Math Olympians are the Monster group of sporadic groups - Perfectly Content

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

I stomped, she slid, he hopped, and above us, the stars were shining vividly, like you could trace an Eulerian path going across them. Having completed the last exam and satisfied our hunger, we were ready to stay up all night. But when we reached the front of our room, the other girl and I turned our eyes upon each other, waiting for the other to open, so we redirected our hopes to our guy friend.

"Don't look at me. This isn't my room. This is the girl's room."

He was fooling with us. He had in his possession a set of keys to enter to our room whenever he felt like it, but on other occasions that we had forgotten ours (yeah, it happened more than once) he didn't want to have anything to do with us. Entering through the window wasn't an issue for us -we were experienced-, but this time, though, we noticed that the other girl was inside, having what sounded like an important chat with her friend, so we decided not to bother them (we may have knocked and they didn't open, I honestly don't remember).

We sat on the floor, backs against walls, with nowhere else to go. In front of us were the walls that served as base for our hide and seek games and the benches where we crowded together and watch the world go by.

"Hey," I said. "How did you solve the problem one of the exam today?"

Faster than you can say "infinite descent" our backpacks were zipped open, paper sheets were spread in the floor, and with compass, pen and ruler on our hands, we began sketching.

"For homothety here, the orthocenter..."
"Considering the perpendicular bisectors..."
"Using the lemma, this is the incenter and..."

It was an easy problem, certainly not the most controversial of the exam, and everyone had solved it.
We caught the attention of the passers-by, who approached us when they recognized the drawing: "What are you doing?"
"We are trying to decide which solution is the prettiest," we replied. And so, they became judges too.

You may be wondering where this place filled with mathematical youth came from. You see, after the 2012 Mexican Mathematical Olympiad, the set of all x, such that x is a Gold medalist or belongs to the intersection of Silver medalists and Contestants that can still participate next year, are invited to four, ten-day long math sessions on different parts of the country. We call them the National Trainings. I used a scholarship to pay for them because my state has lost its funding, a decision that was criticized by my community. They think I only did exams and learnt "math stuff" but they don't know about the rest. That I was famous for solving a combinatory problem using a polygon (I even won a nickname). Or that I once stole the football from a guy than runs like a gazelle (he stole it back, but it's still the biggest achievement of my brief soccer career). Or that I stopped being the same after my friend moved a rare Magic card closer to the window so I could see it, and moonlight fell on it and surrounded it and brought it alive (the lights were off because my roomies were sleeping).

Math Olympians are the Monster group of sporadic groups: we have an order fifty-four digits long and there are no subgroups. We are meant to visit the math world together; that's something I discovered that night.

and* above us?
I like the first sentence, though I'm not 100% it's grammatically correct.


This wording is a bit confusing.


More confusing wording.


having what sounded like?


Strange wording. Maybe "with nowhere else to go"?


"Hey," I said. "How did you solve..." (Missing punctuation)


Strange wording, and you need a comma before "but."


Awkward sentence. "We caught the attention, and they recognized the drawing" maybe? Also, capitalize the first letter inside quotation marks.


"We are deciding which solution is the prettiest," we replied.


wondering*


In my case?


Colon unnecessary.


Sentence fragment. Maybe it's a stylistic choice? I don't know.


I'd tweak the first part of the sentence because ending with "at" sounds strange. I'm also not 100% sure what you mean here.

Overall, the essay has heart, but there were some grammatical errors that need to be fixed. Also, I feel like I could hear more about what you love about math or The National Trainings.

Good luck!

All right, I don't know how to edit threads, but this is the new version. If someone else has something new to add, mainly whether the first sentence is correct, and opinions on the new last paragraph (I think it expresses better what I meant but I may be an eye-roller), I'd appreciate it.

I liked your writing, it is interesting and humorous. But I didnt really get what your environment was, was it the competitons, your room or math itself? I'm sorry i am not a native english speaker so i found this slightly ambiguous.


I liked this. I love math too!

I think the wording of this particular sentence is still weird. Can you try rephrasing it ? Or may be make it two sentences, I think it would sound better that way.

Your use of ( .. ) was humorous, but at the end it seemed superfluous. I really like the way you used dialogues , makes it more vivid although I couldn't get the flow on my first read. But that could have been only me.

Awesome writing :)

Was it superfluous because I have used it before, or because the information wasn't needed? Thanks for your advice, and to savusavu too. The place I chose was the National Trainings. Wasn't it clear?

May be it's because you used it a few times before and continued to use, so because of that it kind of lost it's charm ! The place wasn't clear to me until I read it twice. But again, that could have been only me :)