"the best essays tend to be the ones you enjoyed writing" - Derek Liu
June 2023
“moving points moves your points from 7 to 0” - Advaith Avadhanam
“I like geo as art, not as math” - Tayakorn Suwanich
“right now i feel like an artist standing in front of a blank canvas, I can draw anything I set my mind to but no idea what to draw” - Neal Yan
“i'm just doing olys in the hope of a brighter future” - Feodor Yevtushenko
“the only way to go up a ladder is by looking at the people above you” - Feodor Yevtushenko
“in the end, the 6 people who actually make imo team are the ones who have stuck to their childhood dreams for the longest” - Tiger Zhang
“don't get too caught up in reliving memories, but let these memories inspire you to push further in whatever you dream.” - Tiger Zhang
“mop is one of the few things so powerful that its inspiration can last a whole year” - Tiger Zhang
May 2023
“Tbh i don’t think I’ve improved at all at oly since like two years ago; my confidence had just increased” - Srinivas Arun
“just use :blobheart: every time you would do :1434: instead and the world will be a happier place” - Evan Chen
“math accomplishments never define who you are, so they wont make you happy” - Evan Chang
“the hardest thing about mop is that it’s temporary” - Tiger Zhang
“unfortunately when i post something other people read it” - Evan Chen
“well i mean life is not interesting if you have it figured out as a teenager” - David Dong
“I treat ommc like my child in some way” - Evan Chang
“geo is a comedy if you blast it with a config, and a tragedy if you bash it” - Advaith Avadhanam
“the entirety of my life is making negative ev decisions and still getting nonnegative results” - Aaryan Vaishya
April 2023
“every problem is a one liner if you write small enough” - Jiahe Liu
“I miss when my timewasting neuroligical pathways weren't as strong as they were now and when I could actually be responsible” - fuzimiao2013
“there are many people who could potentially win in these competitions, but only a few do” - Tiger Zhang
“Never kill your inner child” - Carlos Rodriguez
“life is art. the objective is to live the most beautiful story” - Tiger Zhang
“my current view is that there is a lot of work to do in the world and there are a lot of problems to solve, and we win when everyone wins.” - Vincent Huang
“u gotta chase ur dreams in life in spite of minor setbacks” - Rachel Chen
"i think most of the reason that we're afraid of adulthood is not that adulthood is bad, it's because we're afraid of change" - Tiger Zhang
"you learn more math when you're happier" - Aditya Pahuja
“idk if it scares me more that results might come out tomorrow, or that results might not come out tomorrow” - Jordan Lefkowitz
"the hardest part of ap lang is your hand surviving" - Srinivas Arun
"ur mental health is much more important than mop" - Kiran Reddy
"I remember [geometry] configs just how people remember faces" - Ravi Painuly
“it's too easy to succumb to culture/peer pressure if you don't know what you want to be” - Tiger Zhang
March 2023
“the bad days made the good ones seem a lot better” - Neal Yan
“as the end nears, i found out that i only disliked compmath because i took it for granted for too long” - Kelin Zhu
“for every dream that's achieved, one other person's dream is crushed” - Alexander Wang
“i may have had the best numerical performance of my career on an oly, but i feel like i've gained nothing in other ways...” - Neal Yan
“Being an algebra main is like eating white rice at a buffet.” - Linus Tang
“ngl much of my depression in the past was because i cared too much about math. I didn't realize this until i left grade school.” - Kevin Zhao
“Rejected by 2, 3, 5, 7, ...? Personally, I would go to 11 and demand a refund” - Cathy Xu
“Writing is only annoying when you're forced to do it” - Elijah Liu
“i'm obsessed with the problems i can't solve” - Tiger Zhang
February 2023
"don't invest everything in one person." - Aiden Wen
“i feel so influential, its like ive invented a new genre of problem called 'contrived troll pascal'"- Evan Chang
“the beginning of every math career is chokes” - Neal Yan
“even if the bet fails, if the failure is sufficiently spectacular, your story will still be remembered, just as a tragedy” - Neal Yan
“for a brief moment, i really thought that i was in some form of math contest heaven [HMMT]; that all scores and drama are left behind, and only the most positive parts of our personalities remain” - Kelin Zhu
January 2023
“The best motivation is other people.” - Aiden Wen
“isn't that what blogs are for, recording how stupid you were in past years” - Tony Lu
“instead of obsessing over aime and jmo, obsess over math” - Tiger Zhang
“it's okay to not be perfect in everything, so if you're really getting overwhelmed, it's okay to drop something to improve your mental health/do other things better” - Ritwin Narra
“one of my favorite things about the olympiad math community is that, even at the highest level where everyone is competing with each other, we are still generally very friendly towards one another and talk about solutions together after the test like we are on the same team.” - Jeff Lin
“I understood the problem so thoroughly it was almost as if I was the problem.” - Tiger Zhang
“I wasn't happy as I thought I should be, though. because as jelfin said, what joy is there to beating other people?” - Tiger Zhang
"do math instead of daydream" - Allan Yuan
“i like the name, 'the moon' , bc it represents how our aspirations make us lunatics” - Neal Yan
December 2022
“otis might be a dictatorship but at least we got the best monarch out there” - Takumi Higashida
November 2022
“just keep mocking [tests] ig and keep your head up” - Isaac Chen
“p25 on the amc 12 is like the math equivalent of plain oatmeal” - Evan Chang
"I used to be younger than everyone on the aops forums now I'm older than everyone” - David Dong
“MOP did not fix any of my mental problems” - Evan Chang
October 2022
“if you want to achieve anything, you just make a sacrifice. the greater the achievement, the larger the sacrifice. and if you sacrifice everything, you can get anything” - Feodor Yevtushenko
“because what was perfect in the first place? we all try so hard to align things to the situations or positions that we like.” - Katelyn Zhou
“i need to dabble in the dark arts to get to mop“ - Neal Yan
“sometimes I think about geo and say that it shouldn't exist. is the world ready for something so good?” - Tiger Zhang
"EGMO book is literally a geometer's bible” - Neal Yan
“no matter how old… I will always be the one limiting myself the most” - Aiden Wen
“i see the light at the end of the tunnel again, u can do anything u set ur mind to!” - Neal Yan
“now, i've seen things like spacex and meta reality labs; despite the fact that i'm not capable of anything remotely close to the scale of those, to me, they are inspiring examples of people who wanted to do something in the world. you'll never accomplish something difficult (well, unless it's solving a oly math problem) if you don't dream of it.” - Neal Yan
August 2022
“Graduated math olympiad people have a very different mindset from those of us still fully immersed in them.” - Laura Zhang
“the purple heart stands for a million dreams” - Neal Yan
"All who attend MOP are transformed by it. Character, perspective–math is the least of it." - Daniel Xu
"i value mop over a 1600 on sat tbh. does a 1600 on sat give you a once-per-lifetime oblivion?" - Neal Yan
"geometry is keeping me awake” - Neal Yan
“ur potato-shaped freehand circumcircles will revert to good in a few days of geo” - Neal Yan
July 2022
“MOP has truly transformed all of us. We'll all remember this K_60 friendship graph” - Feodor Yevtushenko
June 2022
“at mop its easy to socialize cause everyones like u” - Evan Chang
"don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" - Luke Robitaille
“MOP was making a bunch of new friends, and MOP ending was all of those friends moving away” - Henrick Rabinovitz
May 2022
"not everyone's equal amounts of hard work will reap the same success" - Sarthak Dassarma
"ask for forgiveness, not permission" - Evan Chen
“thankfully in math olys they mark the easy problems with asterisks” - Krishna Pothapragada
April 2022
"EGMO is full of geometry problems" - Alexander Wang
"I'd take a 4.5 hour math test every day to be able to stay [at the EGMO]" - Isabella Zhu
“really i think the distractions aren't really the distractions, it's the want to be distracted that is the distraction” - Tony Lu
"i feel like life is a cycle of work--luck--happiness--expectations--failure--demotivation" - Srinivas Arun
March 2022
“I know that some of y'all are stressed about usamo. And to that I say, solving usamo problems isn't everything... it's the only thing.” - Ryan Yang
"technically you dont have to do anything except pay taxes and die" - David Altizio