By: Aditya Sheelavant and Eric Wang
Photo courtesy of Google
Like a rooster’s crow, a flurry of expo markers scream across classroom-long whiteboards at 7:30 in the morning. Mr. Taylor calls up volunteers, and Mrs. Hyde erases yesterday’s work. The daily ritual of signing up for problems and writing solutions has begun, and a normal day in early bird Math Team. But what actually happens?
There are 3 kinds of days in early bird Math Team.
Usually, we just do problems. It’s typically a selection of FAMAT (Florida Mu Alpha Theta), Nationals (Mu Alpha Theta) tests, or AMC (American Mathematics Competition) tests. Sometimes we work on problems in class, other times we work on them at home. In the case of the latter, we present solutions on the board. Like a roll call, volunteers and victims walk up to the whiteboards, crowd over interesting solutions, and scrutinize badly worded questions.
Then there are competition days. These are different. Instead of explaining barely legible scribbles on the board to the class, we sit in silence. Fighting our sleep deprivation, tricky math questions, and the clock. A few notable examples include the notoriously emotional AMCs (AMC 10 and AMC 12), often-plagiarized Log1 exams, and the comfortable ASMAs and RCMLs. Each has its own flavors of joy and suffering. The whiteboards are also often unused, only covered by our inevitable “could’ve, should’ve, would’ve” solutions after the tests. But, like every competition, it doesn’t really matter–the Earth will continue to spin.
And finally, there are lecture days. These are the days when we get to learn, like the annual sequences and series lecture for the Calculus Math Team or number theory lecture for the Precalculus Math Team. Sometimes it’s weird stuff too, like weird MAO competition tricks and unheard-of one-liners to difficult questions.
This sounds boring–it usually is. But here’s why I think you should join the Math Team. If you look past the early mornings, the marginally excessive homework, and sometimes stressful competitions, it’s actually quite easy to see the problem-solving skills we’re cultivating and the relationships being built. Each morning when we put up problems on the board, behind the rush to claim the best problems and board space, real collaboration takes place. We help each other solve problems and teach solutions to the rest of the class. Everyone claps when we finish presenting a problem. Everyone learns from everyone else. Everyone is given the spotlight, even if just for a moment. You’re probably catching on at this point. Math Team means everyone feels like they’re contributing to something bigger than themselves- you can’t get that anywhere else.
And that doesn’t even mention math tournament trips, frequently cited as the best part of Math Team, but that’s a story for another article.