Qualification exam coming....

The qualification exams are offered twice a year, and new students are expected to take the first try within the first year of study.  One can officially try up to the third time without any trouble.  Normally incoming students take their first try in June just after school ended, but I am feeling lucky and decided to try it in two weeks.  Well, I'm not going to use up all three chances anyhow, why not testing the water temperature?  It's not like I'm going to go there barehanded though.  I'm trying my best to do practice problems recently.

Today, after doing a dozen problem in succession (which totalled a few hours/20 pages of answers), I felt like thowing out.  I think I need more sleep.

One thing that strikes me is that the solution is sometimes not the best way of doing it.  It is simply not intuitive and makes things unnecessarily messy.  I am fortunate that I underwent IPhO training, and have more experience in a lot of the topics.  However I can imagine a normal student struggling to understand why the solution utilized such a strange way of solving the problem.

There is still a lot to learn though.  I've found some weak points that I've been unconciously avoiding before.  Now is the time to correct them ^^".

I hope I can pass the exam in the first try.