Returning to school full-time after two years of online learning was indeed a unique and memorable experience.
On the first day of school, I carried within myself a bag full of mixed feelings – excitement, joy, nervousness, and even some amount of confusion. I was excited to meet my friends after a long gap, while at the same time, I was anxious about what my school had in store for us in this brand new academic year. I was also looking forward to getting to know the new teachers assigned to us, this year.
I arrived early and I sought help to locate my new classroom. There I met some of my classmates and shook hands with them. I was quite thrilled to see some of my friends and the excitement was mutual, indeed.
Then we gathered at the Amphitheater for the assembly hour. Mathangi ma’am sang and introduced us to our new prayer song, in her beautiful, melodious voice. Our teachers were introduced to all of us in class order.
Once back in the classroom, we scrambled for our new seats. Our new class teacher, Mrs. Seema, seemed very sweet and also strict at the same time. She broke the ice by asking us to introduce ourselves and share a few lines about how we had spent our summer holidays.
During the second hour, we played some riddles and dumb charades, and both were super fun. We were also asked to introduce our bench partners. We quickly exchanged notes about ourselves with each other.
The first day ended at 12: 30 in the afternoon. It was a fun-filled day. Most of my friends shared the view that they were happy to be back. I’m looking forward with enthusiasm and eagerness to the opportunities the new year would offer me. And I also wish that the hurdles and challenges posed by the pandemic over the last couple of years, do not show up again, ever.
Wishing both my teachers and my fellow schoolmates a very happy and cheerful school year of 2022- 2023!!
My experience in Clash of Pi over the years
Math has been my strong point for as long as I can remember, but I never found a way to quantify my skill relative to others in my age group until I was introduced to Clash of Pi. Clash of Pi is a competitive speed math circuit that consists of 15 exams spread out across a year. Each exam is 15 minutes long and consists of 25 questions so you can only imagine how important speed is. Kids of my age group across the whole of Asia are quizzed on various stopovers of the year and the student with the best scores in all of the exams wins first place.
Figure 1 shows the schedule in clash of pi for 8th grade this year.
Year 1
I started Clash of Pi in grade 5 thinking that it would be a good opportunity to test myself and actively improve my math. In my first exam, I remember going through 2 mock tests as preparation. While the mock tests were helpful, I found that they didn’t give me a good variety of questions and I essentially felt a lack of resources to prepare for the exam. I finished the first test with an All-Asia rank of 23 which at the time I was very proud of.
It honestly took me a while to get the hang of Clash of Pi and learn to strike a balance between speed and accuracy. Over 5th grade, I had some really good performances (for my standards at the time) and some really bad performances that were caused by mismanagement of time and many other factors. With things going up and down, I ended the year with a rank of 16 which I was pretty proud of at the time but I knew that there was room for improvement.
Year 2
6th grade was the year I had a big leap in my Clash of Pi skills. This was the year online learning started thriving due to the coronavirus pandemic and I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to level up at math considering the amount of free time on my hands now. I started by working on being more consistent as I thought that it was essential if I intended to better my rank. Additionally, Clash of Pi has released more resources in the form of LEAP (Advanced Learning). LEAP tests consisted of 10 questions to be solved in 10 minutes and explained the concepts as well.
I found the LEAP topics important and probably what I credit most of my success in Clash of Pi. Throughout 6th grade, I got a feel for Clash of Pi. I became faster and more consistent. I employed many mental math tricks and shortcuts to come to answers a lot faster and made fewer mistakes. At this point, I had all the resources and the potential but still lacked the work ethic. I would usually start preparing for the test at most, 2 days before the exam. This would end up with me not giving my brain sufficient time to digest the info that I’m learning. For this reason, I finished the year with a rank of 5 which is progress but not my best work.
Year 3
7th grade was my favorite ear in Clash of Pi. I began enjoying practicing and learning the intricacies of various math subjects. My preparation process this year was essentially the same, however, I became more diligent and more committed to preparing for Clash of Pi. I now had a specific method of preparing where I would go through all the LEAP problems for the topic and then do mock tests. One addition to my preparation routine was doing the previous tests and that was helpful considering similar concepts being repeated. I also used a 10th grade Math textbook for various sample problems and to help myself get a feel for the numbers that I would have to work with almost to the extent that it was second nature. In total, I devoted at least an hour to Math every day. After this, all things started to fall into place. I started getting good results very consistently and I’m happy to say that I finished 7th grade with an All-Asia rank of #1.
Another interesting thing in 7th grade is the fact that I saw an improvement in my Math in terms of school work. I also became a lot more diligent in working on my school studies and saw a major improvement in my results, especially in my Term End Exam 2022.
I will no doubt continue Clash of Pi for as long as I can as it brings out the best in me and the results motivate me to work hard not only in math but in all my school subjects. I would also recommend trying out Clash of Pi if you haven’t already.
Hoping to see you working on Clash of Pi shortly, see you later.
Rishikesh K M, Grade 8, Ekya School, JP Nagar
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