Jason's USABO Experience: Freshman Year, Part 2

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Freshman Year, Part 2

A few months later, around December, I decided to get back into the saddle. I was ambitious and had high expectations for myself, so I was willing to give it another go. I took Baology’s Winter Booster class curing winter break, and I wholly 110% endorse it.

Compared to the once-a-week pace of the main class (at the time there were only two TA sessions), solving past exams once a day and being in a community where everyone was wholly focused on USABO was truly inspiring.

My original goals for freshman year were to hopefully make semis. Fortunately, it was 2020 so I had online school and a lot of free time to devote towards reading. I wasn’t (and still am not) a very fast reader, so I read around 2 hours a day and vowed to maintain a pace of 1 chapter a day to finish Campbell by Opens.

By the time Opens rolled around I had read about 80% of Campbell, but I had taken many past open exams as preparation and I had been scoring above the cutoff by 1-5 pts so I felt cautiously optimistic that I would make semis. When I qualified I was overjoyed and even considered taking a break. Just making semis was good enough for me at the time, and I figured there was no chance I would get any further in USABO.

I ended up deciding to study a little bit before semis just so that I wouldn’t be completely unprepared (the style and content are completely different). I figured it would at least give me a headstart when I tried again next year.

After semis, I was totally relaxed. It was the end of the 2021 USABO “season” and I figured I could rest and look towards next year. I was totally not expecting to receive a cryptic “camp email” a few weeks later.

I’ve been lucky enough to have many happy moments in my life, but to this day, I still think that moment when I found out I made camp for the first time was the happiest I’ve ever been. It was just so unexpected and it was the first and only time I’ve ever actually cried tears of joy.

I truly hope that all of you reading this can one day make camp too and have that feeling too.

I think my freshman year was my most “canonical USABO Journey”, and it was an extremely personally meaningful period in my life. I’ve rambled a lot (and unfortunately for you I will continue to ramble in future posts) but I honestly hope that this series can be helpful or at least inspirational to someone in my shoes. I know this is extremely cliche, but you should take it especially coming from me:

Just believing in yourself is the most important part of your USABO journey.