I used to prepare for the AMC like my life depended on it. In high school, I would walk through the hallways between classes with my head buried in problems. During family gatherings, I had no interest in socializing; I was entirely immersed in math. I didn't even care about other subjects. I would study for the F=ma physics olympiad for maybe two or three hours total, but for math, there was no limit. Like anyone truly passionate about this field, I loved sitting in silence for hours, pondering cases, and slowly unraveling a solution.
But passion does not guarantee a fairy tale ending. After two years of relentless preparation—missing AIME in 9th grade, then missing it again by just six points—I walked into the AMC 12A and scored a 70.5. I made over five catastrophic silly mistakes. I was devastated. I felt so ashamed that I imagined even the proctor looking at me and thinking I was terrible at math, despite the fact that I had successfully solved problem 21. Going into the 12B a week later, blinded by anger, sadness, and pessimism, I scored a 48. That was below the national average. An average student who prepares for less than an hour scores higher than that. I watched peers succeeding in chess and violin, and I felt I had absolutely no purpose. I couldn't even achieve the bare minimum in my own special domain.
My mom told me to forget the 12A, to let it go and walk into the 12B with positivity. But I wouldn’t listen. More than that, it felt unjust to forget it. I felt I had no right to be happy, no right to rest, and no right to enjoy life when I was failing at the one thing I dedicated my life to. Even after the exam, I would obsess. On the car ride home, if there was a geometry or graph-related problem, I would immediately pull out my phone, open Desmos, and check my work. One by one, I would realize my mistakes, sinking deeper into discouragement. I was never satisfied. I would look at the test at home and think, "I could have solved that." But solving a problem calmly at your desk does not mean you could have solved it under a 75-minute ticking clock.
My parents told me that life is not all about math contests. At the time, I refused to hear it. I swore to myself I would never get over that 9th-grade failure. Yet, the following year, when I finally qualified, the obsession had faded. I started building machine learning projects, and my life shifted focus. The suffering was real, but it became just a lesson. Life moved on. Today, I work in fields completely unrelated to contests, but that pain is exactly why I helped build Score150. I remembered the frustration of having no realistic mock tests, or seeing providers like IvyLeagueEducation Center charge exorbitant prices. I wanted to use my skills to give the next generation a cheaper, better alternative. It sounds incredibly cliché, but you have to artificially force yourself to detach from the results. Prepare with everything you have, but once the clock hits zero, leave the test at the door.