MOP Self-Outro

This is actually my MOP Self-Outro 3.0. Outro 1.0 was my post on Instagram. Outro 2.0 was my Discord post, for which I meant to simply copy pasta my Insta post. However, I got distracted and somehow ended up with something at least twice as long. And now here is Outro 3.0, once again at least twice as long as the previous outro.

MOP is a prestigious summer camp for high schoolers I went to recently called the Mathematical Olympiad Program. To qualify, you first take the AMC, through which you will be invited to the AIME if you do sufficiently well. After doing sufficiently well on the AIME, you will qualify for the USA(J)MO, through which you might then be invited to MOP. That’s a summary of what MOP is on the surface, but it does not touch on what it really represents for both those in and out of it.

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There are some experiences that always stick with you. Marriage, I imagine, is probably one of them. The birth of a child (or, well, I should probably mention, your own birth, as well). Graduation. Moving homes. Starting a new job. 

For me, MOP this year was one such experience. For years, I’ve thought very little about MOP because I never thought I’d get in. After all, MOP is the place where people like my brother go: smart people who can get dozens of points on the USA(J)MO, whereas I could never even qualify for the test in the first place.

Then I got in, and for weeks, it was all I could think of. For once, I actually wanted finals to come sooner so that I could get them over with and go to MOP. During that time, MOP was like the crowning achievement of any high school career. I anticipated it, yes, but only in the way someone might anticipate a gold medal or trophy: as an unbelievable accomplishment, rather than as an experience.

Then I actually went, and, well, I won’t be forgetting about it any time soon.

It’s not something that can really be described. It was color in a gray world, it was companionship in places I did not know I was looking. It was sublime, it was gentle teasing, it was chaos and roughhousing. It was thinking about life and principles and priorities, and of course, it was a heck of a ton of math. It’s impossible to put into words, but I’ll try my best anyway.

MOP this year was beautiful. It was joy, and new friends, and old friends, and philosophy, and life lessons, and probably just a tad too little sleep. I went to MOP with only the vaguest of plans to hover in the background and photograph everything so I could make my yearbook. Instead, I learned to be upfront and bold from AZ’s phone collecting, JC’s address gathering, and LZ’s interrogation techniques. I learned that idols are people too and that this place which I considered the epitome of math skills is just a place where people like me collect and hang out. I sang and danced and met so many new, wonderful people, my MOP journal is already fifty pages long even though it still only contains a dozen days. 

I know most people would not associate beauty with anything to do with math. They associate beauty with art, music, or nature. I could talk about Fibonacci in flowers or all the places the bell curve shows up, but I don’t think that either of these would do justice. Because all those examples simply convey that math is beautiful due to the way it is inherent in nature when in reality, math itself is already beautiful. It is beautiful in its patterns and challenge and the way the numbers dance, and the people who do it are all the more beautiful.

MOP was indeed beautiful: even the imperfect parts, the “lowlights,” if you will, to balance the “highlights.”

(And yes—there were lowlights. After all, the only things that can have no lowlight are a constant function, which would just be boring, or a monotonically increasing function, which is just called “drugs.” And drugs are bad. Don’t do drugs.)

Because the lowlights at MOP were precious memories in and of themselves, too. For instance, I consider JC’s hat to be one of the lowlights because, you know, it ended up in California instead of Chicago or Nevada, but it was also something about MOP I’ll never forget. The tests (and particularly Holden’s problems) were probably many other MOPers’ lowlights, but in the end, I think they were probably also the vehicle of bonding between many people. 

We were all a bit crazy at the start of MOP, and we were all just a bit more so by the end. But that’s fine: we’re the crazy ones, misfits, rebels, and we’re the ones who might someday do something great. We have vision, and it may be just a tad hazy; maybe others will think we’ve lost our minds; maybe it’s hard to tell if we’re being brave or stupid or insane; maybe it’s a bit obvious that I’m so indecisive I’ve created a Frankenstein lyric monster. Because there’s just not a single song in singeing troup that I can point at and say, “That was the greatest song,” and there’s just not a single part of MOP that I can point at and say, “That was the greatest moment.” There was the great war of Tilted Students Thoroughly Splashing Turtle. There was the trip to Kennywood, and the chaotic attempts to form hearts on the roller coasters. There was the all-nighter, with the 2 am races around the track and getting bagels while we were looking for the sunrise. There were quiet times in classes and walking to get waffles while surrounded by the noise of cars and dozens of people. There was the chaos of Nertz and 12-player Mind. There was live-action mafia (I WON THE GAME!) and the various memes that evolved and grew throughout MOP. I will think of MOP the next time I see deer in my backyard. I will think of MOP the next time I hear anyone say, “I’m back” (Hi back). I will think of MOP every time I play any game at all because I will just hear the echoes of “I lost the game” bouncing all around my head.

It’s more than fine. It’s beautiful. It’s crazy, chaotic, and topsy-turvy. It’s like someone jumped on a rollercoaster, dumped sixty cans of mildly complementary colors onto the canvas, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best, and we all mixed together to form some sort of Jackson Pollock painting. We’re messy. Maybe some people won’t understand what makes us work or why we’re beautiful. 

But I think there’s nothing like us.

(Lolll, I feel like I’m writing a love letter to the entirety of MOP. Some day I’ll get married or something and they’ll complain about why they never got such a heartfelt love letter. rip)