#36. Math Olympics (Saturday, May 6, 2004)
What was your best day…of achieving at something that turned out to be totally irrelevant?
In the grand scheme of things, this competition was such a small deal. It was a city-level event organized by some unknown local committee, and basically involved teams of middle school students trying to solve math puzzles better than everybody else. By this time the next year, my accomplishment here would have been long deemed irrelevant.
But for me, that Saturday was the first time I was able to take part, in person, in a real competition featuring a lot of people – and on top of that come out with a victory (by some measure).
About twenty middle schools in Ottawa took part in these Math Olympics, and each school had two teams of four: each team consisting of one guy and one girl from each of 7th grade and 8th grade. On our Broadview team was my classmate Jieyang, and the 7th graders David and Sonia.
Side Note: We also had a second team of French Immersion students. Which included Carly, my soccer buddy Anton, and Jessica Bennett – this 7th grade girl who had been on the team that won the recent 8th grade 3-on-3 basketball tournament, and I had a big theoretical crush on (theoretical, because I was, at the time, caught up with the whole Samantha ordeal, #47).
There were seven challenges on that day. Four in the morning we did as a team of four; and three in the afternoon we did in Grade 7 girl/Grade 8 guy (and vice versa) pairs. As we go through the day and all of these activities, I just think that this is so cool: a big event, where I’m walking from room to room in a building I’ve never been to before as part of this big crowd of other math geniuses, and I’m actually doing something!
So at the end of the day, in the big cafeteria where the 200+ students and teachers are gathered (adding to the coolness), the winners for each event are announced.
And I win two. One of the morning challenges, “Brain-storming”, where we basically answered a bunch of combinatorial-like questions: with the big one at the end being what were the number of possible football scores a team could have out of 0 to 401. And one of the afternoon challenges, where Sonia and I had to solve a bunch of “Who am I?” math riddles to identify different specific numbers. In addition, our team as a whole finished in third place – beating out our rivals from Glashan (whose teams were fourth and fifth, ouch).
Those three medals instantly became my most prized possessions. And as my parents came to pick me up, my teacher specifically came by and told them how amazing my accomplishment was.
But to me, it wasn’t just amazing. At that particular moment, this was the greatest achievement in my life. And there was no shame in saying that.
(N.B. That night my family and I went to Tim’s2 family’s house for a big dinner; and then with Tim’s older brother Matt (#108) I played Heroes of Might and Magic III – the greatest computer game ever behind Civilization V – for the first time, for six straight hours.)