How have the rest of your holidays been, TigerMum?
Oops! Sorry I haven't updated this journal in a while, I sort of forgot about it over the holidays. Seeing as my first week of Year 11 is done and dusted, I guess it would be a good time to make an update. Thank you for asking about me though, I do appreciate it.
UPDATE: 8/2/2020My first week back at school went better than expected. My teachers are all great and I'm so so so happy to finally be able to concentrate on subjects that I actually ENJOY and CARE about. Well, apart from the fact that my school still makes us do Religion in Year 11, so that's the only class I don't look forward to. But I guess I will have to PERSEVERE!!
I'll give a quick summary of each of my subjects and how I feel about them so far.
Methods (3/4)Aah, Methods, my only 3/4 subject this year and my favourite subject. Not gonna lie, I'm kind of excited for this year. I've actually managed to occasionally depart from my usual procrastinating self and so I have finished the first five chapters of the Cambridge book to get a headstart on the year, and I hope to get through the textbook nice and fast so I can focus on exam-style questions. It's a bit of a shame that quite a lot of 3/4 Methods is just a repeat of 1/2 apart from some more integration and the prob/stats stuff, but this also gives me a confidence boost for the year, because I didn't find 1/2 methods that hard, so here's hoping I will fare similarly this year! My first Methods SAC is in all the way in term 2, which is a while away but I'm sure it will come hurtling right around the corner when I am most busy!
SpecialistI'm quite excited for Spesh this year; my class only has 10 people, and it's a really cool atmosphere where we just get to talk about nerdy maths stuff and do nerdy maths stuff. I've only completed the first two chapters, and it's all content I have seen before, so not much to say here. Now that I'm looking through the whole book, it seems like 1/2 Spesh has a lot of random stuff in it without much focus, (since there isn't any calculus), and several topics that aren't needed for 3/4 Spesh. My teacher said they weren't really the biggest fan of the structure of Spesh 1/2 and that 3/4 is way more juicy (harder, as well, but still). Anyway, it's another maths subject on my timetable, so that's pretty awesome.
English LanguageWell, what can I say, after only one week, I already know that I 100% made the right choice in choosing Eng Lang over normal English. I find this subject sooo much more interesting and engaging, and I feel like it complements my LOTE very well. We've been mainly focusing on the basics; learning about the subsystems of language and things like that; which some people may think is dry, but I find learning about how our language is actually structured and how it compares to other languages to be fascinating.
PhysicsPhysics has been pretty fun so far. We're only doing Thermodynamics at the moment, which isn't in Units 3/4, so I won't worry too much about deeply understanding the concepts, but I find it interesting enough so I'll probably do that anyway. I've also done quite a bit of Physics reading for motion and forces, and I think the concepts are freaking awesome to learn about; I'm really looking forward to it. I do think the minimal maths in VCE Physics is a bit of a shame because you can't delve into the concepts as deeply without using calculus, but I guess they want to avoid just turning it into another maths subject, which is fair enough.
LOTE: ItalianDoing a language is one of those things where cramming is absolutely impossible and the only way to improve is regular practice. Unfortunately, I have a habit of leaving everything to the last minute and spending hours procrastinating. I guess this is the year where I have to change if I really want to excel in Italian. I feel like I am quite good at reading; we had to read this Italian novella (About 35 pages) over the holidays and I hardly used my dictionary; but my listening and speaking isn't really at the same standard. I always feel like when I am reading, I can read at a slower pace and I can understand the structure of the sentence when I see it in front of me, but when I'm listening, a lot of the words fly past me and I don't quite pick up the structure of the sentence. Anyway, I love the subject and I'm really excited to go on the exchange to Calabria at the end of the year, it's going to be awesome.
Other StuffOh yeah, I'm doing Religion & Society 1/2 as well, but I don't really care about it, so I won't write anything for it haha.
I spent a lot of the holidays looking into what I want to do once I leave school, and it feels like the more research I do, the more torn I get. There are essentially a few areas that I'm thinking of going into: Engineering (probably Mechanical or Electrical), Computer Science, Mathematics or maybe Commerce. (I originally thought I was set on doing Commerce, but it's looking less likely now.) I'm also considering applying to overseas universities, but I think I should choose a course first before I choose a university.
If you're still reading all the way down here, I tip my hat to you for slogging through my incoherent ramblings. Wishing you all the best for a successful and productive 2020!