It’s been a while ever since I last posted on this website. I think it’s time to do a good self-reflection and put some updates out there.
A lot has happened ever since that post at the beginning of senior year – “Ten Years in the Future.”
And when I mean a lot, I mean a lot.
October to December was just college app hell. As the holiday season approached I was writing supplemental essays 24/7, so my day looked something like this:
Wake up, breakfast, college apps, lunch, college apps, dinner, college apps, sleep
for around twenty or so straight days. It was extremely unfun to apply to sixteen different colleges, most of which are top-tier for computer science. Even though I “started early” in late November after AMCs/PuMAC, that period until I submitted my last college on December 29th, 2024 at 5:36PM was absolutely dreadful.
That’s the reason why this blog hasn’t been updated regularly in the past few months – my writing juice has already been depleted from writing all those college essays.
I’ve also joined the swim team for South as I had planned in November. We had four duel meets in December and four in January, which actually caused me even more stress as holiday season approached as it sucked out time to do college applications. The swim team was fun and all, but I believe I greatly underestimated the logistical drag of the commitment, as it took some time from my schedule when I could have prepared for math contests or studied for physics instead.
But if I had to do it over again, I don’t think anything would change. I’ve made a lot of new friends who are really supportive of me, and I finally have some source of motivation to keep the sport for at least a couple months more.
AIME is just around the corner and I’m hoping that all my preparation accumulated across high school will pay off on this one. But regardless of my performance, I will make sure that I’ll keep on exploring math and computer science. Math and CS competitions were great sports to train for in high school, but eventually we’re all going to say goodbye to them sooner or later. I want to make my legacy through both contest results and math club, but also bring away the invaluable problem-solving skills and mindset I’ve accrued throughout the process.