The Golden Pen of the Riga City Council: the best 14 subjects

The Riga City Council had a prize for the best school graduates, the Golden Pen. The rule: 120 points across 14 subjects plus olympiads. A classmate of mine, a strong olympiad student, was going for it on purpose, and the school was preparing him for it.

My grades were sevens and eights, and I wasn’t thinking about the prize. Then I got my school report and did the sums. It had more than fourteen subjects. Leave out Latvian, English and Russian, take the best 14, and it came to exactly 120.

I went to the headmaster: “Is that allowed?” The rules didn’t say which subjects to take. The headmaster was just surprised: “Why didn’t anyone tell us we had another candidate?” We applied, and the people at Progmeistars helped me with the paperwork.

There were about twenty nominees from all over Riga. A reception at City Hall, Mayor Gundars Bojārs shaking my hand, the prize in cash in an envelope. It was the first money in my bank account.

2002: congratulations from the Mayor of Riga, Gundars Bojārs.

The prize came with the pen itself, to be presented to the teacher who influenced you most. My classmate gave his to the headmaster, “for political reasons”. I was hurt by a school where nobody had seen a programmer in me, and I gave mine to Sergey Melnik, my teacher at the private Progmeistars courses. The school took offence, but I had just graduated and never went back.

What I took from it: read the rules more carefully than anyone else, and don’t wait for someone to put your name forward. And thank the person who actually taught you.