For better or for worse, the three girls look forward to the results that are released at 6PM local time. When this time comes, all three will go check what decisions are remaining. Especially for Marcia and Krista, who wonder whether their recent successes in the extracurricular arena will suffice, to attend the university of their choice. All three of them thought they were Ivy League material, especially with the dream mathletic season they had. But they know since November there is no guarantee at that level.
That said, Gen is the least stressed of the three since there is always Chicago for her should things go wrong for her at Harvard or at Brown. The parents of the three watch closely the college decisions of their children, especially since they must wait for the financial aid award should they be admitted.
"No Yale, no Tulane, no Rice, Emory, I have Duke, UPenn and Vanderbilt left... And... yes! I'm in at UPenn!" Marcia runs down her results.
"Now, we must talk about financial aid. But... no Tulane? It surprises me a little bit on their part; Tulane never had much favor from mathletes and getting one of the best female mathletes of the state would have been fantastic to the extent they wanted their slice of the pie among the best and brightest of Louisiana!" Marcia's father exclaims, while Duke waitlisted her daughter and Vanderbilt admitted her, too.
"UPenn and Vanderbilt is already very good. Now, we just need to wait for financial aid at these two universities"
Krista, however, counts a lot on her mathletic record, more than even Marcia, for it to make a difference at Stanford, Cornell, Notre Dame or Carnegie Mellon. She is also surprised to see Tulane waitlist her. Caltech or Stanford I would understand, but Tulane? Am I victim of Tufts Syndrome? Krista thought while she imagined that qualifying for the USAMO would have given her a boost big enough to change the deal. Between Cornell and Carnegie Mellon I must pick because Notre Dame doesn't make me feel confident about mathematics!
"The... what?" Krista's father asks, surprised to hear her daughter talk about Tufts Syndrome.
"Tufts Syndrome is really specific to a tier of colleges not far from Ivies but just a little below. What must have happened is that I'm perceived as not being very likely to attend. But, for Caltech or Stanford, I'm waiting on the USAMO result to send my LOCI. But between Cornell and Carnegie Mellon? I am not sure. We will need to wait for financial aid" Krista exlains to her father.
Geneviève is not immune to these hard choices, nor to Tufts Syndrome; no Carnegie Mellon for her for this reason. And no Brown either. Nevertheless, Harvard admitted her, which forces her hand. As much as she can feel joy, it's not going to be easy. And she already submitted the FAFSA before her acceptance to Chicago was in hand.
The next day, the morning announcement includes all the decisions, with Bo going first:
"Bo proved it was not necessary to perform at a high extracurricular level to attend a good college" He will attend Florida, while the principal continues to list the manifest of « prestige » acceptances accumulated by the student body on this Tuesday.
Like the senior whose door slam from quiz bowl led to the inclusion of Imélie and Florence; he ended up attending Wake Forest. But there were only five students on this manifest. During the break...
"The coach received a notification from MAA! Surely our results at this God-forsaken competition that you tell us all the time to wait for any waitlist!" Krista announces to Gen.
"Very well, Krista..." we'll go see the coach.
When both girls find themselves in the mathematics department's office, they are clearly very nervous. After all, this participation at the USAMO represents months of continuous effort, and Krista is the first to see her result.
"No good! No good at all!" Krista sobs.
"How much did you get, Krista?" Gen asks her.
"Our dogs are dead for the IMO, but my dog is dead for the EGMO as well! That's all that mattered to me in this competition!"
"All right, you're not considered for the reserve for this ultimate mathletic competition in two weeks, but you would never have gotten there without me! I want to know how much you scored!"
"I feel like I let you down with this panic attack! But if I didn't have this panic attack on day two that fried my brain, I would have gotten more than this God-forsaken seventeen!" Krista keeps sobbing.
How sentimental Krista can be about her mathletic performances! We spent months solving special problems coming from past USAMOs, IMOs and EGMOs, to learn the underlying material, and she does as if her elimination ruined her life! If she thinks she let me down with a 17 on the USAMO, she must know that there are very few girls that can even score a 17 on this contest! Ten or even fewer among those who entered! Gen thinks while her friend is getting sick because of a math contest.
Sure, it's the most important tournament of Krista's life as a mathlete, but Geneviève finds herself with an email from MAA, with the words EGMO in its title. Fingers crossed and I'll finally know how the reservists are designated for the EGMO! When the parish newspaper started talking about this competition, I thought my preparation was inadequate but now that I've been at the USAMO, it's now much more real and never would they send me an email about the EGMO if I didn't perform at a certain level! Gen thinks while she hasn't seen her result yet.
"Do you have any idea of how many girls could have scored the seventeen you got?"
"Not many. But that's beside the point! I spent the last nine months with you, to live all these good times doing math together, and to take part in contests in open air, and that's what I'm getting for these nine months with you?" Krista complains about what she feels is a disappointing performance and how she believes it's a bad ending for a mathletic career.
"Krista, clearly you let this under-performance at the USAMO poison your life and our friendship! We were very close friends until the USAMO arrived, now, you didn't really under-perform! My turn now"
"Hang on tight, Gen..." Trent prays to his star while her teammate is visibly shaken, while not quite panicking. "You're the reserve, you were the best that wasn't considered for the IMO. You remember I said four girls are considered for the IMO? You're in the girls' top-five"
"I said it as well before the crowd four days ago, but also it left no reserve should the supernumerary girls clause be invoked. Looks like the clause was invoked last year"
So I'm in the girls' top-5? If only I could have performed like this last year, if only I scored this damned 11th point on the AIME or answered correctly one more question on the AMC12... Gen starts wondering if she was victim of poor timing on her mathletic performances. Now, for as morbid as it seems, my only hope for the EGMO is that someone else on the regular team gets injured before the departure... Nevertheless I might be wrong, but no, NO Louisiana girl has successfully cracked a girls' top-5 at the USAMO nor participate at the EGMO. Anyway, the historical character of what I accomplished is as clear as day. But if there is one thing to take away from the movie Vontae evoked at the start of the season, is that high school glory is fleeting, especially when one gets it as a senior.
Even though the stats given to Trent are unofficial, a 17, this year, is approximately good for a 70th percentile. Just not good enough for a girls' top-5 apparently.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"You hurt my feelings, Gen... you make me feel inferior!" Krista then tells Gen, still sobbing.
- Of course not, never would I have gotten there without you, no more than you would have gotten to the USAMO without me! You must not forget that achievements of this size are not the work of a single person. Yet you must not forget that high school glory is fleeting, it's one of the main messages of Friday Night Lights, Gen points out to her teammate.
The bell rings, and Krista cries while leaving the mathematics department office. I really hope she will heal from the USAMO-induced traumas in time for the VMC; I know that, when she's in complete control of herself, she performs practically identically to me. Nevertheless, two of the comparison games the parish newspaper played with me, as much as I could hate it, hold water, Gen thinks while she hurries to return to class, and she has in mind the manifest of the EGMO participants as well as their institutional affiliations.
She can't help herself but think she has beaten one, albeit in a different mathletic context, in the round of 16 of the Math Madness because she was the best TJHSST player in this tournament. And, at the same time she can't help herself but to think that, deep down, she is as good as these four girls... at least based on the USAMO.
But when one see who is prioritized for the MOP... the top 12 at the USAMO are automatically invited, as well as the IMO participants for the year, plus the best 18 residual juniors, and after that the best 30 remaining underclassmen on the USAMO and the USAJMO. If we can't get to 4 girls with the 48 participants in the second and third categories, the MAA completed in descending order, with priority given to the USAMO. There would then be two supernumerary girls clauses and invoking the MOP one will automatically invoke the EGMO one, because there is absolutely no guarantee that the 4 girls so obtained will be in the top-30 at MOP by regular means.
Even though, traditionally, the morning announcement covers announcements relative to student achievements, the school's principal believed it was good to reserve the afternoon announcement to announce something that might seem bittersweet to the student body.
"I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have two girls in the girls' top-ten at the USAMO. Krista, with her seventeen, finished eighth among women" the principal announces before proceeding with a drum roll. "And Geneviève is in the top-five, thus setting a new women's state record on this competition. From her thirteenth place in the overall ranking, she scored twenty-nine points out of a possible maximum of forty-two"
Since I was told I was the best girl ineligible to compete at the IMO, and consequently I was among the girls' top-5, the absolute score lost its importance to my eyes, while a lot of Venomous Agendas fanatics would be interested to know what this girls' top-5 is made of, but I doubt there is more than one EGMO contestant in the top-12 in the overall ranking, in which case I beat girls that are already there! Four to five months ago, I believed it was unrealistic, but now I only need to cross my fingers. Gen thinks while she wonders why the principal seems to care more about this than she did. Regardless, no one would claim that her position as a reservist was not earned. Not when, until proven otherwise, she holds not only the Louisiana's girls record at the USAMO but also the overall Louisiana record from her 13th place in the overall ranking. Nevertheless, she didn't reveal this to her friends until the principal said it publicly.
"The bad news is that our only hope for one of our own, Geneviève in the occurrence, to represent us at the EGMO and therefore on the international mathletic stage lies, for as morbid as it might be, on one of the four mathletes on the original national team getting injured in the next two weeks seriously enough to miss the competition. Sorry but that's the harsh reality of being a reservist; she earned her reservist spot by having the best score of the girls not in the pool of mathletes among which the IMO team is chosen" the principal finishes the announcement.
That said, Krista is really all over the place, and, after the end of the school day, Ted comes to see her shortly before the math practice, except that Geneviève doesn't try to reason her.
"What's wrong with you, Krista?" Ted asks, ignoring the realities of the USAMO.
"I feel like I let everyone down, starting with my teammate. The one who seemed to have made all my hopes possible to begin with. The one I studied with for months and that we even solved a practice problem in front of Cory and you that later proved representative of what we could expect of the USAMO or the EGMO" Krista answers him.
"You put a lot, way too much pressure on yourself. You're nice to have warned me, but it's now you need me the most. I understand you wanted a happy ending to your life in high school, but it seems you have changed since the USAMO. You don't look at mathletics the same"
"Now I know what it takes to fry my brain. Granted, it takes a lot but still..."
"You would never have gotten there if you weren't up to it intellectually. You always appeared very quick-witted to me, a brain with a girl even"
"Gen forced my hand, as I forced hers. But I might be wondering if my mathletic feats of this season are really mine, and not induced by her"
"Don't say that! Even though, with her, you give me the impression you can do so much more together than if you did it separately, don't forget why you wanted to be here with her so much, all the joys that being able to do mathematics and, by extension, physics with her could give you..."
"I'm no longer in position to hide it, I had a panic attack on the second day. Big enough to fry my brain"
In the meantime, Geneviève's parents took all kinds of informal wagers as to whether their daughter would qualify, while others believe she won't go. Cash wagers as well as in nature.
Zack, however, comes back to her girlfriend in the neighboring parish, seeking once again to flee this smothering atmosphere where the speculation object is now whether Gen will compete at the EGMO or not. The parish's object of pride apparently.
"Tara, how are you?"
"Zack, there's something wrong"
"Tara, what do you want us to do together? I am fed up of hearing about math and this forsaken competition that people talk about at every turn!"
"When you come to me, it's in the most intense moments of your mathletic schedule! That's the problem, Zack! Otherwise, I barely got a five on the AIME, I know you won't hold it against me. You never obsessed over my mathletic performances"
"We're still due for a kiss. I didn't get the chance to give you one during the second Duel of the Parishes..."
How perceptive she is! I regret nothing in this relationship, Zack thinks, while the two kiss each other, before choosing which movie to watch together. So long as it's not a movie where mathematics play an important narrative role, both seem to be happy.
But Geneviève seems to be wondering why, suddenly, the current no longer flows between Krista and her... yet she shouldn't have anything to reproach her; it's just a panic attack and it can happen to anyone in stressful situations. It's by reading the historical literature of women's mathletics that I realize that, maybe, in a different era, we could have attended not the EGMO but the CGMO together, and that would have meant a trip to China with 6 other girls back then, she reflects.
"Coach, should I compete at the EGMO, there may be some way for me to catch up the accumulated delay in class while I'm there. The program of the competition is such that I will be there all week, but both days of the competition proper are Saturday and Sunday. If I can have notes and, if applicable, homework sent by email, I might be able to do so remotely. This I will only need to catch up on two or three days if we proceed like this. Or I can ask the teachers for homework and readings myself. Maybe I can compete at the VMC then" Gen asks Trent.
"Marcia, can you email class notes and homework to Gen should she qualify for the EGMO? Don't forget that afternoon here corresponds to a late night at Kutaisi then..." Trent asks Marcia.
"Kutaisi?" asks Marcia, surprised to hear about this city name.
- This is where the EGMO is held this year. Initially this Georgian city was supposed to host it three years ago, but, COVID oblige, everything happened remotely that year.
Usually, mathletes of that level don't engage in activities likely to injure them, but we may never know, a car accident, or a suicide attempt, by any means possible, could cause issues. Because, unfortunately, since girls at the EGMO tend to be high-achieving girls attending academic pressure cookers, if Overachievers is correct, the administration's morbid hypothesis forces us to consider the eventuality of a suicide attempt as having a nonzero probability, Krista thinks while one of the images she has in mind of a suicidal student is, well, very close to herself. She realizes that she has far too much in common with that kind of suicidal students, but she tried to hide what was wrong with her for too long by just doing what she loved and what she did best with Gen. The truth hits her like a ton of bricks.
"Now I no longer have a choice, I need help" a distraught Krista comes to Gen.
"Krista! Is it because of your propensity to get panic attacks?" Gen asks her.
"It's part of it, I have way too much anxiety because of that feeling that I disappointed everyone here, and certainly you"
"You still have college to look forward to, you never appeared to be worried about your success once in college, or even in class here, and your life is certainly not over because of this God-forsaken USAMO! Focus on the VMC!"
"I am not worried about the VMC, I participated in the SRA final unofficially last year with you guys. The difficulty gap between the VMC final and the USAMO, the EGMO or the IMO is very large"
"You seem to have recovered enough mental functionality for the VMC..."