20 July 2009

Math camp: it's half over!

So, as you all know, I got a summer job at BCA to teach kiddies (erm, prefroshies?) for Holbrook-sensei* for six weeks! It's basically teaching chapters from the Art of Problem Solving volume 1 book. The job is relaxing relative to other jobs: first of all, math camp runs four days a week. Yeah that's right, four days a week! And every week is more or less a new week; the parents get to pick which week(s) their kids attend. So anyway, every week is structured the same way, with half the week devoted to learning and the other half dedicated for contests. The week's schedule looks like this:

Monday: Learn, do end-of-chapter problems
Tuesday: AMC10, learn some more if the kids feel like it
Wednesday: More learning and end-of-chapter problems.
Thursday: Contest!

So basically, for the past three weeks, Jeff L. and I were teaching the less math-inclined kids, which translates to aversion to learning, doing well on AMCs, and winning my competition. Well, the second week wasn't as bad as the other two. Nevertheless, my room paled in comparison to the other room. The contest is similar to ARML, in that it has three rounds: individual, team, and relay. The individual round, worth 40 points, is 10 questions in one hour, all open-ended. The team round differs from the individual round in that it lasts for only 45 minutes and is worth 120 points. The two relay rounds (3 people per squad), each worth 10 points, last for ten minutes each. Eight teams of six vie every week for old AAST shirts (and glory!) The difficulty of questions range from Mathcounts-level to hard AMC12-level problems. Results and contests are posted here.

In other news, after eating a week of Boston Market, I found out that their prices are grossly overpriced. Back to home-made salami sandwiches. x_x

Wait, I ran out of salami. Back to getting ripped off by Boston Market.

Darn, I can't win. :(

* I'm probably getting high on Naruto. Sorry for the inconvenience.