Heading back home to Illinois, I took on some more local talent at Northwestern! Walking inside the Tech Building before getting to the competition brought back so much nostalgia for me—I still remember walking through the same hallways to go to summer classes at camp. For this competition, the harsh qualifying times and highly competitive spirit seen at Nationals seemed to ease a bit. I competed in 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5. Despite no improvement in my average, I made it to the second round and got an in-competition best single of 14.10 seconds in the 3x3! (My all-time best is 10.61 seconds.) I also made the second round of 2x2, falling just 6 places short of making the finals. In the 5x5, I was finally able to get my first ever 5x5 average in competition because of the cutoff time, which was a very lenient 3 minutes! Unfortunately, my streak of setting a new personal best competition single ended. But the effort that I was most successful in was the 4x4—for the first time in competition, I dipped under 60 seconds on a 4x4 solve, completing my fourth solve in 57.75 seconds! I was also only a few seconds off my best average. Hopefully I will be able to average under 60 seconds after getting some more practice under my belt.