up a few things on the way. And if I didn't? Who cares? It's not like this is classroom math.
This is not the way to go about it. We, meaning the people at TJ, are presented with insane opportunities. Some of the people I've met here are struggling with my concepts of math class. Why? Because they've never seen induction before. They've never seen any form of logic before. This isn't entirely their fault. They've never been presented this sort of stuff in a clear, systematic fashion.
But you (myself as well) have. We have one of the best collaborative forums in the country for a high school, in the form of lectures and TJUSAMO.
And if you're roughly my level, thinking to yourself, "Well, I'm already good at induction. I do know logic. So I'm good." That's also the wrong way to go about it. So, the first test in my math class was trivial for me. Guess what? I'm totally lost now. And it's completely my own fault. I can't even count the number of times I've thought something along the lines of "oh, that looks like concept x that I saw in math team once. Too bad I paid no attention." Too bad indeed. I'm trying hard to make up for the mistakes I've made. It's not like it's too late. But it's never too early.
Math is math. Even if the math you're doing isn't something you'll be studying later, it's entirely worth it. There's a certain mathematical maturity you develop. I see it in certain people around me, and I can't help but think to myself, "I should have that." It's not something I'm entitled to, though. It's something I had the opportunity to work for but didn't, and that's what I should've been doing.
So, yes. Actually, there is life beyond the next homework assignment. There is life beyond college applications. You will all end up in college, and you'll get every opportunity to use what you learned in high school to its fullest.
So, again. That was probably a little long, but I'm completely serious. It's not even particularly original. I've heard the same speech before. So I don't know what it takes to motivate us. It didn't work on me.
Maybe it'll work on someone though, and that makes it worth it.
Now to return to my concepts of math homework on bijections. Man, that name sounds familiar. I wonder where I've heard it before. Maybe I should've paid more attention ...
Yeah....have to agree with Ved here.
ReplyDeleteBecoming familiar with (and seriously showing a willingness to learn) many of the concepts you're shown in math team is incredibly valuable. (Admittedly more so for some people than others)
Not that I'm saying I was free of the laziness-guilt though.
For the longest time, I knew my proof-writing abilities were well below par. Sadly, I never picked it up when I could have if I had chosen to focus more time on math team. (USAMO score: 2 Eck!)
Why am I considering proofs now? Well, you can say I've realized they're pretty darn important if you want to know what you're doing. Ability to rigorously prove things is indispensable for understanding any abstract concept. And these concepts in turn can be applied anywhere.
As a matter of fact, 3 of my current classes are rather proof based: math - proofs are the only things we do; philosophy - yes philosophy, with full-blown rigorous induction, deduction, & contradiction proofs; and statistics - well this not so much but at least we're deriving the concepts we learn.
Seriously, because I know my ability to prove things are so bad is the reason I opted out of Engineering Multi-Var into Analysis in a Single Variable. I guess it's not too late to fix this problem, but yeah, as already mentioned, this could have started a lot sooner.
But I'm at least glad I didn't leave math team with nothing. Exposure to high-level combinatorics (though admittedly I'm only adept at the low-level) has helped quite a bit already in Operations Research statistics. And one of the first problems from the Analysis text I did was "prove 12 cannot be the square of a rational number." Upon reading that, I immediately thought of one beginner-level proof session I attended a while back at TJ.
@Ved: whooo...injections, surjections, and bijections! :D Topology was chapter 2 for us.
you mathletes need to become more antisocial :P
ReplyDeleteJenny, there are very few (like, less than 5) people on math team who actually try. I am one of the people who is lazy on math team. In my defense, I do not at all claim to care about math team so I am not a hypocrite.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to leave a ridiculously long comment, so if you want to hear my thoughts on math team and the class of 2010, you can read my blog in a few hours.
Uhhh.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't talking about myself.
But some people actually do try and not make A team...
Right, very very few.
ReplyDeleteWow... I did not know Brian to be this passionate a blogger. Quite a tirade here near the end.
ReplyDeleteSam, you should not claim to know that everyone who did not make into A team are not doing enough math. Some people did not get into A team just because TJ has a lot of highly experience math teamers. Contest math can sometimes boil down to contest of experience or familiarity with different applications of math.
I personally thought class of 2011 was terrible, since there are hardly any of them in the math team at all. (Also, because I consider myself terrible 0_0) Let's see there is me, Adam Hood, and James Baek in A team for ARML, but James left TJ for Korea. Then, we have Andrew Cheong, who made into B team last year. I think he has potential to make into ARML A team this year. Then, there are Krishnan Chander and Divya Garg. Andre Kessler is very good at proof-based math, but he doesn't have the speed for solving things under time limit. That barely makes total 6 people in 45 people. That is very very poor number.
I thought that class of 2010 was competitive for sure (considering how many of them are in the top 45 list for ARML), but I never considered their "lazy" side until I just read this.
But Brian, you should not generalize that everyone in B or C team who could have done very well in math team are lazy. Sure, there might be some lazy people doing nothing but come once in a while to math team. But, there are also people who are doing A LOT of other stuff: debate, mentorship/research, Bio stuff, physics...
I wonder if I should get a blog. Maybe, I will wait until next year?
Just some more ramble about me.
ReplyDeleteI pretty much failed last year. No real achievement in math team other than making into USAMO (I have been doing that since 8th grade). Still, TJUSAMO helped me a lot on how to think like a proof-writer. Hopefully, I will get somewhere farther than just qualifying for USAMO.
For some reason, reading this post has motivated me to do more math this year. Let's go VMT!
@Sin: First, Brian's argument had nothing to do with ARML specifically. If you take an individual contest, it's conceivable that a person could screw up. As a whole, though, this is unlikely, and it's still clear when a person has improved overall due to their working.
ReplyDeleteBrian's main point, though, was that it is ridiculously easy to make it to A team, in the sense that there's a huge gap within A team itself. He's not yelling at the B and C teamers only, he's yelling at everyone to cut the crap and work harder.
2011 is missing the talent that 2010 had, not the work ethic. That's why they have done worse on the rankings.
ReplyDelete"Then, there are Krishnan Chander and Divya Garg."
Woo! Go Frost!
"For some reason, reading this post has motivated me to do more math this year. Let's go VMT!"
Yay!
And yes, Arvind put it rather nicely. The result of the problem that I see here is that the bottom of A team is unfortunately weak for being the A team of TJHSST.
Hello. It seems that this post about Homecoming has started a discussion about VMT. This is a VERY GOOD THING.
ReplyDeleteARML rankings last year were just ridiculously unfortunate.
I suppose I should do better next year... and hope that the problems at ARML practice won't be guessable/bashable/ridiculous like they were last year. Maybe I should stop complaining, but it really irritated me when everyone guessed everything correctly.
Also, I should do well at actual competitions.
Goodbye.
who is herefishyfishy....
ReplyDeleteyea, i second that inquisition.
ReplyDeleteHello.
ReplyDeleteI am Mitchell Lee. I seem to have not done well on NYCIML 1 / 2 as a result of being very slow at competitions, which is a result of not practicing not being slow at competitions. It seems I must relearn the techniques of GUESSING which I used to be so good at.
This is unfortunate. Perhaps I should become faster at competitions.
Also, perhaps I should not worry, as only two NYCIMLs have occured.
Wow, intense discussion here. Not entirely related, but I've met a few Exeter math team kids here; they're legit. I didn't know Jigglypuff was a female.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Jigglypuff comes in both genders. I just have problems viewing her as male.
ReplyDeletewait
ReplyDeletewhy do you have problems viewing jigglypuff as a male?
lmao