
I somehow managed to get myself to the Leinster provincial finals of the mathletes challenge. Six students from my year made it to the provincial finals. We were invited up to google in Dublin for the event. I brought Bronwyn with me as a guest which was fun. We had to sign in at 9:30a.m and then at 10a.m we started the tasks.
The first task was doing a series of short questions and we had half and hour to do them. There were twenty four t.ys in total in the Leinster competition. I found the questions quite difficult and got a few done. My friends found them difficult too.
Then the second task was longer brain teasers and we had forty minutes to do these ones. I found these even more difficult and guessed a lot of them. Then lastly we had a team task, we were each given numbers and put into teams of four. I had another girl, Carmella, and two lads, Oisín and Eoghan, on my team. Our task was to build a lego car and make it travel the furthest down a ramp, we were against all the other teams. It was really fun because I am obssesed with lego anyway. We started off with a pretty good car, then we added lots of stuff to the design and changed it, and it ended up worse than ever, and we lost that round, but we still got on very well as a team and they were lovely, fun people, who I hope to meet again someday.
After we completed each of the three tasks we got lunch. Google provided free food, so as you can imagine, me and Bronwyn helped ourselves to a lot. We were given a tour of google. It is one giant canteen, in every room there is comfortable seating and food. They even have see-saws and swings. We asked how they ever got work done in there, it is like a playground. The staff there were very friendly and Bronwyn managed to befriends a few employees while I was off doing maths. Bronwyn even managed to get herself locked into rooms because she didn't have a swipe card to get out, but you could get into the rooms by a button on the doors.
Once Bronwyn finished adventuring, and we finished the tours, we were brought to the auditorium for the awards presentation. This was the most fun. They played good music, there were lots of lights and we were all sitting in comfortable seats for it to start. Once it started we were shown about all the work the mathletes have been doing, and khan academy to make the competition happen, and also some thanks you's to google and the presenter. Then the winners of the online leaderboards were called out to collect medals, I was the overall winner for T.Y's which was a huge achievment. Bronwyn wouldn't stop clapping, and I got lots of congratulations from people. There were lots of other awards for 'most time spent on khan academy' and also the champions league winners I was only in the challengers league because this was my first year on khan academy. They aren't going to announce the winners of todays events till Tuesday, and the top twenty all across Ireland go through to the finals, but because I was overall leaderboard winner in Ireland of t.y's I automatically go through to the finals on the 2nd of May in DCU, I didn't know this till today, and I am so excited, it means no matter how bad I did at the maths today, I still go through (and I did pretty bad today) Also the winning team of the lego round got lego ducks. Once the presentations were over we all got hats, mugs, stickers and certificates outside the auditorium, I also got another medal for being the Wexford county champion. I was so proud of myself.
I can't wait till the finals in two weeks, I better start practicing again. I don't really mind if I don't do well in the finals as even getting to them was such an achievement, (although it would be nice to win something) I am so proud of myself and I think it is my biggest achievement of the year, and the best day out i've had this year also. I don't mind being called a maths nerd because of it, i've enjoyed every minute of it.
So on Tuesday I will find out which of my other five friends will get through to the finals.
Outside on the swings
Giant google maps screen that you could control.