PROMYS was the very cool non-geeky math camp I attended during my summer of 1997. I forget how I first heard of it, but I had tried to get in the previous year. You have to take this evaluation test of some sort, some ten questions that are pretty funky. I remember spending something like five or six hours, and a whole lot of paper, on this question which went like: how many even coefficients are there in (x+1)^100. And that was that.
So anyway, I remember my first day, walking into the Towers at BU, and registering. The first person I saw happened to be Jong. This guy looked like a fourth grader and I immediately felt, "Oh, crap, I'm going to get schooled by a bunch of elementary students." Turned out that Jong was a freshman at that time, but looked really young. He did, though, school the camp. He impressed quite a few people.
So the next funny thing was the introduction of the camp counselors. It was funny to me because I remember reading the brochure that the camp was staffed by a talented group of counselors from the top universities around the country. I mean, not that the counselors did not come from top universities, but the brochure should not have plurified the word university. The pattern went like this, "My name is blah blah, I major in math at Harvard. My name is blah blah, I major in math at Harvard. Blah blah, math, Harvard." Well, there was a Brown, a Yale, a Rice and here and there, but Harvard definitely was the main supply.
So my counselor was, as you may guess, a Harvard student. He was majoring in physics though. I was impressed most by the fact that he was ranked fourth in the world math competitions in his high school years. He was also hell of a frisbee player, too.
My roommate was Cameron Freer. Cameron was definitely one of the smarter people at camp. He was already taking math classes at the university in Buffalo, and had already been exposed to number theory. After my first night with Cameron, I realized how little of math I had seen. There were a lot of math competitions and national tests that I heard never heard about. Now would be a good time to mention that I was the person who brought the AHSME to Andover High. I went to the head of department and told her about the possibility of taking the AHSME at our school, and hence it started. I also tried out for ARML my senior year, but did not make the team because I didn't quite know what questions to expect and didn't really have any past material to practice on.
And so PROMYS was my way of life for six weeks. Classes in the morning, and review sessions in the afternoon. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Warren Tower. I must say, the food was excellent. The professor was way cool. Professor Stevens was pretty energetic, and it was rather entertaining to attend his lectures. He even played basketball with us one time.
Well, so after class, I usually went to Sargeant Gym to shoot some hoops. I also attempted to do some weight-lifting, but was discouraged on day when two girls came in and was pumping more iron than I could even dream of. Evenings were spent usually in the basement of Towers, "working together" with other people on the daily problem sets.
Weekends are spent playing endless games of ultimate frisbee on the astroturf behind Star Market. By endless, I mean endless. We sometimes had enough for a game of basketball at Case, which was pretty fun. I didn't go out into Boston all that much. I figured I've lived here long enough anyway.
So now about somet of the cool people I met:
chia-hao and jae: these two stuy freaks are both now at MIT with me. they were both pretty good frisbee players, too.
austin lee: a maryland korean who gave up his admission to the top korean high school to try his luck in the states. austin was pretty damn smart in that he did most of the problem sets by himself. he played tennis with me once, after he inspired me with his i-learned-to-play-on-my-own story. austin is now at georgia tech, though he spent a semester in england, and another in hong kong with study abroad.
douglas baker: this guy was just plain crazy. he decided to shave his head one night and actually let a bunch of us morons do it for him. he was known for telling jokes of perverted natures and had a thing with the word "faggot" in that he must say it every ten seconds. he was pretty good at frisbee and proved to be quite the man of steals. he is now at caltech. i've only seen him once after PROMYS while at the caltech orientation.
jen lee: one of the nerds from "the academy." she has a tendecy to think that she is ugly (i totally understand though) and let people make fun of her. si saw her again while visiting MIT. the big thing during that visit was that she had a really hot hostess, but i never got a really good look at her. she's now at princeton, and hasn't really changed much. i saw her christmas of '99.
jared updike: this moron, i mean mormon, from utah was a pretty tall dude. i can't remember much about him, and he never replied to my e-mails. all i know is that he is now at caltech.
big mike: big mike is pretty big. he's from atlanta and was a pretty good ti-85 programmer. he's now at georgia tech taking a bunch of classes. i occascionally chat with him on line during the wee hours of the early morning. he doesn't sleep.....
doria: doria was from florida at the time, but her family moved with her to georgia when she decided to go to georgia tech. i belive she is a comp sci major. doria is taiwanese, and talks a lot. she's really friendly, and talks a lot. and she talks a lot, too.
solomon: solomon was not a PROMYS camper, but he was from the same school as baeksan and jen, so he hung around pretty often. he was busy trying to pursue doria and was pretty successful in his attempt. solomon has a way with talking... talking to females. he's one of those people who talk to females like the way guys do in movies. the problem is that women don't always react the same way they do in movies, but it's still pretty entertaining to watch. i met up with solomon at the caltech orientation, but haven't seen him since.
baeksan: my basketball buddy was baeksan. baeksan is a huge jordan freak. despite being a ball hog, he finds his way to score (jordan-esque?). he's an excellent free-throw shooter and can be deadly on the three point line when he's fired up. baeksan and i would go over to sargeant every morning (if he got up) after lecture to shoot hoops. he's a pretty big guy, so it wasn't very fun playing one-on-one with him. baeksan eats and sleeps with volume, and is very good with chopsticks. his big thing at PROMYS was the way he dressed in two dollars bloomingdale apparel. despite not replying to my e-mails, baeksan sometimes e-mails at random occasions. i saw him christmas of '99. saw him again during summer '00 while he was visiting MIT. baeksan has a thing with challenging the system. he claims that his grades in high school were brought down by the fact that teachers didn't like him because he was such a bad-ass. he is now studying (last i heard, tripling major, i think) at university of illinois - urbana champaign. story is he's now got a pretty hot girlfriend.
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