[Competition] HMMT 2020- First day at Boston

Dear readers,

I am writing this blog post at quite an unexpected place--Boston!

What brought me here? I have come to Boston for HMMT, one of the biggest annual competition for math students. For those who are unsure of what HMMT is, it is a team math competition held by Harvard and MIT. There are February contests and November contests, and the one that I am in is the February contest. Although HMMT is quite notorious for its difficulty, the November one is relatively easier, as it also has AMC 12 mid-level questions. Even so, the prestige and size of the competition keeps numerous teams continuously participating each year.

I initially had no intentions of participating in HMMT, but I decided to participate after a talk with Korea's AMC advisor. At a lecture for AIME students, he asked me why I didn't register for team Korea, and I gave a very insecure response that I was unsure whether I am on the level to go there. He said that I was definitely on the level, and even if I weren't, HMMT would be a good stimulus for me. Since I also wanted to see how good my peers in other places of the world were, I signed up for team Korea, and so I am here.

As today is our first day, we went to the hotel (which is quite good), and went around Harvard and MIT. We also touched Mr Harvard's foot, which according to legend, anyone who touches it will get accepted into Harvard.

After having some warm Vietnamese food, we went to the COOP, which was a huge bookstore in Harvard. I bought the book "The Model Thinker," (mainly because I am a huge modelling fan) a small book that had some interesting facts about numbers from 1 to 100, "The Green New deal," (because Jeremy Rifkin wrote it and I am interested in the environment) and some books about business. (Because I thought they could offer me some useful advice and insight in leading many activities that I am doing now)

We then returned to the hotel, took some rest, and did some maths together. I also geared myself up for tomorrow's competition, taking some rest and studying.

The COOP. They also sold some Harvard apparel, even Harvard socks. (left)

Noam Chomsky's new book. (right) I just took a picture because it looked very interesting.

Some pictures of the COOP (left) and statistics books (right) I wanted to buy, because I am a fan of statistics.

Public Speaking book (left) because I thought it would be helpful for my debating!

Entrance to Harvard (right)

Our team in front of Mr Harvard. The reason why the foot is gold isn't that he was made so, it's because so many people touched his foot. Strange people. (Of course, I didn't touch it. Of course. Definitely not)

Hamburgers we ate at the hotel lobby. In fact, I secretively added both bacons and eggs because our coach bought it for us.

Us practising together. The dude in white is me.