Just a heads up to everybody, I may wind up moving this site to the Wordpress blog I created and mentioned last post. I will do this if Moho continues to not post.
Now, onto today's topic of practice.
Something awesome happened today. I was at the practices for the All-State Math team today, and I did literally twice as well as I did the practice before. I really, really hope that this was not a fluke and was, instead, due to the practice that I gained both during the previous practice and during the week leading up to this latest practice.
This is very different for me, because never has practice had such a great effect upon my performance. I have never truly practiced math, due to the fact that it was only recently that I began doing tournaments and that I was too overconfident. The only other things I practiced were things that I was really bad at, like sports.
So it is now that I truly understand how truly great practice and, in this case particularly, studying can be for your skills. If you devote yourself to something with enough fervor, you can accomplish a great deal if you devote yourself to something. So for all those that are trying to learn competition math, I recommend that you study your ass off. In truth, I didn't really do practice problems during the week, but I did read a significant portion of The Art of Problem Solving. I really, seriously recommend these books. They have almost completely filled the gaps in my geometric knowledge, and enlightened me as far as other subjects go. If you want to buy them, they can be found here. However, these books are for neither the faint of heart nor the untalented. You cannot read these books and skim formulas from them and, in doing so, learn how to pass the AMC. You must understand what you read, and how it works if you want the full benefit, and that is no easy task; unless you are already very good at math, I would not recommend them.
So I guess I learned something new today!