Hey there,
I absolutely bombed out on my first assessment task and was wondering if you had shared in any similar experiences (I doubt it)
I'm struggling to find the motivation to keep going especially since I thought it was my best subject. Were you ranked first the entire year? Or were you just really good in comparison to your cohort?
Well done on the great results!!
Hey, I'm not Emily and my anecdote doesn't involve any state rankers, but maybe it'll get you thinking about English again.
My best friend Clair did her first assessment task and received a rank that was something like 24/30 in the cohort for Advanced. She was super cut because she'd put a lot of effort into the task but she also didn't think she was too bad at English. She had a real dip in her mood for a while and wanted to end English all together, not waste any more time on it, it was something she felt that wasn't worth her time after "bombing out." Her brother (HSC whiz from a few years back) explained to her how if you have a subject where you're ranked second, and a subject where you're ranked 24th, it's much more advantageous for you to work on bumping that 24 to a 10, rather than bumping the 2 to a 1. So even though the subjects where you're doing really well motivate you to keep doing well, and so they should, you should put just as much effort into climbing the ranks in the subject you dropped down in.
It's easier to climb from 24 to 15, than it is to climb 2 to 1. Remember, if you bombed out of this one, there will be students who will bomb out of the next one, or the one after. And you'll start to move up the ranks simply because of other's downfalls, but also because of your own perseverance. This is how it worked for Clair, and I think she ended up ranking 4th or 5th in the cohort after originally getting that 24th rank. How? She saw that her excellent rank in maths or science would be maintained if she kept putting in the hard work, but she had to change her mind set to English. Even better for you, English is a subject that you really enjoyed before this mishap. So, get that passion back. Work really hard on it, because recovering from one bomb out is very, very rewarding!