I was a
national level competitor in
MathCounts in
7th grade. I was one of the four
Maine Team members, along with three 8th graders, one of whom was freakishly good at
math. His dad was the team
coach.
Between the state finals and the national meet, I had to go up to
Presque Isle (a town waaay up in the north of the state) one morning to attend an all-day
practice session of sorts. I lived through it.
The national meet itself was held in
Washington, DC. We flew down there and stayed in a
four-star hotel for the three days of the meet weekend, all expenses paid by
MathCounts. It was fairly uneventful, except that the kid who was freakishly good at math pretty much spent the three days
throwing things out the window,
punching holes in the wall,
breaking things, etc.
Finally we actually the
math bit. I did
OK -- I probably could have done better if I hadn't stayed up most of the night watching
HBO, but I've never had cable at home, so the temptation was too great (I also wasn't allowed to watch
R movies at the time.. don't tell my
parents!) Also, being
vegetarian, food was questionably plentifully but I
digress. The freaky-good math kid got 7th
overall, if I recall correctly.
Everyone who got to the national level also received a
TI-92, which is an extremely sweet
graphing calculator (with a little
QWERTY keyboard)! It has been a valuable asset in
the numerous math related circumstances I frequently find myself in.
I consider it pretty sweet that I got an
all expenses paid trip to our nation's capital, AND a neat
techno toy just for knowing a little math. Plus, every time you pull out the TI-92 you get to tell the story
(often this is in the form of "Woah! How much did that thing cost?!" "I got it for free, cause I'm such a l33t math hax0r!...").