Eric Lee: IMO 2022 Report
The experience details you might not care about:
The experience was really cool.
Not literally, Oslo’s weather was nice.
The most memorable thing was their smoked salmon, it was so good I had some every day.
It was my first time seeing so many people from other countries, and you can feel it’s a big occasion. Very fun to talk with people from other cultures and other countries.
It’s one of the occasions I probably won’t forget for years.
Their buildings are very cool, they were tall and coloured, very different to Auckland.
Their flowers and pride flag and pride chairs are also cool, they are everywhere and very beautiful.
The scenery and food helped me relax a lot before the tests.
The loot, I mean souvenirs you can collect from different countries is very cool.
Not a fan of parks and being under the sunlight but it was still nice.
Learnt that '-1 ≡ 42 mod 43, therefore if you can get a score of -1, you get a perfect score'.
Whoever's reading this probably won't experience the exotic blackjack like we did.
So much, too much 'Morbius'.
Getting lost in the city (while having access to the internet and service number of course) was a very good part of the experience.
Tony visited us and we had a good time playing lots of games.
Brian got a new boyfriend (Eric Liang).
Grady got yeeted into the river while wearing dress pants.
Vikings, woo!
Fermat's Big Theorem is always there for you.
You would either trust or get to know your roommate more in the experience, because their hotel bathroom had a clear window.
Drum guys in the opening ceremony this year were very awesome.
We had a very very awesome guide, August Gude. He like did everything.
In short, it's everything you would expect out of this pretty prestigious experience, but even better.
Things that are not about the Oslo experience:
Something very important I learnt:
It's too late if you want to learn new things a few weeks before the IMO, you have to prepare before, at that stage you just have to trust in your own abilities, do what you can at your best and hope for the best. Don't just flop after getting there though. There's still lots of stuff to do, including not injuring yourself, sleep, getting yourself to a somewhat good condition to sit the IMO, sleep, mentally prepare yourself to do good, sleep, maybe being under the sun, and sleep.
Concentration training is definitely needed, focusing on an exam for 4.5 hours is pretty hard, so I recommend doing that regularly to get used to it. Unlike school exams, IMO kinda requires brain and thinking and not just relying on formulas you memorized the night before. Don't memorize formulas/theorems the night before because, also unlike school exams, there are many many different and unexpected ways the theorems can show up, and you can't get used to different ways of using them effectively in any short time.
Do write down whatever theorem down and go a few steps with whatever you have on you though, it might gain you a few partial marks. 1 mark might make all the difference, because uh you know, IMO score is counted in integers.
After the exam, of course nobody will blame you for how well or bad you did. But during the exam, do not chicken out at the hard problems. I felt like I did kinda subconsciously give up after working for too long or the question is too intimidating, or get scared simply because the question is labeled 'question 2', 'question 3' or 'question 5', 'question 6'. Don't be like that. And the way to not be like that is to practice on hard problems for long periods of time, regularly, to be mentally prepared. There's just this part that's purely about your mental and not math skills, and it's just as important as your maths.
By the way you don't get enough time to game, don't bother bringing your gaming setup.
Good luck and have fun to all future IMO participants (including 2023 me, I think).
