The South East Asia Maths Competition, commonly known as SEAMC, was held in Jakarta this year. It will most likely be the largest SEAMC ever due to not only the SEAMC competition, but also a newly introduced SEAMC Elite Competition. Three teams went from FIS. The Junior competition members were Yvonne, Hugo, Bernard and I from Year 10 and Lukas and Klaus from Year 11. The EAMC Elite members were Eddie, Hadrian and Matthew.
It all started when we were chosen at the beginning of the year and started training. My team – Hugo, Bernard and I – met on Thursday lunch times with Mr MacLean to practise by doing individual problems to familiarise ourselves with the style of questions. Then on 2nd March we headed off to the airport with Mr MacLean and Ms Wong to start our academic adventure.
The Competition was split into lots of smaller competitions which included Passback, Energiser, team questions, Codebreaker, long term questions and the individual rounds. The long term questions were the most fun because we were all split up into buddy groups with 5 people from schools all over South East Asia, given the weekend to answer 5 questions and make a fun and creative poster displaying our answers. The individual round was the first proper competition we took part in and we spent one and a half hours answering super tough questions; I found this hard but luckily it was multiple choice. For every other competition we had our team with us which made it more relaxed and fun as I knew I could count on them to help me.
The night before we left there was a Gala dinner and awards ceremony and Lukas and Klaus won a medal each! We left Jakarta the next day very tired from all the hard work we had done. Overall I had so much fun and am super happy that I was chosen to take part. I hope more and more people want to do it in the future because it is a wonderful way to meet new people, learn and represent your school.