Post by: chooby on January 06, 2018, 06:55:23 pm
Who am I and what am I doing?
So I'm chooby and I'm going into Year 12
How did you go for your 1/2's last year?
Heh. My 1/2 subjects. Chemistry was my best subject of that year and apparently, I was close to getting the dux for that subject so that only motivates me more to do well on the subject! Methods was alright, pretty decent grades but after the Orientation period, I'm definitely going to need help with application style stuff. Physics started out rough because I never really saw myself being a Physics person, it was always either you're a Biology person or a Physics person but after a while and some effort I began to really like the subject. Then comes English. English didn't get a happy ending like the rest of my subjects. It really started off with Frankenstein, our first text into English and I absolutely hated it and barely passed the SAC. From there I had to trudge through the rest of the texts and SACs and I barely got the S for Unit 1 and Unit 2.
How did you feel about Bio 3/4 last year?
Biology for me was a must do subject because I have always wanted to work in a medical field from primary school. Starting off, I was fine and I was doing well in SACs and getting concepts and understanding how VCE exams work but around mid-year, I burnt out. Part of it was the mindset that Biology was my number one priority so I neglected my other subjects and too much stress built. Another factor was being too ambitious with my co-curricular activities and it was overwhelming to keep up with all of it as well as with my studies. Soon after I quit everything and before the second semester and took the holidays to reassess what I need to do. After burning out, it was hard to actually get back into studying until late Term 3. By the time exams came up, I was so done with Biology that I wanted to just get the exam done and over with. I'm content with my score, I feel as if it reflects the effort I put in but I know that my effort wasn't at full potential and I don't want to make that mistake again.
My Goals and Aspirations
After being so close to a 40 in Biology, my main goal is to get a 40 study score minimum for all my subjects except for Chemistry, hope I get a 50 there. The main goal outside of school and academics is to keep up my music, volunteering at church. and hopefully the acapella group I'm in can win the 3rd division for Generations in Jazz so I'm just practicing over holidays trying my best to learn the pieces.
Now with that out of the way, let's get to the first weekly post.
2017/2018 : Week 1 : 30th of Dec to 6th of Jan
School ended around mid-December for me and they gave us a ton of holiday homework. I wanted to get a solid start and complete all of it before school begins at the end of Jan. After taking a week
Post by: Quantum44 on January 06, 2018, 07:48:12 pm
Any ideas on what you want to do after year 12? (It’s totally fine if you have no idea ;))
Post by: sarangiya on January 06, 2018, 10:14:27 pm
I'm going to lectures on Monday and Tuesday too! :D
Looking forward to future updates ;D
Post by: chooby on January 14, 2018, 10:53:47 am
Any ideas on what you want to do after year 12? (It’s totally fine if you have no idea ;))
University wise and stuff, I'm looking into Engineering and Biomed at Monash, but I'm still looking around at other unis and other courses. Probably going to do UMAT incase I do want to go into Medicine. Outside of that, I'm looking at travelling to either Queensland or Japan at the end of the year just as a small holiday before university kicks in. (I swear everyone travels to Japan)
Shaping up to be a great journal, looking forward to reading your future updates and good luck for year 12! :)
Biology is so hard to get 40+ in; congratulations on your great score.Thanks for the support guys! Sorry I missed out on posting yesterday, was gone for the majority of the day doing volunteer work but I'll see if I can remember what I've done this past week.
I'm going to lectures on Monday and Tuesday too! :D
Looking forward to future updates ;D
2018 : Week 2 : 7th of Jan to 13th of Jan
Sunday : 7th of Jan
I went to the sleepover at my friend's that day with the intention that we'd be able to do some Chemistry work, however, like most sleepovers, work never happens.
Monday : 8th of Jan
The first day of ATAR Note's Headstart Lectures and I was truly thrilled to attend these lectures. Motivation was at an all-time high and I was fully booked for doing English and Physics. My friend's parents were able to drop us right off at the city, mainly to avoid the bus replacements happening with PTV and we proceeded to almost being late to the first lecture by walking towards the wrong street. I honestly really liked the English and Physics lectures, they were super helpful in getting a good understanding as to what's coming and how to prepare effectively so if any future Year 12's are reading this, (probably very low chance of that happening), go to these lectures! Highly recommend it! Afterwards, we were going to go karaoke, but the whole group changed their minds last minute so we went strike bowling instead up until 8:00 pm when we all went home together.
Tuesday : 9th of Jan
The headstart lectures I was attending on these days were Chemistry and Methods and would highly recommend these lectures too! I took the replacement buses this time and was able to meet up with a few friends along the way so that was comforting, to say the least. Chemistry was a very intense lecture but the good type of intense where it's so in the zone. Methods lecture was pretty good too! I heard from a lot of people that it basically only covered Unit 1 and 2 content, and they were right for the most part. A lot of my friends didn't bother signing up after hearing it but there was some good insight and it's better to get the practice in then rather than in the middle of class. Now the tricky part was trying to get home. Since the friends that went with me in the morning didn't go the lecture, they were able to get home before peak hour and I did not want to get stuck in a replacement bus during peak hour. I decided to take a long way around with some other friends taking the Glen line, then a bus to Springvale and finally take a train from there.
Wednesday and Thursday
After two days of lectures, I really didn't do much work on these days. Just slowly working through my homework list for that week.
Friday : 12th of Jan
Ahh crap. I left a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be done this week 'til the last minute, one of them obviously being another short story outline. I basically spent the whole day panicking and trying to frantically complete each task but in the end, I only managed to get the Chemistry slide summaries and the Physics worksheet done, at least I thought I did.
Saturday : 13th of Jan
I woke up that morning and decided to check the course timelines and at the assigned holiday homework and low and behold, there's a second part to the Physics worksheet I thought I had completed and an entirely new powerpoint on Chemistry Biofuels I hadn't seen. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF..
I completed the Physics worksheet pretty easily because it was mainly on impulse but I decided to put the powerpoint off 'til after volunteer work. Arrived at about 2:30 in the afternoon and left 8:00 pm pretty satisfied. Now it was crunch time. I was able to complete the story outline first which I'm surprised about and I found that the school has annotation vid which is basically one of the teachers going through the short story outlining different points and their significance which is really helping to get a starting point and now I only have two things left to do for the next day.
Now that that's done with
Going to try and complete the Edrolo summaries and the Chemistry slide summaries today and I'll finally be finished playing catch up. Also going to try and complete this week's short story outline now knowing those videos exist and how they are actually super helpful. Just playing around with the format of this as well, trying to see what suits best. Probably going to try a different format next time. Anyways I'll post again next week so I'll see you guys then!!Also is anyone else getting this there where the white background of the text is constantly moving diagonally across the screen 'cause it's getting pretty annoying?
Post by: chooby on January 21, 2018, 01:21:51 am
2018 : Week 3 : 14th of Jan to 20th of Jan
Stuff involving school work and being productive and stuff
- Was able to complete the overdue homework in about a day
- Trying to do the story outline first didn't work. Ended pushing everything else back to try and get this done first and I ended up being unproductive for most of this week
- Currently behind on Methods and Chemistry work that was due last Friday
- Almost finished the Methods holiday homework, just need to do a few more questions
- Went to Uni Extension Orientation at Monash. I had a great time personally and I'm pumped to start the subject this year! (if anyone was there and doing Uni Chem, message me pls)
- Going to try and write another piece as practice for English Creative SAC
- Still yet to choose which class I have a permanent spot for Tutesmart
- Also, I'm about 1/3 of the way through annotating Burial Rites, If I"m able to do 20 pages a day, I should be done and fully annotated by around the first week of school so that's pretty hype.
Events and Life stuff that doesn't necessarily involve VCE
- Went to a friend's 18th party! They go to the school I left so it was nice seeing everyone again after 2 - 3 ish years. It's going to be the first of many 18th parties.
- Pretty much fallen in love with Offline TV so I've been just watching a bunch of stream highlights and its also pretty hype.
- Finally got around to watching 'Your Name' and I lOVE IT SOO MUCHH AAH!! I haven't seen much anime since Year 9 so watching this is actually really nice. Might watch some Food Wars after or another anime movie, don't know yet.
- Also been playing Cookie Clicker again just to relive my Year 10 glory days. Not sure whether it's good but currently at 151 prestige level
- Been faltering on my diet a lot so going to try and build my discipline over this week
- I need to start sleeping earlier :\
Yeah, that's all from me. Not much left to do homework wise so I'm going to try and finish off any homework and be all caught by around Monday!!
See you guys then!
EDIT: I put everything on a list and it looks like it's working on preview but when I post it that all seems to go so yea :P
Post by: chooby on January 27, 2018, 09:18:07 pm
The last post before school starts next week so let's do this!! This week was pretty uneventful so I'm going to try doing large paragraphs again.
Started this week trying to finish last week's work which was a lot less than I thought it would be. Just needed to complete Chapter 1 Chemistry questions and complete the Orientation Methods Supp work and after that, I just had to complete a bunch of summaries for slides, a few worksheets and another story outline for Rankin's Point for this week. I actually really liked Rankin's point despite being a larger short story. The themes displayed were a lot darker and I guess it wasn't as typical as the last 3 short stories. I'm glad I've finished pretty much all of my holiday homework. Now I can just touch some things up, get ahead for Uni Chem, continue reading my texts for English and hopefully watch The Greatest Showman before school starts! I've taken up the advice from the annotating book thread and have started a quote bank for Burial Rites and can vouch that it is such a good idea especially if you do it in Excel or Google Sheets. That way you can set it up so you can filter out and isolate certain themes, characters and chapters making it super easy to navigate and find information so thanks to sophomania for that suggestion!
Currently procrastinating on writing another short story but I think I finally have an idea I can get behind and links in the themes of 'Island'. I'll post it on ATARNotes for feedback soon!
Saw a bunch of other journals like Philboi and Lear do this as well so I want to keep my initial goals here and see how they feel as this year progresses. I guess these are just raw scores?
English [40]
Methods [42]
Chemistry [50]
Physics [45]
MUEP Chemistry [90% = 5.0]
Methods [42]
Chemistry [50]
Physics [45]
MUEP Chemistry [90% = 5.0]
I know these are pretty high goals but where I'm standing right now, I'm pretty confident in myself. I've set myself up by actually reading my texts and doing the holiday homework and I really believe I can do this!
I've also been thinking of writing a huge post of advice for Biology 3/4 based on all the mistakes I made (unfortunately there's a lot of those). Now that it's been about 2 months since the exam, I've been able to reflect on what I could've done much better with a bit of effort such as having an updated glossary throughout the year or actually identifying what mistakes I made on practice exams and focusing on those rather than looking at only the score. Not sure though, only time will tell.
House Swimming is coming up really soon and I acn't believe this'll be my last on of highschool. While I do participate a lot in actually swimming, I really want to dress up for once this year. As of right now, I'm thinking of some sort of weapons dealer, mafia style, with the whole trench coat, sunglasses and fedora (is that what mafia people wear?) and basically deal out water guns. Seems pretty simple but pretty fun but I also wante dto ask suggestions for you guys. What did y'all dress up fas for House Swimming?
Some other non academic or school related life stuff:
Spoiler
I've really slacked off singing and bass practice these past two weeks but I'm slowly picking it up again. Did some more improv on ukulele with an Overdrive effect which makes it sound like an electric guitar so that's pretty dope. I honestly can't wait for the music program to start back up again at school. It was probably the only thing keeping me sane during a tough school day and I love being part of that community so much.
The diet's going okay, wavered a bit but as much as I expected and I've set up a Term 1 Challenge exercise just to pick up where I left off. Knowing my tight schedule, it won't be every day but around every second day (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) and I'm trying different bodyweight routines for each of those days just to spice things up.
Still in love with OfflineTV content <3. Might make a Twitch account soon just so I can keep up with what they're all doing.
The diet's going okay, wavered a bit but as much as I expected and I've set up a Term 1 Challenge exercise just to pick up where I left off. Knowing my tight schedule, it won't be every day but around every second day (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) and I'm trying different bodyweight routines for each of those days just to spice things up.
Still in love with OfflineTV content <3. Might make a Twitch account soon just so I can keep up with what they're all doing.
Anyways I think that's it from me. I'll update you guys next week as to how I spent the last of my holidays and how first week of school went! Bye!!
Post by: Lear on January 27, 2018, 10:10:12 pm
I’ll definitely be rooting for you. You seem confident and that’s wonderful :) I hope you’ve had an excellent holiday and wish you luck going into this year.
Post by: chooby on January 27, 2018, 11:00:23 pm
Those are some high scores Chooby! 50 in chemistry is the dream
I hope you’ve had an excellent holiday and wish you luck going into this year.
Thanks :) ! Hope you had an relaxing holiday too! And good luck for your subjects as well, if you ever need help with Chemistry you can always PM me :)
Post by: chooby on February 03, 2018, 07:45:29 pm
This whole week so far has been pretty chill. That's probably not going to last long...
I started school on Wednesday so I still had a few days of rest while some of my friends were starting already. I spent the rest of my holidays fixing up some of the holiday homework that wasn't up to standard
School right now is okay. We've just been recapping what we've already learnt and going over holiday homework for English and Methods and we'll be moving onto new work as of next week. In Chemistry, we're still learning about Hess' Law and manipulation of thermochemical equations. I'm pretty ahead for this subject so I'm going to try and finish off the chapters in thermochem that weren't part of the holiday homework and either look ahead to Galvanic cells and batteries or start doing Checkpoint questions in preparation for the SAC (or both if I can). Within physics, we're starting on circular motion and because of that class, I will never forget the term 'RADIALLY INWARD'. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the teachers in my class and I hope I can ask them questions more often.
The new year 10's coming in this year had their little orientation camp (JMSS starts at Year 10) so I decided to head over with our head of music to help out with the presentation. It's weird being back at the campsite and seeing kids who were in the same position as I was 2 years ago and I'm glad a lot of them were interested in joining the music program, the ensembles and were asking questions about it. Travelling to and from school right now sucks because of the bus replacements. Adds about an extra 30 minutes to the travel and the buses can get really packed during peak hours.
Next week is pretty broken up too. Tuesday we have our (and my last :'() swimming carnival. Need to find a good costume to wear on the day, I'm going to go out this weekend and try and find something power rangers related but if that doesn't work out I wanted to ask you for any last minute suggestions for a costume, my house colour is BLUE. Wednesday we get a free day off. This'll probably be the last of the free days in a long while so I'm going to enjoy it while I can. I also start MUEP Chemistry on Monday so I'm getting nervously excited about that and I can't wait to jump into it.
Some non-related school stuff can be found here
*Didn't end up watching The Greatest Showman YET. I'm going to watch it soon.
*Diet is going strong but my exercise routine is pretty lacking so I'll need to pick that up. Even if I only do one rep, I'll try and build it up.
*Music program at school hasn't started yet but every one I know is ready to get started and straight into it. :D
*Me and a friend are planning to join my youth group's band so that's pretty cool
*Going to try and move from cameras back onto the lighting desk and re-learn it from scratch.
*Diet is going strong but my exercise routine is pretty lacking so I'll need to pick that up. Even if I only do one rep, I'll try and build it up.
*Music program at school hasn't started yet but every one I know is ready to get started and straight into it. :D
*Me and a friend are planning to join my youth group's band so that's pretty cool
*Going to try and move from cameras back onto the lighting desk and re-learn it from scratch.
I just wanted to end this post with Friday. Ended the week on Friday by going to my youth group at church just to completely unwind. It was such a breathtaking experience to be back and see old friends and not worry about the struggles of school (or worry about it together for a bit) and I just wanted to bring up a point that is close to my heart: Don't give up what you love because of VCE. Sure, VCE is very important and you will have to make sacrifices and drop stuff in order to free up space and time for study but this doesn't mean you have to give up everything. It's why I continue to do music, go to church, youth group and volunteer. When I gave these up mid-2017, I got stuck in the endless cycle of study, eat and sleep where even then, I burnt out. These things, these activities, these moments outside of VCE were what kept me sane. Year 12 only lasts a year and after that, it's over. When you give up everything for VCE, you won't have anything waiting for you afterwards. So whether it's a youth group, a band, a sports team, work, volunteering, a relationship or even spending time with family, don't give it all up. Use it, value it and appreciate the time you spend outside of VCE. Reconnect with the real world outside the studies and live a little.
That's all from me. I'll post again next week :)
Post by: Yertle the Turtle on February 04, 2018, 03:00:17 pm
Post by: chooby on February 11, 2018, 12:25:36 am
Looking forward to continuing reading this chooby. 50 in Chemistry would be awesome, hope you can achieve the levels you want to in your subjects. I think more people should give themselves final goals to head towards before they start the year, so great job on that.. Great job in Bio as well, a 38 is a pretty good score. Good luck in the Class of '18, chooby! :D
Thanks Marvin!! And all the best to you with your final year too! Let's make this one an awesome year :D
2018 : Week 6 : 4th of Feb to 10th of Feb
Started off my week with my first session at Tutesmart!! I'm enrolled in the English class and while I know absolutely no-one there, it's a good opportunity to make some good friends to go through Year 12 English with! As a space, it's really quiet and everyone seems really focused on getting work done which is nice. Definitely going to go more often once bus replacements end.
It's our first official week with the new year 10's and it's pretty great to see that a lot of them have already made friendship groups over orientation camp and how engaged they are with their classes. It's very nostalgic to hear their banter about different subjects and pretty much hearing the same words I said years ago.
School work has still been pretty chill so far. Because of all the missed classes, we've only had one English class this entire week. Mainly just focusing on our Creative SAC and getting drafts in for feedback. They're getting us to focus on the style of writing that MacLeod and right now, the vivid imagery of the landscape. I've got a draft I've typed up but there have been a few context issues with it which I feel like I can resolve pretty easily. Also, need to get back to annotating Burial Rites just so it's done before we do the Creative SAC. In Methods, just moved onto odd and even functions as well as addition of ordinates which was a lot easier than I expected. Not falling behind on homework for this subjects yet and I don't plan to anytime soon. Got a quiz next week so I'm really just studying for that. In Chemistry, we're doing a lot of things in a much different order. We have covered pretty much all of Unit 3 AOS 1 except for fuels so far and have started covering calorimetry so there's that. In Physics, we've just finished pretty much all of circular motion and should be moving onto orbital motion in the next lesson. I'm not really big on the space stuff, and the matter unit in Physics 2 didn't really interest me but just the applications of forces and motions that I can apply keep me engaged and help me recall motion stuff I learnt last year.
We also had our swimming carnival on Tuesday and it was personally awesome. Since it's our cohort's last one, we went full out with the costumes from Fionna and Ice King to the Green Exit Man. The costumes honestly made the day so much more awesome. While I only went for one of the competitive (relay and we came second 'cause I got carried), all the other novel events such as raft building and lap for a point were pretty awesome. Just to add, my house won! So that's awesome! :D
Had the day off Wednesday so very grateful for that. Pretty sure everyone just crashed after swimming carnival and everyone got a well-deserved rest. Definitely made me grateful for having at least 1 study period every day.
Thursday was same old, same old. Stage Band had just started up after school again, however, and I am HELLA RUSTY. We'll be performing for Generations in Jazz again so I really need to dig deep and get to practicing. As for other music stuff at the school, I need to keep practicing for acapella and hopefully, choir gets some good repertoire this year.
I think Fridays are becoming the highlight of my week. Day went by as usual and I went to the youth group. I don't know what was so different about that session but it was a very impactful session for everyone that went. It was ana amazing reset just to get in tune with my non VCE life :D
Next week we have our first full week without any days off as well as the music ensembles would be starting. Bus replacements will end on Wednesday so I really can't wait for that. Can't wait for Uni Chem that'll be starting this Monday.
Will update you guys next week on other stuff as well so I'll see you guys then!
Post by: The Special One on February 11, 2018, 12:31:59 am
Post by: chooby on February 17, 2018, 11:46:25 pm
Good lad, perseverance is the key but keep it up you have a promising future ahead of you.
Thanks The Special One!! Just gotta keep going at it and try not to overload myself again.
2018 : Week 7 : 11th of Feb to 17th of Feb
Finally had the first full week of Year 12 and I am already feeling the intensity and how much of a time crunch this year is going to be.
Sunday started out with our first TuteSmart sesh with argument analysis. Went over contentions and how to find them and found this super helpful seeing as how in all my previous essays last year, I could never find and flesh out the full contention. (The teacher would write 3/4 which I thought meant it was of a 3/4 standard but when I asked she told me I only had 3/4ths of a contention :P)
In English, we are still working towards our upcoming Creative SAC next month. They've given us the opportunity to write up paragraphs in class, so I'm going to try and expand on those and create a few drafts. Going to get through another chapter of Burial Rites annotations tomorrow so things are going pretty smoothly. Methods is going okay so far. Had our first "quiz" yesterday and it's an eye opener as to how hard the applications are going to be for the exam. Still going steadily with the SUP work and staying ahead but I should get started on my bound reference soon. Chemistry is going alright. We've finished up on calorimetry and the errors and are working towards our investigation SAC on petro and bio diesels in about two weeks time. Already made some solid notes on the fuels and comparing them to each other so this week I'm going to try and do last year's investigation to revive the method writing skills I used in Bio. Slow progress in Physics. Just finished a bunch of orbital mechanics stuff and I think we're moving onto some more energy things. Not too sure.
We started Uni Chem this week as well. Definitely an intense lesson and way more advanced than anything we're doing for VCE with quantum mechanics and a lot more math than I expected. Thank goodness bus replacements ended because going home would've sucked since our lectures end at 7 pm on a Monday.
Some school but not VCE related things
Joined our school's Interact club. Basically, the group that organises all the fundraising charity events at the school. They've done stuff for Valentine's Day, R U OK Day and for Christmas and it would be nice to be involved in that type of stuff.
Also helping run a Christian group at the school so that's going to be awesome.
Got a few camps lined up, first one being Year 12 Camp happening this week as well as Parliament Leadership Camp in a few so I'm excited for those. Will need to work hard so I stay up to date even with those camps.
Formal is a thing that's happening in a month's time so there's already some talk about the school about dresses and travelling to formal. Only ever been to one formal in my life so I've got some ideas as to what to wear lined up. Going to have to wait for the formal committee to choose a theme though and hopefully it lines up well with what I've got in mind. (going to need to start exercising for this)
EDIT: i used the word "formal" in this wayy too much
Also helping run a Christian group at the school so that's going to be awesome.
Got a few camps lined up, first one being Year 12 Camp happening this week as well as Parliament Leadership Camp in a few so I'm excited for those. Will need to work hard so I stay up to date even with those camps.
Formal is a thing that's happening in a month's time so there's already some talk about the school about dresses and travelling to formal. Only ever been to one formal in my life so I've got some ideas as to what to wear lined up. Going to have to wait for the formal committee to choose a theme though and hopefully it lines up well with what I've got in mind. (going to need to start exercising for this)
EDIT: i used the word "formal" in this wayy too much
Muso Things
The Music Program at the school has finally started. All the ensembles I'm in are kicking into speed and we're starting to learn repertoire again. Most of the stuff (for acapella and stage band) is working toward Generations In Jazz but I'm planning to choose some of the songs we do for the choir. Also got in my church's youth band after auditioning yesterday so I've been pretty happy since.
Yea, just trying not to overload myself with extra stuff outside of VCE. My schedule is already getting pretty tight so I think I'm settling with where I am at right now. See you guys next week!
Post by: Sine on February 18, 2018, 12:15:09 am
Post by: chooby on February 18, 2018, 08:26:53 pm
nice to see someone doing MUEP chem :D - I did it in 2016. At the start it may feel a little overwhelming but definitely possible to do very well. The first semester does have a decent amount of math but that will dependent on how far you want to go into the unit. Since you can go and try to prove everything or just take the formulae/concepts as they are ahah, also semester 2 is a lot more theory so overall had a really nice balance.
Yea, we just got emailed lecture notes for tommorow and I understand absolutely nothing. Don't think I'm going to spend as much effort for this subject because I definitely need to put more of that effort into English and Methods. Hopefully it helps me to understand the stuff we are learning in VCE soon. Do you know if it's worth doing practice questions throughout the year for Uni Chem?
Post by: Sine on February 18, 2018, 08:55:41 pm
Yea, we just got emailed lecture notes for tommorow and I understand absolutely nothing. Don't think I'm going to spend as much effort for this subject because I definitely need to put more of that effort into English and Methods. Hopefully it helps me to understand the stuff we are learning in VCE soon. Do you know if it's worth doing practice questions throughout the year for Uni Chem?Textbook questions can be useful but doing all of them can be a little tedious especially for an increment subject. Make sure to drill out the tutorial questions, they are quite representative of what comes up on the exam and helps with understanding, they might not be posted yet but once "actual" uni students start they should be up. Also remember MUEP chem is basically twice as hard as what a normal uni student would have it since they cover 3 hours of lectures in 2 hours (sometimes 1-1.5hours) and you don't get any tutorials to reionforce your understanding.
Post by: chooby on February 25, 2018, 10:17:37 pm
2018 : Week 8 : 18th of Feb to 24th of Feb
Once again another broken week for Term 1.
As for English and Chemistry, its been same old same old regarding content as we are working towards upcoming SACs in the next two weeks. For English, I've got a practice SAC on Tuesday, and I'm hoping to smash out another draft with a new prompt before then. As for Chemistry, we just found out that our experimental design is going to be on the energy content of biodiesel and petrodiesel so just going over their chemical structure and explaining why petrodiesel has a higher energy content and such. Also did the practice experimental method write-up they provided for us so I'll try and seek feedback before the SAC on Tuesday. In Methods, we got our first quizzes on calculus and addition of ordinates back, and I'm honestly quite disappointed with my marks. Got 16/24 and while a few of them were from mistakes such as subbing in the wrong values into an equation, most of the marks lost were due to misconceptions, unknown knowledge or merely forgetting about specific concepts that justify why certain questions were only one mark. I've written out how to solve them now but my Methods teacher did suggest that we look over our text-book questions and work out why we got questions wrong and learn from them so I'm basically going to go re-do an entire chapter on application this week. In Physics, we've breezed through projectile motion and completed our first prac. I still need to catch up on the textbook questions and the Edrolo for this subject though. The second sesh of MUEP Chem I found to be a lot more calming as it mainly ran over periodic trends. Since Monash courses are starting this week as well, us MUEP students are finally getting access to videos and questions to help aid our notes as well.
However, all this happened in only two days as we had our Year 12 Camp which spanned from Wednesday to Friday. The campsite was near the beach so the school had a lot of beach stuff planned like snorkelling and paddleboarding which, aside from hanging out with everyone, was my favourite part. They even let us out at around 6:30 in the morning to go on beach walks where we got to see dolphins and just have a relaxing walk before breakfast. In between all the activities we had a bunch of talks on a variety of things such as how to get good sleep, interview tips, positive education and a few motivational speakers. While some of the talks were very useful, I'm pretty sure everyone was too tired to keep up and listen to it all. All in all, it was a relaxing camp which only made me realise that I should dig deep for Year 12 and make the most of the year, both academically and personally.
I'm really pushing my sleeping schedule now so I'll just end it there. See you guys next week!!
Post by: chooby on March 03, 2018, 08:51:03 pm
Far out. It's already been one month since Year 12 has started. I'm looking back at my previous entires and everything seems like it happened ages ago!!
Started off the week with the last TuteSmart sesh on the creative SAC. Overall fairly useful but out of the whole lesson I definitely took two things away; one being the sense of verisimilitude and the other narrative techniques such as time freezing and bookends. Definitely going to try and incorporate those into my draft.
Let's start with Chemistry this time. We had the first part of our investigation SAC which was the method write-up on Tuesday, and I started the day fairly confident with what I needed to do. The experimental design was fairly straight forward: burn a fuel of known mass under a beaker of water, observe the temperature change and calculate efficiency then burn one of the diesels under the water, get that temperature change and calculate the energy content while taking the efficiency into account. Yet throughout the day, I noticed I was getting more and more stressed and started worrying about things I didn't know I had to worry about and its definitely from being around people who were stressed as well. Fair enough since this the first SAC for a good majority of people. As soon as they started worrying about one thing, I started worrying about it too, and the cycle continued throughout the day until the SAC came around. Yet, the SAC itself was a lot easier than I originally thought, and many of the little details based on previous SACs weren't relevant this year. Next time a major SAC rolls around, definitely going to try and get some alone time to rethink and just calm down. Next week we will be doing the practical portion of the investigation SAC so we can get results to write about and I'll being writing up an introduction in 2 weeks so the teachers have provided us articles that we need to summarise and reference before then so I'm going to try and break it up over this week.
In English, we had our first practice SAC for our Creative SAC this Wednesday, and I thought I absolutely flunked it. My original story had very unclear thematic links to Island and didn't really match the prompts given to us, so I had to make up a completely different story on the spot. I was only able to write two pages
For Physics, we have a SAC coming up in about 2 - 3 weeks on AOS 3, and we are only getting into the hard stuff now: Special Relativity. I knew this was on the study design and as soon as I saw it, I knew this is where my brain is going to explode... and so far I'm not wrong. I'm still trying to wrap my head around relativity as a concept and aAGhh >:(. Luckily our Physics teachers know this is the hardest concept in the AOS, so they are trying to get a whole bunch of different resources for different kinds of learners so that we have the best chance of understanding this and I'm very grateful that they are doing that. Apart from looking into the Edrolo, I'll need to start doing some revision on classical motion so that it's consolidated. Been able to keep up with the textbook chapters so still going strong so far.
Not much is happening in Methods right now. So far we are covering transformations of graphs and understanding properties of graphs with a power of p/q. While I'm starting to understand the properties of those graphs I finALLY understand how dilations work!! It's taken me since Year 8 to understand the wording of 'from x' or 'to y' and understanding how to transform a graph, but it all finally clicked today! Covered two chapters in the SUP today so I think I'm all caught up for now. Might try and get ahead tomorrow if I have time.
As for MUEP Chem, I've noticed that I'm really tired for the first 30 minutes, but then I'm suddenly really alert afterwards. Definitely more evident in this session though since all over my notes, you could see where I started to fall asleep and the pen trails off into random scribbles. Might try taking a nap afterschool so that I can stay awake the whole time this week. I've really been trying to do summary notes for this class on OneNote to keep everything summarised, but I still haven't been able to get through first week's notes. Might start on second week's notes today since that what our first assessed pre-quiz is on. Content-wise, it's been getting easier since it's building off of things we have learnt previously in school such as periodic trends and structure of chemicals, so I'm not stressing out as much.
School Related but not VCE Thingys
- The Christian group at the school is going really well so far. We've had about 20 people come in on our latest session and the messages being spoken are absolutely amazing. Going to invite more people soon!!
- Joined the school's Philosophy Club. Since I have to stay back on Wednesdays because of music commitments I can't leave early so why not join a new club? So far I have no idea what is going on. But I think I'll get the hang of it soonlater never help me
- Parliament's Leadership Camp is coming up this week on Thursday and Friday so I'll be going to that. I went last year and it was absolutely amazing and I learnt a lot about how I work as a leader and in a team and I can't wait to go back. This means some of the SAC-related stuff such as SOI writing and intro writing have been moved to the week after but all the admin stuff has already been sorted with :D
- My friends dragged me to go to badminton this Friday, and I was super sceptical. I'm not a sports person. Don't follow and don't play it competitively but I actually had a lot of fun. Was definitely scared at first since it was very out of my comfort zone but I soon realised no-one cared how bad I was. Sure they'd laugh whenever I screwed up and missed the shuttlecock when serving but I did it to them too. It's all in good fun. Some of my friends are absolute MASTERS at this so I've been getting tips on them on how to play and technique and stuff and I'll try to go ore often. That and it just adds to the exercise I should be doing.
- Joined the school's Philosophy Club. Since I have to stay back on Wednesdays because of music commitments I can't leave early so why not join a new club? So far I have no idea what is going on. But I think I'll get the hang of it soon
- Parliament's Leadership Camp is coming up this week on Thursday and Friday so I'll be going to that. I went last year and it was absolutely amazing and I learnt a lot about how I work as a leader and in a team and I can't wait to go back. This means some of the SAC-related stuff such as SOI writing and intro writing have been moved to the week after but all the admin stuff has already been sorted with :D
- My friends dragged me to go to badminton this Friday, and I was super sceptical. I'm not a sports person. Don't follow and don't play it competitively but I actually had a lot of fun. Was definitely scared at first since it was very out of my comfort zone but I soon realised no-one cared how bad I was. Sure they'd laugh whenever I screwed up and missed the shuttlecock when serving but I did it to them too. It's all in good fun. Some of my friends are absolute MASTERS at this so I've been getting tips on them on how to play and technique and stuff and I'll try to go ore often. That and it just adds to the exercise I should be doing.
Music Related Thingys
- Choir is getting the hang of things now. We started our first piece 'When She Loved Me' from Toy Story 2 and it's a pretty easy piece apart from all the rubato which is all dependent on our choir director. We also started doing student-run sectionals this year so practice felt a lot more intimate and more connected I think. After this I think we are getting start on some music from The Greatest Showman so I'm definitely excited for that.
- In the chamber choir, our teacher is really knuckling down on practicing this year and putting effort into the pieces for Gambier. So far, we are sounding pretty good. We're getting out notes but we definitely need to focus on dynamics and blending together. We'll need to send her a recording of our parts by Monday so I'll end up doing that tomorrow.
- For Stage Band, I think I'm really getting to know the others in the rhythm section and hopefully that shows through our playing. Definitely need to practice both my pieces. One of 'em I'm just doing a walking bass line which I have pretty much learnt but there is a section where it's just chords so I'm going to need to learn those. In another piece, I have the main melody with bass trombone so I still need to work on that entire piece.
- In the chamber choir, our teacher is really knuckling down on practicing this year and putting effort into the pieces for Gambier. So far, we are sounding pretty good. We're getting out notes but we definitely need to focus on dynamics and blending together. We'll need to send her a recording of our parts by Monday so I'll end up doing that tomorrow.
- For Stage Band, I think I'm really getting to know the others in the rhythm section and hopefully that shows through our playing. Definitely need to practice both my pieces. One of 'em I'm just doing a walking bass line which I have pretty much learnt but there is a section where it's just chords so I'm going to need to learn those. In another piece, I have the main melody with bass trombone so I still need to work on that entire piece.
Outside School Thingys
- Went back on the cameras for church last week and I basically got put on the spot and did first camera. Essentially, I was in charge of all the close-up shots and following the speaker. While during praise and worship it was all right, it meant I had to zone out during the speaker and focus on following them so definitely a test of my focus.
- Year 12 Formal is coming up soon. I have no idea what I'm doing. Or what I'm going to wear. Main idea is just black everything with really fancy undershirt. Help pls.
- Year 12 Formal is coming up soon. I have no idea what I'm doing. Or what I'm going to wear. Main idea is just black everything with really fancy undershirt. Help pls.
Okay, this week's post is actually really long (and I hope I write as much during my English SAC this Wednesday) so thanks for reading this until the end.
Post by: chooby on March 25, 2018, 11:37:55 pm
2018 : Week 10, Week 11 and Week 12 : 4th of March to 24th of March
So for English, we had our Creative SAC. In all honesty, I think I went alright with this SAC. The prompts were really broad (thank goodness because my story didn't fit in with very typical themes) and I was able to remember a good majority of what I had written in my drafts. As for the SOI, they didn't expect as much as I thought they would so I ended writing a lot more indepth. Still struggled to get all of FLAP - C but we do get our results this week so I'm anxious to see what I got. We've just started with our text response with Burial Rites. As of right now, I've annotated up to Chapter 9 of the book and we've just gone through Chapter 1 in class pretty recently. I'll try looking on the site to see if there are any practice topics that I could start drafting for it. To speed up the process of getting through the book, the class has been split up with each group analysing a certain chapter and creating a slideshow which is shared to the rest of the class. The SAC is in about a month from now so after I post this I'm going to be writing up a plan for a draft essay and writing it throughout this week!
In Chemistry, we had finally completed the investigation SAC on Fuels!! On the 5th, we had our practical for the SAC where we basically burnt a bunch of fuels and we were able to get the results pretty quickly. Breathed in a few fumes from the petrodiesel but I think I'm okay. The week after I did both the introduction writing and the discussion and analysis part of the essay. From what I remember, it was relatively okay, definitely a bit of a time crunch but managed to complete it all on time. Right now we've breezed through redox and galvanic cells and are currently looking into different types of cells and yeah. Since the SAC it's been pretty smooth.
Physics right now is also going pretty well. We just had our Motion SAC pretty recently and I honestly thought I would have a harder time with special relativity but our teachers were able to explain it really well. This SAC actually marked the last of my SACs for this term so definitely very relieving to have it completed. We've just started on fields and because we had gone through orbital mechanics in our motion SAC, we're going stright into electric fields and yeah I'm pretty excited.
Methods has been a pretty rough ride so far. We've been having these quizzes after every topic and the first few haven't been the best. I'm averaging around a 50 - 60% right now and we just completed the topics on polynomials and transformations and we'll be moving onto exponentials and logarithms this week. I've started to make a book with all the mistakes from my tests and practice SACs in the hopes that I can improve.
Okay, I've really stalled this post for too long. I really want to expand more on what's happened in my non academic life since not much has happened after the SACs. Might make a post tommorow or some other time this week but yea! I'll see you guys around!
Post by: sarangiya on March 26, 2018, 07:36:50 am
Awesome that you're preparing for English so diligently. I'll have to take a leaf out of your book.
Hope you have a great last week(?) and enjoy a well-deserved rest!
P.S. no petrol sniffing!! Haha
Post by: chooby on April 10, 2018, 11:43:24 pm
Congratulations on a great term and finishing your SACs so far!
Awesome that you're preparing for English so diligently. I'll have to take a leaf out of your book.
Hope you have a great last week(?) and enjoy a well-deserved rest!
P.S. no petrol sniffing!! Haha
Heh. I'll try not to sniff any more petrol fumes. Hope you had an amazing holiday as well!!
So I wanted to wait until the end of the first week of holidays before I posted anything because not a lot was happening on the last week of school and at the start of holidays but I forgot to post over the weekend due to MUEP Chem Labs and a sleepover the weekend, so I'll try to update you guys with as much as I can remember!
2018 : Week 13 and Week 14 : 25th of March to 7th of April
Not much happened in the last week of school. We're still churning through Burial Rites in English, and we've moved onto electrical fields in Physics. We finished off fuel cells in Chemistry and had just recapped what we learnt in Methods so far. The major thing that did happen was the SAC scores we received. We haven't received out Chemistry SAC marks back, but we did get our Physics and English marks back. I averaged a 'high' in the English Creative SAC (don't really remember what letter grade correlates with it) which I'm honestly really happy about. Hopefully, if I start drafting sooner and getting feedback in my essays for text response!! We also got our Motion SACs for Physics and I got around 78%. While it was a pretty decent score, I'm kinda disappointed with myself because I made a lost a otl of marks due to stupid mistakes and misconceptions which could've been avoided had I started revision sooner. Definitely made me realise that I need to step up my game for the final year.
Before holidays started, I compiled a giant to-do list of things I should do before Term 2 and set different deadlines for each task. Well, that's already been tRASHed mainly because I packed too many things into the two weeks forgetting that I had other commitments already. After a few days, I've shortened my list down, but it's definitely a crunch still:
- Annotate 20 pages of Burial Rites a day (If I can keep this up, I should have annotated the whole book in about six days)
- Chemistry Fuel Cells Summary (this got emailed to us around start of holidays, and I've got a plan set out on how to complete so it should be okay)
- Update Physics Cheat Sheet (just gotta make sure this is constantly being worked on so I don't stress at the end of the year and I can use bits and pieces for my SACs)
- Write up 2 English Practice Essays (Our English teacher gave us two practice topics to work on, and I was hoping to finish one each week, goin g to try and do one timed and the other super open book and at least finished by the start of Term 2)
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I also have to finish four MUEP Chem reports by Thursday and Friday. We had our labs last Thursday and Friday, and it puts you into the zone as to what you're learning and how to apply it to the experiments. From numerous titrations to transforming a copper chloride solution into solid copper, the labs were both intense yet intriguing at the same time and reminded me how awesome science can be. I was hoping to write reports over the weekend but was occupied in a pre-planned sleepover, so I'm trying to cram it in now. Even though this is only an aggregate subject, I still want to do well in it ya know?
I also wanted to give you guys an update/summary about what has been happening in stuff non VCE related as well as plans for the future which will probably keep me busy for a while so I put it in spoilers for those who want to read about that and get to know a bit more about me!!
Leadership Camp
Our Leadership Camp occurred on Week 10 and was definitely an impactful camp to stay the least. The school's Student Parliament was invited and I'm glad Music Captains snuck into it this year. We headed over to Lyrebird Park learnt a lot about the type of leader that we are as well as our typical strengths and weaknesses. There were definitely a few highlights of the camp though, first one being this huge tree we got harnessed to. We pretty much scaled the tree, went across a diving board thing and free fall until they caught us before reaching the bottom. I don't really know how else to explain this but there's a video of my friend doing it on Instagram @kai.pal (I told him I would give him a plug :P ). Another major highlight was on the final day where the whole camp did a group challenge. We were broken up into mini groups and were allocated an area with different sized containers. We were assigned a communicator who would run over to the central hub and organise how to get the buckets to the middle and stack them within each other. Not allowed to directly touch or be within two meters of any bucket, we somehow got all 8 - 10 ish buckets to the centre and stack them but unfortunately we went overtime :(. Final highlight was definitely when the principle and vice principle came over and talked us through how the school runs, how school policies are made as well as improvements to the school that are based on the overall scores from strength surveys the school does. Definitely huge motivation and feels like we have a voice in the school.
Formal
Literally a week after Leadership Camp and it's time to stress about the Year 12 Formal. Honestly such an amazing nice and I'm glad I took some time over the weekend to pick out my suit and made sure everything fit well. I also put on contacts on for the first time and a lot of people couldn't recognise me because of it which was pretty funny. Loved seeing everyone dress up super fancy <3
Music Immersion Week
This was an event the other music captains had been planning since around the end of last year. Essentially for the whole week, ensembles would take the whole day to practice their music and perform for the rest of the school in a lunchtime concert at the end of the week. While I had to balance out when I left for ensembles because I didn't want to miss out on class, we had a free day on Thursday for Parent Teacher Interviews so our Stage Band took this opportunity to take our ensemble practice outside of the school. We headed over to Laneway Studios in Richmond and rehearsed there and the place has such an awesome aesthetic that matched with the rest of Richmond. It felt like a small gem hidden down a random alleyway. As for the actual concert, it ran pretty smoothly! We somehow managed to fit all the ensemble performances within an hour with smooth transitions between each and a pretty good turnout.
Plans for the Future
Can you tell that I'm starting to write less and less with each spoiler? Anyways, I have a few things planned for the future that aren't VCE related. Firstly, Generations In Jazz is coming up really soon! Still practicing hard for both Stage Band and Chamber Choir and it's starting to come together! We have another holiday rehearsal for Stage Band this Friday so I'm excited for that. We also have a Music Camp coming up too! I didn't want to talk about it here in case it didn't happen but we've been planning this camp from the ground-up since it technically got cancelled because of Music Immersion. RIght now we are just ensuring numbers, getting supervision as well as planning out the itinerary. This has practically become my passion project of the year so I'm super hyped that its working out. Very grateful to the Music Team :D. Harmony Day (or Diversity Dya in most other places) is coming soon and a bunch of us decided to carry on the legacy of the Kpop Dance Group!! There has been one every year and since the last group graduated it's up to us to step up and take it. Practicing has become my gateway into Kpop and Kdrama... started watching Pinocchio and am currently obsessed with TWICE. Send help.
So that's it for now!! I'll try and get back to regular updating when I can, and I'll see you guys around!!
Post by: chooby on April 15, 2018, 12:55:20 am
Let's hope I start staying consistent with these journal entries again.
Last week of holidays was easily one of the most stressful. Spent most of the week writing up four different discussions of scientific reports in MUEP Chem. Haven't done much in terms of actual holiday homework but I have completed the Chemistry Fuels Summary and have started updating my Physics Cheat Sheet so I've got that going for me. Not much has happened between the last post and this one but I'm going to try and chill with the last day of holidays. I start school again on Monday so I'm going to have to get used to early wake-ups and being tired again. I've tried scheduling my entire week to find out what time slots I have free to study and do homework and I don't really have a lot. Going to need to prioritise a lot harder. I also got a new desk from IKEA!! Everything's a lot more organised now and yeah it looks really nice. I'll make a longer post once the stress of school kicks back in so I'll see you guys then!!
Post by: chooby on April 29, 2018, 01:29:38 am
Back again two weeks later and boy have these two weeks been hectic and it's only going to get more so for the next month!!
Subject wise I'm starting to worry a lot about everything. We've pretty much finished all of AOS 1 in Physics and since we learnt about orbital mechanics during AOS 3 which we did earlier, we pretty much breezed through electric fields, magnetic fields and have since moved onto applications. My brain felt like it got bigger when we connected projectile motion and electric fields. Our SAC is going to be on the 8th of May so only a few weeks left. Going to try and spend this week working on my cheat sheet as well as doing one or two practice SACs beforehand so that I'm somewhat prepared.
Methods is starting to come around. We are almost finished the topic of exponentials and log functions and I'm still up to date with the SUP work provided for us!! We also had our first quiz of the term yesterday and I didn't want to mess up like I did last time. I did two practice quizzes and had them corrected and checked through the worked solutions and after coming out of that quiz I felt really good so things are looking up for me there.
We've finallt moved onto electrolysis in chemistry and I feel like we are so behind form the rest of the state. Luckily they're really comprehensive about it and I can also learn ahead with Edrolo. We still haven't gotten our previous SAC marks back but the other classes have and so far it's not looking too good. Overall the cohort had a pretty low average and I'm just getting more and more anxious about my own mark. We also have another Chem SAC a week after the Physics SAC so going to try and do a few practice SACs beforehand.
Then there's English. Our Text Response SAC is coming up in two weeks and I'm pretty nervous about it. Text Response has always been one of the worst parts for me and I'm getting anxious because I know I have to do well this year. I never got around to actually writing those practice essays yet but we did have a practice SAC and while I did okay, there were so many fundamentals that I wasn't able to hit. Going to write one tomorrow at TuteSmart since I'm going early and I'm going to use cue cards to help me memorise quotes.
I'm going to be pretty busy for the next three weeks so I'm probably not going to update anytime soon after this
Things currently streSSING ME OUt
These next three weeks are going to be the busiest I'm going to be. This coming week is Mount Gambier so I'm practising like crazy for both of my ensembles. To help practice in front of a crowd both ensembles will be performing at Info Night this Wednesday so I'm staying back for that. Then once Friday comes around that's my entire weekend gone and spent at Gambier. Going to bring my cue cards of English quotes as well as one SAC for both Physics and Chem to do on the bus ride there so that I can be somewhat productive. However, I still want to enjoy my time and not worry about anything else but the music. This is right before the Physics and English SAC. Then the week after we have the Chemistry SAC as well as Harmony Day. I'm part of two dance performances so I gotta find time to rehearse for those with the groups. Then at the end of the week, we have Music Camp which there still needs to be tons of planning for so yeah that's what the next three weeks look like.