Last December 5, 2021, Ervin Joshua Bautista of 9-Compassion received a gold award from the 2021 Guang Dong – Hong Kong – Macao Greater Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad (Big Bay Bei) heat round which was held online. This recent win is only one of many past achievements and just a stepping stone for more to come.
Joshua’s love for math started when he was only in second grade. After not being able to pass into Advanced Learning Program (ALP) in fourth grade, he started pushing himself to do better and joined math competitions. At first, he only started joining math competitions because of the competitive aspect and wanting to win, but after a while, he started to enjoy mathematics itself.
“I grew to like how the problems are set up,” he says. “Where you kinda just start throwing random pieces of information at the problem until it makes sense.”
Other than his recent win, Joshua also won a gold medal in the American Mathematics Olympiad which took place online last November 6, 2021. He finished in the top 8% of his level in the global competition jointly developed by Southern Illinois University and the Singapore International Mastery Competition Centre.
When asked about memorable experiences being a mathlete, he mentioned his experience in his second-ever international competition and first “exclusive” invitational competition. He shares, “I remember having a really difficult time in the test. What's worse was I was competing against people in a grade higher than mine and I was not used to that. After all the exams, I was at the award ceremony with my teammates since the awards were given per team. When it came to my team I was surprised to find out that I had gotten a silver, doing better than all my teammates and a lot of the people in the grade above me.”
The competition he had the most difficult time with was the International World Youth Mathematics Competition. He shared that he had little to no time to prepare for it and that he thought he did poorly in the individual and group competition, but with his dedication, he bagged a silver medal and was one of three lauded participants from the Philippines.
When asked about what he likes best about competing in math competitions, Joshua answers that he likes the environment. Of all the things he mentions, he says he likes the feeling of nervousness he gets before entering an exam room, being able to sit down and look at everybody else itching to take the exam, and the fact that, for a couple of hours, the only thing that matters is the test that’s right in from of him.
He adds, “[Another thing is that] I like the sort of 'beauty' of the problems, since they are designed to be answered in such a short amount of time some of them can seem really complicated and the solution can be really simple 一 granted not easy to find.”
He mentions that he doesn’t actually have a specific routine when it comes to preparing for math competitions. He says that over the course of a lot of months, he practices a bunch of problems and aims to learn something new every day. If a competition is around the corner, that’s when he starts doing trials using past exams or mock tests. But that’s not to say everything’s work and no play: his hobbies outside of math include writing argumentative essays, debating, and playing games.
Joshua’s continuous streak of mathlete wins continues to be an inspiration to his fellow batchmates and schoolmates. Though his Big Bay Bei gold award is yet another big achievement, it will certainly not be his last.
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