About the speaker
Harrison Wang, MIT 2021, made the 48th and 49th International Chemistry Olympiad teams and won a gold medal in 2017 (5th place in the world and 1st in USA). He also won a silver medal in the USA Physics Olympiad in 2016, and he was a USA Biology Olympiad semifinalist in 2017.
Harrison graduated from Hinsdale Central High School, where he won the Fermin Lab Science Award and was state champion as captain of his scholastic bowl team. He is also interested in literature, philosophy, classical music, Shaolin martial arts, and dance.
This article is the transcription of Harrison Wang’s presentation at Xiaolu Talk #7 on July 21, 2018. Harrison gave the talk both live to 100 audience members in a public library in Northern California, as well as an audience from all over the world in seven we-chat groups.
1
I'm Harrison, MIT class of 2021. I went to IChO 2017 and won a gold medal. Thanks all for coming and listening!
Harrison Is Giving The Talk
Before I begin, I’d like to thank a couple of people. First, thanks to Auntie Xiaolu (晓鹿阿姨) for allowing me this opportunity to speak to you all today. Thanks to ACS and my high school teacher Mrs. May for allowing me the opportunity itself to compete in chemistry Olympiad; thanks to my mentor Professor Tian and Dr. Jiang from the University of Chicago. They gave me a lot of wisdom and taught me how to succeed in practical and theoretical world. And I'd also like to thank my parents, my friends for their guidance and support throughout my high school.
2
I like to think about things. How ideas work and how they interact with each other. So rather than just tell you what Olympiad is and how to do it, I’ll tell you how I’ve begun to think about Olympiad. Not only what it is and how to do it, but its context. How Olympiad deals with our lives as a whole.
During this talk, I invite you to reflect honestly about your lives. If you do Olympiad seriously, if you want any substance out of it, you’re going to devote thousands of hours to it, you’re going to be molded by it and learn from it and become it.
2016 US International Chemistry Olympiad Team
Olympiad is hard work, even for the most talented. If you really don’t want to do Olympiad, it’s totally fine! I’ll still hope it’ll be somewhat interesting and applicable to your lives, and if you don’t find it interesting I won’t be offended. I know everyone has different and busy and fun lives.
So stay for a while and if you get really bored, by all means feel free to leave. Go do something else with your time, because you’re not going to get much out of being here.
Audience Members in Palo Alto Public Library
And let me get one more thing straight: for us, young people, there’s no reason I should convince you to do Olympiad competition. The only person you should be convinced by is yourself. And parents: there’s no reason I should convince you to convince your kids to do Olympiad competition. The only person that can convince your kids is themselves. I know you want the best for your kids. But their lives are not going to get better if you don’t really think hard about if the things you’re doing are really actually the best for your kids. On that slightly unpleasant note, let’s begin!
Olympiad is something you do. It’s something you make part of your life. Before you do it there’s going to be something that’s going to motivate you to do it. Those are the causes for you to do Olympiad. Then there’s how to do Olympiad itself. How to go about training your abilities, how to become better. Finally Olympiad is going to have an effect on your life. Your life will change because you did it, and I don’t mean that in an inspirational sense. But I hope you’ll like it.
So with this framework today I’ll try to first outline my life with respect to Olympiad, then generalize each experience I’ve had to something you can take away.
3
I’ll discuss for whom is it appropriate to prepare for competition. While I still have your attention this is the most important part. Olympiad is not for everyone. Competition by nature is something that could result in bad experiences, and who we are as a person is shaped by our experiences, and we still have a lot to figure out about who we are, especially while we’re still young (I still feel like a high schooler sometimes, I forget I’m actually in college now). These years are crucial for our development as a person, so you can’t let Olympiad screw it up. What should be the right causes for someone to do Olympiad?
Perspective Discipline Passion
Next for those of you who feel like you’re all fired up, you’re ready to go and spend infinite hours a day on reading a bunch of textbooks and doing a bunch of problems. But that’s not the best of ideas. If you’ve realized Olympiad is not for you, I think this part is still important. So what’s the best way to study for Olympiad competitions?
2017 US International Cheristry Olympiad Team
I’ll reminisce. I’ll share my experiences with Olympiad, motivated by this one question: how has competitions affected my life?
Ok maybe you came for one framework but I am going to give you a two for one deal here! Second framework is the physical-mental-social triangle. Sometimes when you’re a student they say sleep-social life-grades, pick two?
These correspond to each of the circles. But to have a balanced lifestyle you’re going to have all three, because these are really just the three parts of the world we live in.
So by dividing the world up into these three spheres, I’ll clarify more of the causes, practices, and effects of Olympiad preparation. Olympiad preparation deals mostly with the mental world, but I’ll start with the physical and the social world.
Ok! We’re ready to use this twofold framework to dissect stuff. So first slide. In this slide, I won’t be talking about why you should do physical activity, but rather, because of Olympiad, there are physical reasons you should do Olympiad. I hope this idea will make more sense soon.
My mom always tells me that I have to be healthy before I can do anything with my life. My mom is an acupuncturist, I thought she was just forcing me to do acupuncture again, so didn’t realize the importance of it before, but this is a really important idea, this is just Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: the physical needs must be satisfied before anything else. So to succeed at Olympiad you need balance. Exercise is really helpful for the mind. It calms it down. And through exercise, through pushing yourself, you learn discipline and willpower.
4
With the combined framework: in the physical world, how is my life different expressly because I studied Olympiad competition? All the reasons I can think of that go here are just reasons why I would do physical activity. I can lift heavy things now.
So in the world of society—our interactions with everyone else–are there any reasons why someone would do Olympiad? My parents pushed me in around eighth grade to do Math Olympiad for the typical reason of getting into a good college so I get a good future. Ok so to some extent this is a good motivation—you’re going to get the name of Harvard or MIT or Stanford, and interact with some cool people there, and you’re going to learn things. But generally the circumstance is that you shouldn’t do something expecting the outcome being that you get into a good college. If you don’t get in, with this expectation mindset it’s harder to make the most of what you get.
Harrison (middle) with his younger brother and younget sister at Cabo, Mexico, Christmas 2017
If you’re really passionate about wanting to learn science or math, remember, at any reputable college you’re going to learn the same material! You’re going to have a good research experience, then get letters of recommendation and then get into grad school.
I know it’s kind of unconvincing because I got into MIT, but actually MIT is not too different. I routinely use coursework from other colleges that I find online to guide me.
Audience Members in Palo Alto Public Library
Beyond myself, two world-class organic chemists, who both are at Scripps right now—their names are Phil Baran and Jin-Quan Yu—one went to undergrad at NYU and the other went to “East China Normal University” which is not really 清华 or 北大– if you haven’t heard of these they’re pretty much the MIT and Harvard of China. If you’re motivated to get the name of Harvard or MIT or Stanford, because it is pretty useful for careers in finance or business or medicine–there’s better ways to spend your time than seriously engaging with Olympiad, anyways.
There are no real shortcuts here. And if you’re interested in other things, you probably would get a better experience in a different college. Top colleges are very selfish. They found students to give them money and make them look good. Chances are the students that look good are just passionate at what they do and can utilize the resources given to them to make their colleges look good. At any rate, college shouldn’t be the reason to do Olympiad.
So one thing I’ve noticed is fun is doing hard chemistry problems with friends. Learning how another person’s brain works is really cool and interesting. If you haven’t found out already, friends in Olympiad are pretty easy to find. You probably have some sort of Olympiad training community here. Make friends on AOPS, take online classes with people, or just ask your parents. Find mentors too, people that really know their stuff. They’ve gone through things before and probably are happy to share in the Olympiad journey with you. Find people to teach, too. To prepare the knowledge you know in order to teach someone, you’ll strengthen the mental connections in your brain, and so you’ll have a strong foundation.
Throughout high school I’ve had really small friend groups. Instead of socializing in class I’d inevitably end up doing Olympiad problems. Friday nights or weekends I would play league legend with my brother, play runescape alone, do my homework, and then study some quiz bowl or Olympiad problems.
Instead of graduation or school dances the nostalgic events I’d look back on are the long, rainy Saturday trips down to Urbana-Champaign with the quiz bowl team. I still feel a sense of alienation from people who didn’t spend their high school lives mostly alone, but recently it’s getting there. At MIT, I’m really glad through Olympiad I’ve found friends who think like myself but also push me out of my comfort zone. We do really fun things.
2017 US International Cheristry Olympiad Team
During spring break, I’ve gone to New York with my friend Aaditya to visit my IChO teammate and our mutual friend Josh, I also went to DC with my two chemistry camp friends. This summer four of us rent an apartment, which we’ve endearingly named the Steven Liu clown house, we cook every day. Almost every Friday I do something avant garde with IChO teammate Brendan, or have impromptu house parties with the friends we’ve made last year. And not to mention IChO is one of the most creamy things in life.
You go visit places and do fun things and meet people from all around the world and meet people who’ll be in your life for years to come. My friend, IChO teammate Steven and I were able to influence a Korean IChO team member so much that he’s now coming to spend three years of undergrad in MIT with us. It’s been a good life right now.
You can have passion without motivation, talent without passion, and most crucially you can have success without happiness. Throughout my journey I’d always guide myself through Olympiad by simply chasing short term goals—finish this problem set, read that textbook. At the beginning I was driven more by the beauty of organic chemistry than the competition of Olympiad, but in the end what I gained was pretty much just learning how to solve IChO-type problems very well. After IChO I fell into a serious sense of purposelessness and dissatisfaction.
I was a gold medalist, but what did it mean? I didn’t have any real knowledge to back it up. I only knew how to solve Olympiad problems and didn’t know much real chemistry. I had so much to owe people for their help and I didn’t even contribute back to the world with what I now know, I just won something for myself. The win felt extremely empty.
Even more so because the 2017 IChO was so easy, it was left to chance who would end up getting which medal, and some of the silver medalists could have easily gotten gold. I was really ashamed at winning – there are people out there so much smarter than me that weren’t rewarded for their abilities. And I was ashamed at what I was feeling – these same people have gone through so much more pain because their successes weren’t rewarded—who am I to complain about my own insignificant troubles?
But now, I look back, and I’ve come to know that, somewhat tritely, the world arbitrarily hands us this loss and gain, and I’m powerless to do anything to change these outcomes.
5
All I can do is make the best, for myself and beyond myself, out of what I’ve been handed, the abilities I’ve gained, and the identity I’ve adopted. Without interrogating what I felt and then letting it go, the toxicity could stay with me for a lifetime.
Harrison at Martical Arts Performance, Chicago 2015
As a result, I’ve realized that success doesn’t matter too much. You could be really talented or driven, but the only lasting thing that can come out of Olympiad is not reward for success but well-being—and this can only happen if you, somewhere in your journey, develop a positive mindset. With such a mindset, if you find it very difficult to improve, but still go at it day in and day out without giving up, you’re going to find your experiences valuable even if your work is not rewarded. Medals don’t mean much in the future.
And if through Olympiad preparation you find it difficult to motivate yourself but are very talented, Olympiad will do you a favor by pushing you away from it.
Finding mindset. I’ve found that what I believe is just a product of the environment, unless if I consciously note to respond to the environment in a different way. To find a good mindset—to develop an attitude that helps you grow as a person—requires conscious nudges away from toxic thought.
Harrison at Martical Arts Performance, Chicago 2015
Finding motivation. Motivation is easier found than cultivated. In the end, you’re finding any positive emotional response that results from an outcome. People study out of spite, or out of a competitive spirit, are driven in part by the positive emotion of pride. People that study because they like what they do are driven out of a sense of pleasure in the moment. And you can have multiple responses to things.
Harrison at Ink, MIT ADT Performance 2017
For example, I learned that I liked the fulfilment that came out of completion of a large project, and if I took small steps on a large journey, then I can feel a more short term fulfilment. Say I wanted to read Klein organic chemistry because afterward I would feel really proud how I knew a comprehensive body of knowledge. Then say I want to read three hours of Klein a day and do the practice problems.
The General, MIT ADT Performance 2018
I’ve gained a drive and discipline toward my goals at MIT—I took 7 classes last semester (Total 14 for the first year) when the usual is 4 and have the curiosity to take more in the future. (and because I was pretty busy I somewhat unfortunately impacted the other parts of my life). Moreover through adapting the analytical problem-solving mindset I gained from Olympiad, I learned to think critically about life and how to push my life toward improvement.
I found purpose in studying applied math toward uncovering the secrets of our biology–I found what I want to do in the future.
So that’s all I have today! From concrete to abstract, I hope you’ve learned more about my experiences, more about Olympiad, more about the world, and most importantly, about these two contextual frameworks I’ve discussed today, so you can use them to learn more about yourself.
I can’t think fast, so if you want to talk about life, or have questions or criticisms that I’m not able to address in the moment, shoot me an email at wangharrison0@gmail.com or join my favorite facebook group here. With this I hope you’ll navigate and live an amazing life. Thank you for your time.
To be continued......
文字稿：江其莹，Linda Xu, 行者, HSun, W.S, Xiaoyun
编辑： Ying, 晓鹿
总编辑：晓鹿
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