PhoenixxFire's VCE journey

[Bri MT]

look at this cute puppy I can’t pat

We got back from the 12 day hike this morning, we had an amazing view of machapuchare and Annapurna south from machapuchare base camp, it got cloudy as we left for Annapurna base camp but it cleared up again.

Our guide says the view we got of the mountains in the morning was the best he’d seen during monsoon season.

photos

Machapuchare (fish tail mountain)



Annapurna south (and the clouds rolling in)


Our guide, Karma, and me. The photo is in front of the Annapurna Base Camp sign but I’m not good enough at taking selfies to actually get it in the photo haha

I have other photos but not enough time or energy to upload them.

We’re going white water rafting tomorrow, but only for 2 hours because all the rainfall has made the the river run really fast - it was supposed to be 3-4 hours. I’ve never been white water rafting before and at the start of the trip our WC leader told us about a teacher who got trapped underwater and drowned and I really didn’t need to know about that haha

After that we’re going straight to Kathmandu we’re we’ll be for 3 nights. It’s only really one day though because we’ll get in late tomorrow and have to leave early for the airport. One full day for shopping though haha. I don’t really have much I want to buy - the whole group has got matching Annapurna base camp tshirts and I want to get one of the shirts that says ‘Nepali flat; little bit up, little bit down’ because when our guide says flat he does not mean that - seriously I think they just average it out, 100m up, 100m down - that’s flat. And I’m there like no, no that is definitely not flat - our guide laughed at me.

Also I managed to get a cold that has made the last couple of days a bit shit - at least we were going downhill and ‘flat’ not uphill.

And this morning I managed to break the toenail of the little toe on my left foot. I split it right across parallel to the nail bed and darn it hurts. At least we’re done with the hiking.

The mountain looks absolutely incredible & white water rafting has been on my bucket list for a long time   (I've done white water kayaking which was fun but not the rafting). On the other hand I can completely understand you being low on energy... 12 days of hiking would be quite draining even without the cross sectional map being a zigzag!

I hope that you feel better soon and that the rafting is exhilarating but not terrifying

[PhoenixxFire]

Rafting was fun and way less scary than I thought it would be. There was this flat stretch for a bit so we jumped out of the boat, hooked our feet under the rope and got dragged along (and they let us float through a couple of low level rapids) so that was fun. I just wish it had gone for longer - every time I get back in the water I remember how much I love it haha

I got back into Australia at midday on Tuesday and my sleep is so messed up still lol. Slept in to 11am because because I was on the plane, didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night because I was too busy writing my English speech (I wrote one whilst I was away but I hated it so I redid it - I made the minimum time requirement though so I passed). Then I slept 11 hours Wednesday night, then 4 hours last night (I was too busy watching Criminal Minds). I should probably actually go to bed early tonight.

My brother had a lump on his neck before I left, he’d had some tests on it but it was still inconclusive, turns out it was cancerous so he had to have it cut out - he’s fine now, the doctors reckon they got all of it but he has a wicked scar along his neck, his ear is numb, and he can’t move his arm properly. That was a *fun* surprise to come back to

I’m not too far behind in maths, I’m already halfway caught up. We’re doing matrices and I already did it in 1/2, although I seem to remember guessing a lot of that SAC

Outdoor Ed I can catch up on fairly easily because we’re mostly just doing things from our textbook.

Enviro on the other hand....
We’re doing a prac at the moment and I have no clue what’s going on - seriously I had to ask the teacher 3 times before he actually explained, and he got annoyed at me for not doing anything (kinda hard when I don’t know what on earth is going on ). I still don’t really know what’s going on, we’re testing water to see how much detergent and dirt is in it. I assume it’s for our poster SAC.

I’m not going back to work until next Thursday, so hopefully I’ll be mostly caught up by then. I have to read I am Malala before next Wednesday so maybe I’ll actually put all my time on public transport to good use for once


I’ve been enjoying hugging my dogs. I never used to miss them whilst I was at school but now I look forward to going home just so I can hug them (although they’re both in desperate need of haircuts). Also my mum and brother fed my fish way too much. They’ve grown a ton and they’re all fat I told them that they’re better off missing food rather than being fed twice but they just kept feeding them - it’s really easy to kill fish through over feeding but goldfish can easily go a few days without food. Their tank is kind of too small for them now but we don’t really have anywhere we can put a bigger one (I seriously think they’re 2cm longer than they were before I left). My brother keeps joking that I should feed them to the turtle

[Joseph41]

Welcome back, PF!

[Bri MT]

Welcome back! I'm glad it was such a great experience in the end  
Glad that the academic stuff, at least, has been relatively easy for you to catch up on

My brother keeps joking that I should feed them to the turtle
[/quote

Don't worry, I don't eat fish anyway

[PhoenixxFire]

Not much happened last week.

I’ve got my math SAC Wednesday and Thursday this week, which should be fine - although I just spent 20minutes staring at the first multiple choice question on our practice SAC, turns out all of the answers were wrong I thought I’d forgotten everything haha

My Enviro SAC was supposed to be on Tuesday next week but it’s been moved to the 20th (On my birthday ) Also the enviro sac is on AOS1 so I have no idea what that prac was for...

Outdoor ed SAC is in a couple of weeks, I think I know most of the content for it but I need to know a bit more to relate it to a specific environment (which is always the bit I mess up).

I should probably actually read I am Malala, it seems fairly interesting from the few and random chapters I’ve read (I had to write chapter summaries haha). Our teacher’s been telling us the entire year that she thinks it’s a bit dry so it’s beating my expectations so far.

My fish teacher has been away doing organising stuff to help the principals (they’re hiring a new AP though so he’ll be back). Everyone in both classes has their own tank now so it’s way more organised. I don’t have a tank though because my teacher wants me to do leader stuff rather than have a tank.

I started rambling about fish (again) oops

I knew that’s what he wanted, but the kid who’s taking care of (what used to be) my fish didn’t give them a water change when they were supposed to last week, and there was heaps of fish poo in the tank and the filter wasn’t doing a good job of converting it to nitrate, it looked a bit off so I checked the nitrate levels on Friday and they were 10ppm which is ridiculously low for a tank that had no plants and hadn’t had a water change in a week and a half. Turns out it was because he ammonia wasn’t being converted - it was at 0.5ppm which is bad but not super bad. I also don’t think she knows how to test water because she’d written 1.5 under nitrate on the care sheet but he minimum out nitrate tests show is 5....(I’m a bit protective, they’re my babies haha)

We also got mail from school and it has stuff about how to apply for uni and the date & RSVP form for our graduation....I kinda don’t want to go though, I mean like I know it’s like a once only thing (but then I didn’t go to formal either) but it’s speeches and dancing and that sounds like hell. I’ll probably have to go though

Also way more motivated about finishing school than I was before although I suspect a month of actually sleeping for a decent amount of time had something to do with that haha

[sweetiepi]

Good luck for the math SAC this week!

It also sucks to have a test/SAC/assignment on your birthday! I had that happen to me earlier this year- it was pretty brutal, aha! Hopefully you have time to treat yourself afterwards though, that's always good!

[PhoenixxFire]

Sooooo.....I got my English SAC results back lol.

And despite how much I joke about it, I'm actually totally screwed.

Anyway I got 13/30 for my Medea text response and I think about 50% for my oral (I got told at PT interviews but I don't remember exactly). So uh yeah lol.
The average in my class for the Medea SAC was 14/30 but I know people in the other classes got 29/30 so RIP. (the highest in my class was 20). They're both pretty much what I was expecting though, My Medea SAC was in a week when i had 5 other SAC's and then my oral i literally wrote in one night so I'm just happy I passed that haha.
But nah I'm screwed. I've just got my Malala & Dagenham comparison left and I don't know when I'm supposed to have time to prepare for that and for my other SAC's and somehow remember everything from Medea and write practice essays on it and media analysis and I'm screwed.

Maths is going good though I think. I'm pretty sure I got 91% and 95% for last two SAC's (after that abysmal first SAC that everyone did badly on). One more SAC left and it should be fairly straightforward. Somehow math is the easiest subject and I don't even hate it that much anymore. Having said that I know my school's SAC's are going to be way easier than most schools because my school is very low ranked and no one does particularly well at anything.

I think I've been spending too much time on outdoor Ed. Like I don't really have to spend time on math outside of class (except when I was catching up) because it's easy but I've been spending heaps of time on Enviro and outdoor Ed but I should probably stop doing that because Outdoor Ed scales down 4-6 points so unless I do really well in it it's going to be my 5th or 6th subject, and I should really be using that time to do English instead. The problem is I like outdoor ed and I don't like English

Fish is a bit frustrating at the moment because I don't actually have fish to take care of and I don't really know what I'm supposed to be doing instead which just leaves me bored and pondering how much time I'm wasting.

All my teachers at PT interviews today were asking what I'm doing for uni and what I'm planning on doing after uni etc. and it's so annoying because they all have their own opinions on it and it was kinda of annoying having to repeat myself 5 times. And they were (my english & outdoor ed teachers especially) being like you gotta work harder to get into that and like I know that, thanks. ugh. Also I have no idea what I want to do after uni and thinking about that is kinda terrifying because I don't know what I would enjoy doing but I guess I'll figure that out later.

Hope you're all having a better week than I am <3

[Poet]

At first I read 'PT' as Public Transport instead of Parent-Teacher, so that was amusing. And congrats on your recent maths scores!
But ugh, that sucks about the English scores, I'm sorry girl. Feeling you there.

You seem pretty down, so here are some memes:

Spoiler

All the love gorl

[sarangiya]

Congrats on your awesome methods scores.
Term 3 seems like it sucks for everyone so far. It looks like you're doing fine though, don't sweat it
You won't know whether you're screwed or not till the 14th of December so fear not!! Just keep hustling and I'm sure everything will work itself out.
Good luck with pondering over uni stuff and for future SACs. Don't worry, you've got this!

[PhoenixxFire]

Time's been going really fast, it seems I barely blink and it's the end of another week already.

My Enviro SAC went pretty good - I got 92% which is the best I've gotten so far, but the SAC was really easy. Even our teacher said he made it too easy. I didn't make any big mistakes which is good. I lost 3 marks because I took a guess about whether peak oil is when the maximum amount of oil is used or when the maximum rate of oil extraction occurs. I guessed the first option, it was the latter (there was a multiple choice and a short answer on it - I won't be making that mistake again). I also lost a mark because I didn't include enough information on a question - I missed the 'describe' part

I've finally finished reading my English book (Yay!) but now I have to actually start writing ().

My next Enviro SAC is a report not a test which is annoying - I also have to do a poster for AOS3 so no actual tests left. I have the mark allocation for each section and stuff already, so if I'm allowed to bring notes in it's going to be an easy SAC, otherwise I'll just memorise it or something.

I think my outdoor Ed SAC went okay, although I know I analysed one of the questions that said 'evaluate' so I'm sure I'll lose marks for that. - Will probably have to wait a month or two for results though haha.

We're finally learning a bit of marine biology in fish, rather than just freshwater biology. It's all pretty basic stuff (kind of hard when you have a mix of ages from year 7 to year 12 in the same room) but I'm still learning new things so yay

I'm going on another camp. It's Thur/Fri of week 1, term 4. Probably a bad idea but it's just one night and it's a fish camp - we're going snorkelling with seals and maybe dolphins if they show up. It should be awesome, I've hardly been in the ocean all year and I miss it.

A cat playing jenga popped up on my fb, it's cute haha

[Bri MT]

Wooo! Marine biology!!

What type of stuff are you learning? Anatomy?  Biochemistry? Ecology?  Oceanography?

[PhoenixxFire]

Today we did a bit of oceanography and a bit of ecology - I'm hoping that's the sort of area we'll stay with - we've done heaps of anatomy stuff on freshwater fish so I'm a bit over it If I have to do one more fish dissection.... We just did basic stuff about interactions between species living at different depths (autotrophs and heterotrophs), the variety of species living at different water levels on coasts, how deep light gets into the ocean and how that affects the species living there, etc.
Next week we're researching a specific coastal environment (seagrass meadows, sponge gardens, mangroves, etc) and their importance to oceans/life, nothing particularly new but should be interesting regardless.

[PhoenixxFire]

Many posts in a row, fight me mods

I forgot! One of the kids in my fish class has baby barramundi and he taught them to eat out of his fingers and he let me feed one of them today! I held their food pellet between my fingers and it just swam right up and ate it, was very awesome (most of our fish are way too shy to do that)

[PhoenixxFire]

Kinda just hit me that I don’t really have any school camps left (except the one night fish camp). We were supposed to have an outdoor ed camp this semester but it hasn’t happened.

I’ve kind of just been ignoring the fact that I’m very near the end of high school. Even doing my uni applications I was sort of just looking forward to it and not really thinking about what it meant. It feels more permanent now. Actually, I think that was part of the reason I never got a grad hoodie and I didn’t go to my last athletics carnival, I missed my last swimming carnival because of a camp. I’ve skipped all of our grad morning teas and dress up days (which basically no one does now we have free dress haha). I don’t even really feel like I’m in year 12. All of the other year 12’s seem older than me even though they aren’t. Especially last semester, it didn’t really feel like I was one of them. I feel a bit older this term, but it’s still weird. I remember when I was in year 7/8 I would look at the older kids doing their exams and whatnot and it would feel so far away. Strange to think that it’s me here now. I think subconsciously (actually I think I was aware of it and just ignoring it) I was avoiding all of that so that I could pretend that things were the same.

I mean, I’ve never really liked school - I like learning, I like some of my teachers, and some of my classes, but I’ve never really liked school. But as much as I’m looking forward to going to uni and moving out (yay!) next year, its only really started feeling final when people started saying that they were gonna miss me and I realised I don’t have any camps left and it all just feels really final. I guess I’d never really thought about things that are going to change until now, I was just looking at what was ahead and not really paying attention to what I would be leaving behind. I guess the only thing I’d really thought about was leaving my little brothers - my youngest brother is in year 7 this year and he’ll be in year 12 the year after I finish uni, and that’s really weird to think about. I’m the first one of my family who’ll be moving out (although my oldest sister is potentially moving overseas next year). And so it’s weird for me to think that’s he’s going to have siblings who aren’t living at home through most of his high school. Really bizarre. Also I’m going to miss my puppies haha. But I’d never really thought about everything else, leaving work, leaving friends who I probably wont stay particularly close to - especially the ones who are younger than me.

Feels weird.

Sorry for the rambly post. It was half this length then I reread it and added tons of stuff

[PhoenixxFire]

So darn excited for school to be finished.

The report for my Enviro SAC is going to be easy. It's a really standard format and we're allowed to bring in as much info to use to write it with as we want (statistics sort of info, we can't just write it before hand haha). I might just memorise it though, I managed to write and memorise my creative in 2 nights so I know I can, I don't know if I'll bother though. i'll definitely write it out beforehand though. It's next Thursday.

My English comparative is next Wednesday afternoon. My teacher tried to get us all to say we have appointments and do it on Friday instead, but I don't want to be doing a 2.5 hour SAC on a Friday afternoon so I'm just going to do it on Wednesday. I'd only written one paragraph of the essay we were supposed to have done today, but the most anyone had done was an intro and one paragraph. I don't know why our teacher hasn't given up on us yet lol. Anyway she read it and gave me a few pointers. One of the bits I was really unsure about including was her favourite bit so yay lol.

One SAC left for math - it's next Thursday as well.

I think I have two SAC's left for outdoor Ed (we're splitting AOS2 into 2 parts) but I don't know when they are exactly (or maybe we're doing one SAC and he just split the practice SAC into 2 parts?)

Wednesday and Thursday next week are going to be hectic. If we're doing our outdoor Ed SAC in two parts then part 1 will be next week as well. I still haven't gotten my results back for U4AOS1 (or for that matter U3 AOS2 part 2......) ugh. I'm want to know where I sit by the end of the term. I know it doesn't matter because I can't change it but I still want to know.

We only had one fish lesson last week because my teacher was sick so I don't really have anything to update you on. There's some work I was supposed to have done but I haven't. I want to, it's interesting stuff, I just can't really afford to prioritise it over my 3/4 work.

I feel like I should be a lot more worried than I am. I'm not really worried about getting into my course. Given the scores I already have I'd have to screw up pretty badly in everything else to get below 80. I want to get above that, and I hope I do, but I'm not worried about it if that makes sense. I'm sure that'll change as soon as I start trying to write 3 essays in three hours though lol.