Update 4/23/22

Today was the competition. Before the number sense competition I played a couple of card games with some other competitors; I was trying to ensure moderate arousal for optimal performance as per psychology. After the test for number sense, I was feeling good as I got to question 71, which is further than normal. I did have to skip quite a few, but I was feeling good overall. Then I went into calculator (for some reason it took almost an hour to do number sense, a 10 minutes test). I thought it was harder than usual, I had to skip almost all the geometry questions. After that I walked around the campus a little, worked on homework, and studied a little for UIL physics. Then I got my number sense score, and I got 4th. This was pretty disappointing, especially as it was the same place as last year but I wasn't as close to 3rd (last year I was 2 points away :~( ). I studied a lot for number sense and I felt good about it too; all of that just to find out I'm probably not going to state. After that I pretty much knew the day was pretty much going to be a waste. I figured that I'd stand no chance in science, calculator, or math as I didn't study for them. As I waited for number sense verification I hung out with some kids from Westlake. It was interesting to see how cohesive they were as a team. I also met one of the number sense competitors better than me; he was really energetic and passionate about number sense. Then there was science. It was really hard, a lot of the later chemistry questions threw me off and the physics ones I wish I had studied a little more for. It was a bit embarrassing for me to see questions about Physics C and not be able to do them (I'm in Physics C right now). I did memorize the Doppler Effect equation right beforehand, and it turned up on the test. But I kept trying to use it and I kept getting something different. I ended up doing pretty bad. For the couple of hours between science and math I explored the campus and looked for some food. I wasn't that hungry though, and I didn't want to wait in a very long line, so I just skipped lunch. Then was math. I found the math one to be really hard - normally I get about 50 questions, but I only got 39 this time. After seeing verification for this, I felt so stupid for the mistakes I made. It was especially stupid considering how close I was to advancing in it. I was only 1 question away from advancing and 3 from first place! One of my mistakes was 8³=216 (it should be 512, but I thought I could be slick and save time with number sense). I also did 10+15 = 15 for some reason. I really wish I double checked that problem. There was also a really simple time/speed problem that I thought I could be slick on with harmonic means. It turns out it didn't apply to that problem and I should've just bashed it. I'm so frustrated. I really regret playing cards against humanity for so long last night. What was I even thinking.