Math Contests

  Today I have had enough of MATH for a whole week.
  In the morning I got to school early for choir practice. Then before first block started, I stood outside the cafeteria with countless others waiting for the math contest to start. I was taking the Pascal (grade 9 Waterloo) in the morning. I saw different people from different grades, and we were all taking different ones. There were Gauss for grade 8, Cayley for grade 10, and Fermat for grade 11.
  If that was all, then I have nothing to complain about. But after taking the Pascal, I already know I got 6 marks off for sure. I was thinking about it for the whole day. During lunch time, Yunni and me were looking over the Cayley from last year, because we were going to take it after school.
  Unfortunate for me, I also had math class today for last block. After school, I hurried to get my science fair board from the science wing. Today was probably the only day I was getting a ride, so I needed to take my science fair back home. Then I hurried off the room 110 with Kaixin, we took a little detour when finding the room, but we got there on time.
  The Cayley this year was no doubt harder than last year. I was really surprised and frustrated. There were 5 questions that I didn't get, and that is a lot. I finished the first page really fast (Sections A and some Section B), but started to get stuck on questions on the second page (last questions of Section B). When I got to the last 5 questions (Section C), they were the hardest of them all, I could only do 1. The other 4 was confusing, and I had no choice but guess or leave them blank.
  By the time I finished, not only was I not relieved or free of troubling thoughts, I had more than ever. Math keeps getting back to me. I have officially had too much math in one day. To dig a little deeper, I guess it is not the math that was really annoying, it was the stress of the math. Thinking about how your Cayley marks affect whether you get to enriched next year etc is not very helpful.
  However, although the contests are important. I think that marks in class, and a teachers recommendation is just as good. So QUIT WORRYING!!!