Reflections right before a math contest
I crumple up another sheet of paper, thoroughly covered in scratch work, and position myself at the far end of the room. I toss it delicately toward the waste basket. It goes in.
I have become pretty good at this, because I’ve been doing it frequently for two weeks now. I have been solving practice problem after practice problem in preparation for the United States of America Mathematics Olympiad on Tuesday and Wednesday.
It has grown to be a routine, almost. Last year, the Olympiad problems inspired me: Each problem I solved seemed a marvelous new discovery. I experienced no such feeling this year — I worked through more problems more easily than before, but my stomach only tightened as I thought about the approaching test.
That made me stop to wonder: Are competitions in general just a cycle of practice, reward (through winning or performing well), and pressure to practice more? I think that this dynamic certainly holds true to some extent. Competition is by definition about winning, and to win, you need a certain amount of practice.
However, when I thought about it more, I realized that competitions (of any sort) generally have little intrinsic value; anyone can compete, and it doesn’t make you a better or worse person to do so. And generally speaking, there’s about as much luck involved as there is skill.
What matters, instead, is how you look at the competition. Different people can view it in different ways, but winning alone cannot be the motivation. What happens after you win? There needs to be some context, and this time around I didn’t have one.
Sometimes, we forget to take a step back from the immediate din of things. I stepped back, noticed the bright day outside, and decided to go for a jog. When I returned, I found myself alert but extremely calm. I hope that’s how I’ll feel on the day of the test.
It is one of the great ironies of contest preparation that during the contest, you must clear your mind of everything that you have previously done. Nonetheless, it is precisely the way to think of competition beyond a comparison of two or more people and to draw from it the greatest possible value.
— Alex Zhai