Stuyvesant’s Record DeltaMath Speedrun

The last day of summer always feels like the end of the world. I wished for an actual apocalypse to hit, even though at that point, going through the end of the world would be better than going back to hell—I mean school. Crying inside with immeasurable sorrow, I went over my checklist of supplies one last time. Notebooks? Check. Pens? Check. Folders? Check. My TI-84 calculator with Tetris downloaded? Check. Finished summer homework? Check. And with that, I was ready for another year of sleep deprivation, mental breakdowns, and obsessing over numbers on PupilPath—oh, wait, I mean Jupiter Ed! Just as I was grieving the death of PupilPath, a Messenger notification popped up from my friend Mary Sue:

Mary: YO I AM FINALLY DONE WITH DELTAMATH WOOHOO

Me: great. congrats. u should have done it earlier lol

Mary: pls, ur crazy

Mary: no one finish hw in the first week of summer

Mary: ur not a real stuy kid

Me: imagine procrastinating (◔_◔)

Me: this is why i have a higher avg than u

Mary: rood, no need to shame my 92 geo avg T-T

Mary: shapes r hard

Me: there was no geometry in the hw tho, it was all algebra 1

Mary: no wtf r u talking abt

Me: algebra 1, like quadratics, radicals, diff of 2 sq stuff

Mary: U IDIOT U DID THE WRONG HW

Me: WDYM, WE’RE SUPPOSED TO DO GEOMETRY RIGHT???

Me: BC WE TOOK GEOMETRY THIS YEAR?

Mary: YOU DID THE HW FOR THE FRESH MEATS

Mary: GO CHECK THE EMAIL

Panicking, I scrolled through my stuy.edu e-mail before clicking on the e-mail sent by Assistant Principal of Mathematics Mr. Eric Smith. Closely reading the PDF, I see the text, “Select the course you will be taking in the fall of 2022. Do NOT enroll in the course you are currently taking!”

Oh shhhhhiii-

I quickly logged onto DeltaMath, mourning over all the green checkmarks in the Geometry course which were now rendered useless. I switched over to Algebra II, and I was greeted by countless tabs that were all at zero percent completion when the page finally loaded.

Oh double shhhhhii—I almost threw my phone out of the window.

I sighed. It was going to be a long night.

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I did not sign up for these for the last day of summer. I should have been asleep by 9 p.m. like I usually am, but it was 10:25 p.m. and I was still battling with the annoying DeltaMath-generated questions. I probably shouldn’t have drank black coffee like a depressed junior; the bitterness of bad-quality instant coffee made me want to puke. My eyes stung from continuously staring at the computer screen, my back hurt as if I had fallen off the Hudson staircase and rolled from the 10th floor to the first floor, and my brain could hardly process x^2+5x+6=0.

I cursed myself once again as I went through each section and solved the math problems. Never in my entire student career have I waited till the last minute to complete my work, especially NOT by making the stupidest mistake of my student career by selecting the wrong assignment and wasting HOURS of work. This was going to be a shame that I would regret for the rest of my life. It shall remain a secret from the rest of the world forever, and I will bring it to my grave.

After getting yet ANOTHER problem wrong, I banged my stupid head against my keyboard and looked at the time, shocked to find that it was already 11:01 p.m. Whoever invented DeltaMath should suffer in the 10th circle of Hell, cursed to do complex math problems without a calculator forever. You know what, screw this. I apologize to every single math teacher in my life, but desperate times called for desperate measures. After all, Photomath and Desmos are your best friends. Stuyvesant High School Academic Integrity Policy what? Never heard of that.

With the help of my bros, I was finally done with DeltaMath by the break of dawn! I scrolled down the page from the top, and the sense of satisfaction I felt seeing a green check mark on every single tab was incomprehensible beyond words. Even though it was midnight, at that moment I felt more alive and awake than I had ever been. Outside my window, the pale moon was high up on the deep blue canvas of the night sky. A bright shooting star shot out from the clouds—just kidding, it was no more than a plane. A meteor in New York? In your dreams.

I shut down my computer, grabbed my phone, and texted my friend back: DONE!!!

I was amazed by what I had just accomplished. I had never known that I had the potential to complete so much work in just one night. When my new Algebra II teacher asks, “Did everyone complete their DeltaMath summer homework?” I do not have to be one of the few people feeling guilty because I hadn’t finished it. I felt a sense of pride in myself. At least I finished my work on time as I always had in the past, hadn’t I?

Satisfied, I scrolled down the page once again to gloat over the tiny green checkmarks. With that, the school record speedrun of DeltaMath was completed one minute and nine seconds before the deadline! No one else would have ever finished Deltamath in four hours and 20 minutes. Just to double-check (not because I’m paranoid or anything—it’s called being mindful), I looked at the due date. Due Sep 12, 11:59 p.m.

I looked at the screen, looked at the time, then looked back at the screen before screaming into my pillow on September 7, 2022, at exactly 11:59 p.m.