If you aren't familiar with them, Olympiads are gatherings of young people interested in and fascinated by academics, where they go up against each other to prove who's more interested in and fascinated by a certain subject than everyone else. So yeah, Nerd-con. 

I recently went to one of these Olympiads to see if I possessed any marketable talent that could make me rich one day. I was thoroughly disappointed but thanks to infallible boredom that triggered heightened powers of observation, I managed to learn enough things to write this article. 

The first group of people you'll notice in the early morning hustle bustle of an Olympiad are people with their head buried in a book whose title reads like it came out of a BuzzFeed article - "40 Formulas to Get You Through High School" or "10 Techniques Matheletes Must Know". Some of the books might be legit, but the people reading them are the sort who'll invariably snap at you if you interrupt them. They can't imagine what it'd be like to go home without a medal. What's funny is most of them go home with a participation certificate, and on it, if the Z's in their name is misspelt with G's, they'll fuss about it like that even matters. 

Then they're people who're more enthusiast than competitor, and they'll be smiling all the time. It's almost refreshing to see people who can be so happy with so little. They're happy to just be there, it's almost as if they like Physics because Greek letters are pretty. They'll be the first in every line, and they'll ask the experts in the panel stupid questions. When they don't get an answer to their stupid question, they'll have a "gotcha" smile plastered on their face, and ignore the disgust directed at them from all directions by people who actually know why Einstein is famous.

Next is the sad story of those whose golden days are past them. In a year recently gone by, they might have been in the same place winning all the praise and acclaim, and the longing for that to happen again is what brings these people back. But between the times they last won something to their latest appearance, brain development hasn't lived up to expectation and the laziness of late teens has prevailed. These people can easily be identified by how they concede defeat even before the fight starts. They've made the journey from extraordinary to mediocre and Olympiads are where they're reminded of it the most. 

Now we move on to the people who truly know what they're doing. These are the people who'll own tech companies in 20 years and people like me will keep getting rejected by for jobs. They don't have to prove themselves to anyone because they know they're good at whatever they try, but accomplishments and appearances at international Olympiads are necessary if you want to get into a good university. They'll mind their business all day and at no point in the day will you look at one of them and think that that's a genius right there. But when the day is over and everyone's leaving, and they're up on the stage with a medal hung around their neck, you'll can't help but wonder, "Who would've thought?"

Azmin Azran is a 17-year-old boy stuck in the body of a 17-year-old boy. He talks a lot, mostly about football and politics because that's what's on TV most of the time. Contact him for an onslaught of uncomfortable jokes at fb.com/azminazran