The Great Journey - Hopefully the HSC is easier than Halo 2 on Mythic

[John Halo]

Hello,
I thought the idea of documenting my Prelim and HSC years was really cool so here I am. It should also help to have an archive of previous mistakes so I don't make them again. Hopefully having an audience will make make me a bit more proactive. Shoot a message below if you want to chat (I reckon I'm decently sociable)

Just a quick introduction:
- Already in term 2 of year 11
- Currently doing English AD, Chemistry, Physics, Software Design, Engineering Studies, Maths Extension 1 and Maths Advanced
-Accelerated to year 12 Maths Advanced
- Love Halo

I just got the results of the first assessment block in term 1 back and honestly I'm pretty disappointed.
Maths Advanced Assignment - 72%
English Advanced Assignment - 53%
Maths Extension Assignment- 58%
Physics Exam - 60%
Engineering Studies Assignment - *Haven't recieved
The only real measurement I had was the Maths Advanced Prelims I sat last year and comparing my score then to my Maths advanced score now it has dropped significantly. After this crushing defeat I was determined to study more and hopefully counter-balance this score during the next test. There is however a problem with that thought.

With a term of year 11 already over I've kept realising that I have less and less time to study but for some reason I keep on defaulting back to "Man I really could go for some games". It's always confused me since I seem to have all the motivation going into a study session on the first day but never enough to actually follow 2 or 3 days later. I have found a few techniques online to try to fix this like the pomodoro technique which I will update on how it turns out. Another problem I had was not really knowing how to study for subjects like Chemistry or English which is somewhat different to my general approach of "just do a bunch of questions and see what sticks during exams". I  guess with Chemistry I could still memorise my notes and do a ton of 'what is this' questions but I'm completely stumped in how I can actually improve my English mark.

Well thanks for reading this post,  and sorry for being extremely random and always going off topic (probably why my English marks are low). 

[John Halo]

So I examined all my test and assignment results today and this is what I'll need to improve on in the future.
Physics - Improve on bearings, do more graph related questions, always ensure that easy questions are done right before going forward
English - Make openings more enaging, use more imagery, make ideas clearer, more in depth analysis is required in the reflection, work on sentence clarity
Maths Advanced/ Maths Extension - need to explain all concepts in future assignments
Maths Extension Extra Topic Test - understand when to use nPr, improve on selection probability, organise working to avoid mistakes

[Bri MT]

w/ physics graphs,  something that I found useful is sense checking my values - just going "common sense, does this seem reasonable?". It's a small thing but it can help catch stuff

[John Halo]

Thanks

[John Halo]

This week in review
This week I implemented the pomodoro  technique into my study schedule and the results were pretty good. I went from being able to only focus and study for a hour or so to about 2 and a half hours.  I've only used the 30 minutes on 10 minutes off intervals though so I'm gonna try to go 1 hour on 10 minutes off to see if I can increase my study time to >3 hours a day. I think I think I'll also make some questions for subjects in my notes for active recall and set up a retrospective revision timetable for spaced repetition. I also want to try out ANKI and Rem notes. I'll update next week on well it goes.

Besides that this week I got my rank back for Maths Advanced and it turns out that after that assignment I fell 12 ranks from my previous rank (10) so I'm gonna have to sweat out the trials to climb back to top 20. I want to at least achieve a raw mark of 90 on Maths Advanced so I can stop doing it next year. Besides that still haven't gotten back my Engineering mark back and I got the notification for a chemistry test.

I guess that's all for this week, thanks for reading.

[John Halo]

A quick update, I'm not dead. Just hit an assessment block.

[fandomtrash2580]

Hello,
I thought the idea of documenting my Prelim and HSC years was really cool so here I am. It should also help to have an archive of previous mistakes so I don't make them again. Hopefully having an audience will make make me a bit more proactive. Shoot a message below if you want to chat (I reckon I'm decently sociable)

Just a quick introduction:
- Already in term 2 of year 11
- Currently doing English AD, Chemistry, Physics, Software Design, Engineering Studies, Maths Extension 1 and Maths Advanced
-Accelerated to year 12 Maths Advanced
- Love Halo

I just got the results of the first assessment block in term 1 back and honestly I'm pretty disappointed.
Maths Advanced Assignment - 72%
English Advanced Assignment - 53%
Maths Extension Assignment- 58%
Physics Exam - 60%
Engineering Studies Assignment - *Haven't recieved
The only real measurement I had was the Maths Advanced Prelims I sat last year and comparing my score then to my Maths advanced score now it has dropped significantly. After this crushing defeat I was determined to study more and hopefully counter-balance this score during the next test. There is however a problem with that thought.

With a term of year 11 already over I've kept realising that I have less and less time to study but for some reason I keep on defaulting back to "Man I really could go for some games". It's always confused me since I seem to have all the motivation going into a study session on the first day but never enough to actually follow 2 or 3 days later. I have found a few techniques online to try to fix this like the pomodoro technique which I will update on how it turns out. Another problem I had was not really knowing how to study for subjects like Chemistry or English which is somewhat different to my general approach of "just do a bunch of questions and see what sticks during exams". I  guess with Chemistry I could still memorise my notes and do a ton of 'what is this' questions but I'm completely stumped in how I can actually improve my English mark.

Well thanks for reading this post,  and sorry for being extremely random and always going off topic (probably why my English marks are low).

Are you in year 11 now? I have to say if you are definitely don't take these marks to heart. You have a very long time to improve even if it does seem seemingly short time to prepare. Trust me I'm trying to believe this and I'm on my third term of year 12 😅 As for the fallback onto games thing trust me I definitely understand, it's just your brain trying to avoid dealing with the more difficult and painful stuff. Pomodoro is a really good method (I use it a lot currently) but I can also recommend two things, the first being a lil extreme.

Go for a dopamine detox which is essentially just letting yourself get bored without opting for social media, video games, YouTube and etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Yvq-g7_Y
This is a really good video to watch if you need a little convincing but psychologically it works but really difficult to commit to so you can try giving it a go.

Second thing, you have to do more things that you don't want to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3vRK2P9lSU
This video gives a lot of information on just discipline in general but strategy number three is what I would put the most emphasis on. If you break down your resistance to discomfort it will make not just studying easier but just grinding for stuff in general.

Sorry if it's a long message but I know what it feels like to only be able to work really hard a day and then going back to bad habits for the next three days even though you would much rather be productive and then getting insanely frustrated. Hope these are at least a bit helpful!