On October 3rd, 2020, a total of 11 students from BBS KJS took part in the Southeast Asian Mathematical Olympiad (SEAMO)
Written by: Harvani Sumawijaya (Junior College 2)
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On October 3rd 2020, students from BBS’s 6 campuses, along with other students from the rest of Southeast Asia gripped their pens and stared at their computer screens as the countdown approached zero.
“Pencils? Check. Paper? Check. Wi-fi? Let’s hope it doesn’t give out.” – Harvani
The next 90 minutes would be the culmination of a long month of training—of countless past-year-papers and endless YouTube strategy tutorials. A far cry from other common Mathematical competition formats which range from gameshow-like rounds to team problems, the Southeast Asian Mathematical Olympiad in 2020, due to the ongoing pandemic, would be limited to a single online test paper of 25 questions that gradually increased in difficulty as one progressed. Each student’s performance would then be evaluated in relation to that of the other participants.
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Beyond simply having to solve monstrously complex problems, participants had to devise clever, elegant solutions to optimise their efficiency in order to have a chance at completing the paper within the brutally short period of allotted time.
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Despite universally encountering a system failure as the competition started, the Mathletes pushed through and survived the barrage of mind-numbingly difficult questions. In the end, 11 participants from BBS-KJS brought home a total of 3 Bronze Medals and 1 Silver Medal.
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While most of the participants breathed a sigh of relief, some refused to. Hungry for more, a select few instead opted to continue onto the American Mathematics Olympiad to continue pushing their minds to their mental limits in their endless pursuit of knowledge.
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