In my personal statement submitted to UCAS (in applying to a Mathematics degree in UK universities back then),
I began with the following quote:
I have always been fascinated by maths' endless room for conjecture that begat different principles and theorems.
Indeed, the process of generating insights to justify mathematical statements have fascinated me since I joined the Malaysian International Mathematical Olmpiad (henceforth denoted as IMO) training camp in November 2010:
so intriguing that I am willing to spend hours (or even days) just to think of a problem.
Cracking even one mathematical problem can get me occupied for a few hours in a row, and it can be frustrating when no progress can be made.
Nevertheless, my biggest motivation that moves me forward is the feel of accomplishment as I finally managed to tackle these difficult puzzles.
In fact, I ended my personal statement with the following sentences:
I have not been able to refrain from spending hours on proving theorems presented in textbooks and conquering maths problems from different contests.
The adventure of 'researching' various topics beyond textbook level (such as quadratic residues) has been equally rewarding.
Among high-school Mathematical Olympiad topics, Number Theory fascinates me the most. It is very intriguing to think how ideas as simple as "divisibility of numbers" and "remainders" can be transformed into various problems in the Mathematical Olympiad. (In fact, three of the problems I proposed to the Junior Olympiad of Mathematics are Number Theory).
Geometry comes next, and was one of my strongest area in Mathematical Olympiad (thanks to my trigonometric discoveries).