(Part 2)Software Development (7/10): the Software Development exam this year was fine, both easy and hard simultaneously, which translates to an average exam. I don't really have much to say about the questions themselves because software development is a mess of a subject, but I can say that the questions were consistent with the previous years and insight exams, in fact they were mostly copy-paste, which is actually fine when the subject itself feels like a jumbled trainwreck of junior year theory mushed together with a half assed and at times incoherent attempt at VCE level critical thinking. So yeah props to the exam for keeping at the exact same level of difficulty that allowed me to give a fairly good performance for the 50% of the time that I actually cared.
Exam weirdness: So what do I mean when I say wacky exams? I mean the questions are different to the type of testing we have come to expect from VCAA exams and this caught everyone off guard. This manifested in both easy and hard questions. For example the papaya question in the chem exam was completely open ended with no prompt with what to answer, which means that everyone who writes something should be awarded marks because there was no direction whatsoever in the question. This has been construed as free marks but I would argue that it was intermediate as it still requires you to know and explain a relevant food chem concept as well as take up some time writing and these open ended questions have popped up several times this year, and anyway every exam has easy questions. The other example is the last question of methods exam 1, which at first glance seemed like a standard separator question with a graphical solution, however there were so many details to keep in mind that made the question quite hard to complete, even for the experienced students where every little thing would completely screw you up in addition to throwing you off your game and making you doubt yourself detrimentally. These 2 trends of weird questions actually make up for an average difficulty of exams, but one that made the exams more challenging to complete because the questions were not ones that we were familiar with unlike past exams. This made familiarity with content and grit of the utmost importance, ironically devaluing the practice exams we should use to prepare. Of course saying it like that makes it sound like a well made exam, since sketchiness and ambiguity aside, tests should be able to determine your understanding of content without relying on your smarts and you are right, but I think that gives reason to justify why exams this year were harder than normal, because even though the difficulty was average, the stress, time management and overall being pushed, sometimes to your limits, that make exams widely hated are all present with the foreign questions we faced this year, thus making for a distinctly challenging to complete exam, for which I am proud for everyone to have partook in.
But I guess it doesn’t really matter because we are all done, yay, well done everyone. Sorry for the long post but I guess I needed to get these thoughts off my chest and it also allows for some first hand experience to be documented in what might be a different looking future of VCE exams. All that’s left is to wait for our study scores and ATARs as with the end of VCE exams marks the definitive end of VCE for all the year 12s, it definitely feels surreal but I wish all the best for everyone. Well done on finishing exams and VCE!