i'm here to win.

I was in the math building at 8:30 am on a Saturday to take a math test. Oh, and it was a voluntary math test. I wasn't even getting extra credit in any of my classes like some of the other kids who showed up. Before we started the test, we went around introducing ourselves and telling why we were here. Most were there for the extra credit. A couple, like me, were there more out of curiosity than anything else. Then there was this skinny sophomore kid, who shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm here to win." The other kids looked aghast, and I laughed out loud at his audacity and arrogance, but thought, hey, if he's going to be full of himself, he might as well be honest about it.

The Putnam Math Exam is a Big Deal. Undergraduate students all over the country take it, and basically, if you make a positive score, that's considered really good. You're given a dozen problems and about six hours to work on them. You're not meant to finish them all. The hope is that you'll get far enough along on at least one of them to get partial credit. That's how you get a positive score. Whoever has the highest score is the winner. I don't know what the winner gets, maybe a scholarship to grad school or something like that. I wasn't there to win, so I don't know.

There were maybe a dozen kids there. For the test, they put each of us in a different classroom, and we were allowed to draw all over the chalk boards if that helped us think. I don't like using chalk boards. Give me a good sheet of scratch paper and I'm set. Plus, I ended up having to share a classroom anyway. The other guy in my classroom used the board a little for the morning session. He drew triangles. There was a triangle question on the test, so I assume he was working on that rather than just killing time with three-sided figures.

I was the only senior there. I knew only a couple of the other kids. During the half-hour lunch break, I mostly just listened to the others talk. I could tell that some of them were pretty smart and others not so much. I talked to Adam because he was the only guy I knew well. I like Adam. He has math tattoos. Plus, I think he was the only one besides me there who was of age.

After the morning session, we were all looking a little discouraged. The test is apparently designed to make you feel stupid. Most of us questioned how long we would even stay for the afternoon session - what was the point? Most of us weren't there to win. Adam joked that we should blow off the afternoon session and just walk to Murphy's and have some post-Putnam beers.

The afternoon session was a joke. No one cared anymore about this stupid impossible test. I made myself at least make an attempt on the afternoon questions. There was one that looked doable, at least more doable than the others. The other guy in my classroom gave up after about fifteen minutes. I thought I was getting somewhere on my problem, but then realized a kink. There were always kinks in these questions. I had spent the whole morning session feeling like I was getting somewhere and then finding a tiny kink that made the problem exponentially harder. Once I found the kink in the afternoon problem, I gave up. I didn't care. I wasn't there to win.

Security was much more lax in the afternoon. I peeked in the other classrooms to try to find Adam to see if that post-Putnam beer offer was still good. I found one of the other kids in his room, and they were discussing the problem I had just given up on. This was definitely not allowed, but I joined in since I had already given up. Adam wanted to finish the problem - he thought it looked doable, too. He and the other kid talked about it for a while while I watched. Adam started getting excited. Then I pointed out the kink. I had to explain it twice. Then Adam saw it, too, looked at me, and said, "Let's go to Murphy's." We didn't care. We weren't there to win.