ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => Victorian Education Discussion => The VCE Journey Journal => Topic started by: swyic on February 14, 2021, 10:21:43 pm
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[standard long time lurker first time poster type of warning whatever]
weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
got inspired by a classmate's post / journal thingy (she doesn't know i saw her post but yea anyway HI [redacted]!!!)
anyway, let's get started
[header goes here] <h> y12 vce stuff 14/02/2021 </h>
About me: Hi my name's Sawyer (yea that's my actual name lol); you can call me swy if u want even though that's like only 4 keystrokes less. I'm really bad at academic stuff and a bit on the slow side. I am a year 12 in 2021. My subjects for the year are English Language, Specialist Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. Yeah, the power of my 3 brain cells picked the "hardest subjects at the school".
epic stuff, now some goals for the year:
- make this obscure competition thing which is obscure enough to doxx me anyway the gist of it is it's hard
- make at least 1 friend (objectively the hardest of the lot)
- get like a decent atar (which means making my year 11 study scores in my bottom 2)
- duxing (or coduxing; there's actual smart people at my school) the cohort
- stop being addicted to discord and social media
- sub 1 minute tetris 40L sprint (the goal i have been working on the most this year)
- not a goal but i just realised i doxxed myself anyway w my name so oh well i guess you can find out what the competition is online or something
cool now the boring stuff is out of the way i want to talk about 2020
[2020 stuff header goes here] <h> 2020, the year that felt like a decade </h>
I was a year 11 in 2020. Not a really smart one, but one that managed to not fail any tests, which I'm going to call a win. On the topic of achievements, I did Mathematical Methods Units 3 and 4, and scored pretty horribly- enough for a uni pre-req but not enough to be much to talk about. Scoring enough for the pre-req is the achievement here. I also learned that I shouldn't leave studying til just the week before the exam and that taking time off 1/2 classes to just study for 3/4s is a viable stratagem and I should use it sometime. I kinda wish I learnt that earlier, since I've only got 3/4 classes this year, but oh well. Better late than never they always say.
Enough about academics, since that's a depressing topic for me. Let's talk about other stuff.
I got into fountain pens lately and they've been motivating me to actually write (woah, ikr!) in class! I recently got this beautiful Lamy Al-Star which is amazing and runs out of ink really quickly but I think that's a "I write a lot" problem not a "My pen is leaking and that was a waste of >$50" problem. Anyway, if we revert to online learning I guess ink shortage won't be an issue.
I also got into informatics lately, which is super fun (and super distracting). Informatics is basically writing programs to solve problems, and it feels good to solve a problem. I really recommend this website called "orac" (since idk how to hyperlink, link is http://orac.amt.edu.au/cgi-bin/train/hub.pl) and it's really cool. I don't know what else to say about informatics since if you like it, you like it, and if you don't, you don't. There's not much point in trying to rope people in against their wills since if they liked it to begin with, they would've already gotten into it. That being said, if you like info, please continue doing it :)
Now I'm just getting off topic and you're getting bored, so I'm going to go into detail about my goals.
[help formatting is hard] <h> Goals 2: Electric Boogaloo </h>
Goal: "make this obscure competition thing"
Reason: Same deal as with the info, it feels cool to make it. Oh, and by "make it" I mean qualify for it, not literally create this competition. Also it'll look snazzy on my CV if I make it.
How I'll get there: Uhhh by studying for it.
Goal: "make at least 1 friend"
Reason: Apparently, according to this study I read online which I'm not citing for maximum funny points, having friends is a good thing. Anecdotally, one of my teachers says that she enjoys having friends. I must investigate these baseless claims. Since I don't have friends in my school cohort right now, it would be nice to test this out empirically. (Kidding; I'm really lonely and I want someone to talk to and do friend stuff with)
How I'll get there: uHHHHhhhhhhhh by talking to people at school until they adopt me into their friend group or by online social media things
Goal: "get like a decent atar"
Reason: Purely for uni purposes. I could make jokes about this but 1) they wouldn't be funny, 2) they're beaten to death by now, 3) I'm tired and don't want to think about it and 4) wait no i've run out of braincells
How I'll get there: By studying and getting good study scores, which I'll get by studying. Huh. It all boils down to studying.
Goal: "duxing the cohort"
Reason: I want to prove myself as not the dumbest in my year level and what better way of doing it than this? I guess this is also more easily observable than "getting a good atar", since I can literally compare myself every day. So essentially this is a rehash of getting decent atar but so I can write more goals lol
How I'll get there: You guessed it- sTuDYiNG.
Goal: "stop being addicted to discord and social media"
Reason: Social media sucks a lot of time away from studying for me. Since like almost all my other goals require me to study, this is almost a must.
How I'll get there: Limiting myself on discord to not talking on servers and only checking important stuff, and talking on here instead so at least it'll be semi-productive. I'm gonna use the social media... to destroy the social media addiction. Big brain strats.
Goal: "sub 1 minute tetris 40L sprint"
Reason: I want to give myself something else to focus on that's not studying or related to studying. Also I want to be on a level where I am comparable to some of my [not-school] friends and then we can play tetris together.
How I'll get there: Keep playing tetris and get used to faster handling.
Last dot point's not a goal so yay I'm already done!
This post took too long to write so I'll stick to shorter updates later (if I post later) anyway i'm tired and wanna sleep and you're sick of me rambling about stuff so im gonna dip bye
-- Sawyer
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Hey Sawyer,
Welcome to the forum! Glad to see you've created this journal :)
It's great to see that you have some goals for this year! I definitely can relate to the social media one. What's helped me is using a carrot-on-a-stick approach and using the social media as a reward after doing some studying, as well as using an app (YourHour, on Android - there's likely to be something similar out there for other operating systems) which tells you how long you've spent on your phone and has challenges to help you reduce your screen time (e.g. no phone for one hour). Reducing your screen time and is a difficult habit to form, but is worth it in the long run. :)
Any plans for uni?
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This sounds interesting - best of luck!
:)
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Hey lm21074 and Cat in the Hat! Glad to see other people here haha
While YourHour sounds like a great app, sadly I am an iPhone user, but I'll have a look around for similar apps :). The carrot-on-a-stick approach sounds great- I think I'll try it today. I also think I'm different from most people with regards to social media as my issue isn't screen time on my phone, but Discord on my laptop, which I almost have to have open during online learning to talk to classmates about homework/schoolwork etc.
About plans for uni: I'm almost certain I want to do a Bachelor's of Science at the University of Melbourne, probably majoring in something like medicine stuff (I haven't looked into too much detail yet) but I know I want to study at least first year chemistry and Latin as a breadth subject- I'm really interested in Latin and I want to get back into it after VCE. However, I'm not rejecting the idea of going interstate for uni, since at least one of my friends is planning on doing that and it sounds cool I guess.
Do you guys have any insight about uni stuff?
-- Sawyer
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About plans for uni: I'm almost certain I want to do a Bachelor's of Science at the University of Melbourne, probably majoring in something like medicine stuff (I haven't looked into too much detail yet) but I know I want to study at least first year chemistry and Latin as a breadth subject- I'm really interested in Latin and I want to get back into it after VCE. However, I'm not rejecting the idea of going interstate for uni, since at least one of my friends is planning on doing that and it sounds cool I guess.
Do you guys have any insight about uni stuff?
-- Sawyer
Hi Sawyer! Really enjoying your journal so far. Well, I'm also in year 12 right now so I don't really have any past experiences/specific analytics to share but I've been looking into a similar field too. If you're interested in medicine, I would recommend also taking a look into Biomed at Melbourne, since there's more of a medical focus as the name suggests. Fairly sure that all science disciplines (Chem, Bio, Phys) as well as calculus are required throughout, as well as the breadth subjects, so you'll get plenty of opportunities to pursue classes in Chem and Latin. There's a bit of a higher ATAR requirement though (around 96.00+, sometimes a little lower) but it shouldn't pose a problem for you as long as you study hard! Anyway, you've still got plenty of time and probably no harm in listing it as a lower-priority preference if it piques your interest :)
Best of luck for this year! What subjects are you doing other than Methods last year?
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Hey Wingdings! Glad to see you're enjoying my journal haha
Biomed at Melbourne sounds really cool, I might look into that once I start to really think about uni. I'm a bit surprised biomed needs physics, but I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation for it. 96.00 ATAR seems incredibly hard, though! Do you think you'd make it into biomed?
This year I'm doing English Language, Specialist Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Biology, which, along with Methods, makes six subjects. What about you? Best of luck to you too for this year!
-- Sawyer
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[ok so i did end up updating]
*deep inhale*
<h> year 12 stuff 15/02/2021 </h> [if i put funny comments here it formats a bit more nicely]
Hey hey hey it's ya boy Sawyer back with another Minecraft video Year 12 journal thingy. Also thanks to the mod who moved me to the actual Year 12 VCE Unit 3/4 (ok I think that's enough synonyms) journal forum.
I feel like I'll be motivated to write these (and you'll be motivated to read these) if I put a brief school shenanigan story at the start of each one. Names have been changed to letters to give everyone literal equation flashbacks.
<h> comedy corner </h>
During online learning, before class, students A and B were hanging out on Zoom, and chemistry teacher C joined. C saw A eating what seemed to be a bowl of rice, veggies, curry, etc... but A was eating each part separately. C, being a reasonable human being, asked A why he was doing that; "it's going to be the same in your stomach anyway". Since it's rude to talk while you're eating, B replies for him: "He's changing initial conditions, miss!"
<h> ok that wasnt funny let's talk about other stuff </h> [if u didn't get the joke before it's to do with equilibria in chemistry or something]
For some reason, one of my teachers wanted to hold an online class today. Okay, probably not "some reason"; we have to actually learn stuff in Year 12, but bear with me. For the record, my schedule makes it so I have one of each class every Monday (and today is a Monday). So one of my five teachers decided to hold an online class. I have no idea what the other four were doing, but I assume from their Google Classroom posts, they decided to just send us work to do while they plan online learning or whatnot.
Anyway, my Specialist Maths teacher held a class today, which works out because we got to sing happy birthday to him and we all set this edit of his face with "Happy birthday" written on it and other various in-jokes that wouldn't be funny without like a year of context (The vast majority of the people in the Spec 3/4 class were in the same 1/2 class with the same teacher). He also actually went through some content today, so that was fun I guess.
From reading other VCE journals in the actual VCE journal forum (again, thanks mod for moving this here and basically letting me know VCE journals exist), people seem to be doing these journals in subject-by-subject sections. Soooo I guess I'll do that too.
<h> the other 4 subjects </h> [in a "random order" which just means the order i like them in rn]
Biology: uHHHhhh bio actually seems kinda easy right now. I think it's because we haven't covered content that's too hard (it looks like a rehash of Unit 1 but I wouldn't know; I didn't do Unit 1/2). My teacher set us some work to do which I might go check out now, though I'm not too worried since I feel like I already know half of it from Year 10 science, and the rest is kind of obvious. I really like how stuff in bio is all interconnected but not so much that if you don't know something you can't do the rest.
Chemistry: Chem is cool I guess. My teacher's really slow with teaching, and we're behind all the other classes, but I guess it's fine because I've been leeching off my friends in the other classes for new material... and most of it looks like stuff I did in Year 10. I have to go check with my teacher about PV = nRT though, since she taught it as the "Universal Gas Equation" but I'm used to calling it "Ideal Gas Law". Otherwise it's kinda okay at the moment.
EngLang: ENGLANG ENGLANG ENGLANG I LOVE ENGLANG!!!! It feels like we're behind in EngLang, since other classes are starting face needs and we're still messing about with what an English is. Also, our teacher didn't set us work today even though I got work for all my other subjects... :-[ uh oh. Whatever, I expect we'll catch up sooner or later, and my teacher's an admin so he was probably doing admin stuff. My teacher is a massive fan of not doing work in class but our class is still managing to do really well in exams (I had him last year and we did pretty well on average on the Unit 2 exam our school held) so I'm not overly fussed.
Physics: Physics is fun I guess? It's also really boring half the time. My teacher loves talking about exam questions and [insert low percentage]% of the state managing to answer these questions he gives us. Since covid happened last year, he's been basically making us do Unit 2 stuff again. I don't really mind it, since I don't have to put too much effort outside of school for Physics, but class is super dull when we did all this stuff last year... I expect it'll be a bit more exciting after this snap lockdown though!
Yep that looks like all my subjects. I haven't done much this lockdown yet, and I can't believe it's half over! I'm looking forward to going back to school physically and seeing my friends from other schools on the train.
<h> other random stuff i set as my goals </h>
I also finally got ranked in Tetr.io (the tetris client I use) today, which is something I've been procrastinating on. I'm ranked B+ which is a bit sad but I've got a lot to learn to become competitive. Did you know that T-spins are overpowered? Yeah I didn't know what a T-spin was this morning- it's when you have a specific setup and spin a T-piece to clear lines.
I spent a bit more time browsing server messages in Discord than I would've liked today, but I did manage to limit myself and use social media as a reward, as lm21074 suggested (thanks!!). I might try using that approach more in the future.
Okay, I think this is all I want to talk about today- these posts take so long to type up and come up with stuff to talk about D:
-- Sawyer
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Hey,
just here to say hello.
Hello.
regards,
Penelope (rhymes with cantaloupe and no that is nowhere near my real name)
Ps interesting journal so far btw
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Haha yeah I don't quite see where Phys directly relates to Biomed either honestly (maybe it's got something to do with Biomechanics/Physio?). But it'd definitely be nice to have some different areas and disciplines so the Bio aspects don't drive you crazy :D I'm really hoping I get in! I'm not totally sure if I will but it's worth a shot, still got the whole year after all.
That's a really good set of subjects you've chosen! They all seem to match your interests and strengths perfectly. I'm actually doing almost the same set, except for Music and CSL instead of Specialist and Phys. Really would have liked to continue Phys after 1/2 but alas, it would've made a 7th subject :(
Keep up with the great updates :)
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Okay I finally learned how to quote so let's hope the formatting isn't janked:
Hey,
just here to say hello.
Hello.
regards,
Penelope (rhymes with cantaloupe and no that is nowhere near my real name)
Ps interesting journal so far btw
Hello to you too Penelope! Thank you for reading my journal, yours is also quite interesting.
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Haha yeah I don't quite see where Phys directly relates to Biomed either honestly (maybe it's got something to do with Biomechanics/Physio?). But it'd definitely be nice to have some different areas and disciplines so the Bio aspects don't drive you crazy :D I'm really hoping I get in! I'm not totally sure if I will but it's worth a shot, still got the whole year after all.
That's a really good set of subjects you've chosen! They all seem to match your interests and strengths perfectly. I'm actually doing almost the same set, except for Music and CSL instead of Specialist and Phys. Really would have liked to continue Phys after 1/2 but alas, it would've made a 7th subject :(
Keep up with the great updates :)
Hey Wingdings! Good luck for getting into Biomed then- I'm sure you'll get in with your results last year and how you're going this year. Your subjects sound pretty cool- Music and CSL sound like fun subjects to do in Year 12 to add a bit of variety in the mix.
-- Sawyer
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Hi Sawyer,
Looking forward to seeing how you do in VCE!! Cheers!
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Hey, Sawyer!
Don't mind me, just a gross little year 11 here - I've really enjoyed reading your journal so far. I already love your sense of humour :D I also struggle with procrastination - I haven't found the perfect remedy yet, but there are a couple apps that I've found useful (that I probably should use more):
Forest is an app where you can set a timer; when the timer ends, a tree grows. If you go on your phone before the timer runs out, the tree dies. Depending on how long the session is, you get an amount of coins which can eventually go towards planting real trees, which is pretty cool - only thing is, I'm pretty sure the app costs a few buckaroos.
I also use an app called Focus To-Do; it's a pomodoro timer (where you study in sessions with small breaks in between), and it has a feature where you can set up groups. Each group has a leaderboard that resets each week, which I've found pretty motivating - we all love a bit of competition! Only drawback is while it is free, after the "trial" period ends you can't adjust the time of your sessions - it costs $14 for premium. If you find any good strats, definitely hit us up.
Can't wait to see more from you! :)
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Hi Sawyer,
Looking forward to seeing how you do in VCE!! Cheers!
Hey |log| (or is that absolute log?)! Thanks for your message, and good luck for VCE!
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Hey, Sawyer!
Don't mind me, just a gross little year 11 here - I've really enjoyed reading your journal so far. I already love your sense of humour :D I also struggle with procrastination - I haven't found the perfect remedy yet, but there are a couple apps that I've found useful (that I probably should use more):
Forest is an app where you can set a timer; when the timer ends, a tree grows. If you go on your phone before the timer runs out, the tree dies. Depending on how long the session is, you get an amount of coins which can eventually go towards planting real trees, which is pretty cool - only thing is, I'm pretty sure the app costs a few buckaroos.
I also use an app called Focus To-Do; it's a pomodoro timer (where you study in sessions with small breaks in between), and it has a feature where you can set up groups. Each group has a leaderboard that resets each week, which I've found pretty motivating - we all love a bit of competition! Only drawback is while it is free, after the "trial" period ends you can't adjust the time of your sessions - it costs $14 for premium. If you find any good strats, definitely hit us up.
Can't wait to see more from you! :)
Hey Duck Tails!
Glad to see you enjoyed reading my journal- I quite liked reading yours too. I might try check out Forest sometime, but since my issue isn't that I spend too much time on my phone, I'll have to see if there's a desktop version. Thanks for the recommendation though. Focus To-Do sounds pretty cool, I might have to try that sometime, though I find I don't do well with Pomodoro- the times are a bit too short for me and it seems like the alarm goes off every time I finally get settled into something. Though if I do find epic study strats I'll be sure to let you know!
-- Sawyer
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Hey |log| (or is that absolute log?)! Thanks for your message, and good luck for VCE!
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Hey Duck Tails!
Glad to see you enjoyed reading my journal- I quite liked reading yours too. I might try check out Forest sometime, but since my issue isn't that I spend too much time on my phone, I'll have to see if there's a desktop version. Thanks for the recommendation though. Focus To-Do sounds pretty cool, I might have to try that sometime, though I find I don't do well with Pomodoro- the times are a bit too short for me and it seems like the alarm goes off every time I finally get settled into something. Though if I do find epic study strats I'll be sure to let you know!
-- Sawyer
I've heard good stuff about 'Cold Turkey'. I believe it's desktop. I've procrastinated on looking into it, so I can't give you advice. :P
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[riding on a high of getting a new 40L sprint PB in tetris]
weeeeeeeeeeeee
<h> y12 stuff 16/02/2021 </h> [maybe i should number these as well as doing them by date oh well cbs rn]
In today's episode of Sawyer talks about random stuff in his life like VCE, we discuss how his progress in informatics, his improvement at tetris, and how he solved one maths problem today. Oh, and VCE.
But before that, I just had this funny story I wanted to tell you guys-
<h> comedy corner </h> [hehehehe i should swap the name up sometime]
Students A and B were partners for Food Technology, where they got to cook actual food at school (free food yay!). Their teacher, knowing these students were young, naive, and inexperienced in cooking, kept emphasising the importance of washing your ingredients! She'd gotten that drilled into each of the students' heads, and as they started preparing their ingredients for the soup they were making, Student A verbally checked with Student B about each of their ingredients-
"Did we wash our carrot?"
"Yes"
"Did we wash our peas?"
"Yes"
"Did we wash our water?"
<h> the o and the s in online school stand for things i cannot say here </h> [yeah it stands for ohmygodyoucan't swearhere]
Since nothing much happened today in terms of classes, I'm not gonna bother talking about each subject with their own little subheading. Today was actually pretty confusing since we got told via the school that teachers were gonna do online learning stuff... so I woke up at a reasonable time for online classes and it turns out I didn't have any. Precious seconds of sleep... gone. :( Also, like half my teachers didn't set any extra work for today- they just set it all on Monday so that was that I guess. I'll have to actually check I did everything tomorrow though.
I also have no idea what my physics teacher is up to since he basically just set us work for the week without teaching stuff... he said he had to go to this conference thing on Friday and we don't have physics on Thursday, so I realise it's a physics-less week unless I choose to do physics.. which seems unlikely.
I guess EngLang deserves its own little section because I found out several funny things today.
1. My EngLang teacher gave us a section of a (not in our syllabus) textbook to read. I started reading it then realised it was part of a textbook I owned physically, and I'd already read this section. Oooops-
2. That's all the EngLang homework we have over the week. Just read several pages of this textbook that's admittedly quite funny because it has printed memes as images. Oh, Burridge, never change.
3. We covered all of this stuff in class in the form of paraphrased notes. Epic stuff, Mr EngLang teacher. We had the exact same examples too and I was wondering why they looked so familiar in class.
Anyway, by the Rule of 3 that's all I'm gonna write about EngLang today. If you write "EngLang" enough it starts to not seem like a real word.
<h> yay time for fun stuff </h> [which is basically what i did all of today]
I did a lot of not-work today, mainly because I've done pretty much everything I needed to do for online school (thanks teachers for making me think this week's stuff was for yesterday only), and partially because I felt like it, so I started watching the 2020 Animaniacs reboot (watch itttttt), and then I did some informatics, and topped off the night with a new personal record in 40 line sprint in tetris.
The 2020 Animaniacs reboot is pretty awesome and quite, in their words, "zany". It's so wacky, but they throw in such good jokes and incredibly boppy songs that you have to love it. I strongly recommend it to everyone who likes cartoons, and around half of people who don't, because Animaniacs basically has a lot more budget than the average kids' show, so the writers can put funny meta stuff in there and flirt with the censors. It follows the Warner siblings, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, as they do wacky shenanigans around the Warner Bros movie lot, and it's also where the iconic Yakko's World song comes from... so there's some educational value :)
I started debugging some solutions I had written for informatics today, and I'm planning on just rewriting one since I wrote it when I was a lot less experienced and it's just really janky in general. I also discovered what stdin and stdout are and that's going to shorten my code by at least 10 lines per solution.
Anyway, I alluded to my new 40L PB in what seems to literally (not figuratively nor colloquial "literally") be the first line in this post. I've gotten slightly better at tetris and I managed to finally do a sprint where I didn't misdrop like 30 seconds in and do pretty consistently around 1.60 pps the entire time. I need to get used to better handling though- I might try for a new PB then change my handling again.
Now that I've covered the funny stuff, the fun stuff, and the not-fun stuff, I've run out of things to talk about, so I guess I'll see you guys soon. Or around the forum.
-- Sawyer
P.S. Oops I just realised I didn't talk about the maths problem. Problem's
"Let triangle ABC have AB = AC and BC = 10. Construct points D and E outside ABC with D closer to B and E closer to C such that triangle DAB ~ triangle ABC ~ triangle EAC. If DE = 45, what is AC?"
Basically I didn't realise ~ was similar (I thought it was congruent then got confused), and I took a while to actually read and parse the question, but yeah anyway I'd tell you the answer but that'd spoil the problem and ya boy Sawyer still doesn't know how to do a spoiler formatting thing. Feel free to DM me asking for the answer though.
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I've heard good stuff about 'Cold Turkey'. I believe it's desktop. I've procrastinated on looking into it, so I can't give you advice. :P
Hey Cat in the Hat,
Ah, the classic procrastination positive feedback loop. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll definitely have a look at Cold Turkey tomorrow morning! ;)
(Not because of procrastination though- I genuinely should go to bed now)
-- Sawyer
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[ooooops i totally remembered this existed]
soz guys i was busy and forgot to update y'all
<h> y12 stuff 08/03/2021 </h> [i guess this is number 4? hehe]
Hey all you cool cats and kittens! I apologise for ghosting everyone here, I've just had a busy week or two, featuring 3 competitions I had (not emotionally) signed up for and a SAC as an entree. Anyway, funny story to start off today's journal entry:
<h> comedy corner </h> [i realise i don't actually have that many funny stories so oh well this'll have to do]
After sitting an extraordinarily harsh exam, student A (who also does Software Design or whatever it's called) decides to invite everyone in their class to an outing (to bond over the trauma) and does so through a Google Form. The Google Form has several questions, including "Do you want to go to an outing?" and "When are you free? List the dates", but most notably, a multiple choice question asking "How did you go in the [exam]?"
The options are:
- Bad
- Horrible
- Terrible
- I left everything blank
- I need a fun meetup to neutralise the horrors of the [exam]
[/color]
Obviously it went really well for everyone.
Student B, who also sat the exam, then comments that whoever made the Google Form had better not be doing Software Design, because those should clearly be checkboxes.
<h> anyway sawyer, how's school stuff been </h> [yeah that was a pretty bad story, i'll find some better ones for next time]
School stuff has been alright. I just had my first SAC for the year, which went pretty badly (but it went badly for everyone else so I'm not sweating it) and I have two more SACs this week! Really getting the Year 12 vibe here. In general, I feel like I'm not really up-to-date with any of my subjects except Specialist Maths, and that's the one subject I know the SAC is going to be in a month or so for. I guess I'll do the subject-by-subject analysis of my school life then talk about random stuff. I'll do them in the order I dislike them in:
Biology: Ughhgghghhhghh I have a SAC tomorrow and I'm absolutely not ready. I kind of mentally checked out in the last few sessions when we were covering content for the SAC, or I might not have been physically to class because of competitions or whatnot, but I basically need to catch up so much content and learn how to answer questions and whatnot. I think the SAC is on protein transport/cell membraney stuff and gene regulation, and I need to go over what gene regulation is because that's mainly what I missed. If anyone has any practice SAC stuff for bio, please feel free to send them my way :)
Chemistry: Surprisingly I actually really like Chemistry right now, it's second on the list because I like everything else a bit more haha. Our SAC was on fuels and combustion calculations, and we've moved on to electrochem which is nice and relaxing, though I know we're behind the other classes so we've got lots of catch-up to do.
Physics: We covered what I like to call spinny-spin-spin, and what my Physics teacher likes to call circular or centripetal motion. It's surprisingly okay, and we got a few formulae to use for centripetal motion problems. We also get to go to Luna Park to uhhh "experience centripetal motion" ourselves (read: receive a reward for picking physics). I'm really psyched to go to Luna Park for the first time!!!
EngLang: I've got an EngLang SAC later this week, which I'm not too excited about, but we've done lots of preparation in class which helps I guess. Our teacher is really nice and helpful and chill and hopefully he gives us our practice SACs back before Thursday haha. He said our SAC is on informal spoken language, which already gives us the answer to "What mode is the text?" and "What register is the text?". Only 3 more things to actually figure out once we get given our texts.
Specialist Maths: It's actually super chill right now, even though I missed like 3 classes last week. We're just cruising through complex numbers at the moment and I think we're going to go to the next topic next class. I'll need to update my bound reference, but I think I'll procrastinate that for the time being until my SACs are dealt with.
<h> other random stuff aka the other goals i kinda care about </h> [wheeeeee]
Aside from schoolwork, I've been getting better at Tetris and I managed to get myself A- ranked :D. I've also gotten better at doing T-spins and someone called me a "T-spin machine" on chat :D.
I've also gotten hopefully a bit better at making friends? I found a nice happy Discord community which are all interested in the same stuff I am, and they've kind of adopted me into their friendship circle, so we've been hanging out a lot online. They're also scary good at Tetris- I must steal their secrets!
That's all I have to say, and I hope this formats okay.
-- Sawyer
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[hi it's been another week or so!]
uhhhh yes very active indeed
<h> y12 stuff 16/03/2021 </h> [it still feels like it should be 2020 for some reason? whatever i buy it]
(cue primary school voice) GooooOOOOOOood eeeEEEEEEeeeevennninnngggggg ATARNOTES!
Today I found out I have one class today, so I celebrated by going home after that class. Then I found out my parents went down to the city to buy something so I ended up getting home at like a lot later than I should have. Maybe I should've made that the comedy corner part of this journal entry... oh well. Have this instead.
<h> comedy corner </h> [hehehehhehee this one's the type to make u laugh in disbelief which i count as comedy because laugh!!]
Alright, full disclaimer: I heard this one on the train today from my friend, about his classmate A. I can't guarantee how accurate this is, but let's just say I know of A myself and I am genuinely not surprised.
My friend and A did Methods together last year, in the same class, at the same school. However, during the school year, A apparently did no study for Methods whatsoever, and would frequently show up to SACs not realising SACs were running. (A side note: very unexpected of A's very academically strong school, though he also never missed a SAC). A would also apparently "bully the teacher" (my friend's words, not mine) and basically show off in class. A also managed to show up to school on the day of the exam 1, at 8:00 in the morning, and being very confused why nobody was there- he thought the exam was supposed to be held at that time. Then, after the initial confusion and whatnot, A took the exam at the time it was held- 11:45 or something if I recall correctly- and walked out pretty confidently.
And A's study score? A raw 50.
<h> oh okay sawyer, what about your raw 50s? </h> [lol but to be fair A was pretty OP and i'm not so-]
School is not going good :<. We got our SACs back for biology and chemistry and uhhhhh...... yeah I'm not going into specifics but it went pretty horribly for me. Even with the class average in mind. Also I seem to have forgotten what we're doing in all of my classes except Physics- nop nevermind it's coming back now. I guess I'll just have to use my SAC results as motivation to study harder and learn what I messed up.
I'll do my usual subject-by-subject analysis of my school academic life then make a few more comments about random stuff like how I got back into Education Perfect and also I should really watch the rest of the Animaniacs 2020 season sometime. I don't know why that popped up out of the blue but I buy it. Also if you haven't noticed yet I just kinda write whatever comes out of my brain at any given moment and don't edit unless it's a spelling error or it's not grammaring correctly.
Let's do this in the order I had these classes last:
Physics: Ehhhhh, it's alright I guess. I have a worksheet due soon, which I should probably do. We're covering vertical circular motion, so it's still spinny-spin-spin, and we actually have to finish the Luna Park (help I keep misspelling this as Lunar Park) worksheet they gave us. Sadge. Also, we've kind of moved onto projectile motion? We're in this nice grey area between topics where we have to finish the work for the previous one and we get to learn about the next one in class. Projectile motion seems pretty easy so far, and I am almost insistent on calling it YEET MECHANICS to people in real life, much to their dismay. As you can tell, I like giving things funny nicknames.
Chemistry: Oh god we got our SACs back and I am sad. I screwed over so many questions because I forgot a lot about fuels. :<. I need to get better at explain-type questions and just general answering questions with actual words, I guess. We had a really intense SAC handback session with lots of yelling (thanks teachers) and a bit of crying (thanks classmates), and I think we're trying to recover from the trauma by doing as much electrochem as we can. Galvanic cells for the win! I need to do well on the next SAC otherwise my ranking is totally screwed over. Also, Physics gets funny nicknames but I just like calling Chem topics [prefix]-chem. Like combustion is thermochem, redox is electrochem, and I predict organic will be ohgodwhydidieverpickchem.
Spishy Speshy: My Specialist Maths teacher is super chill in case you've not heard and he took us through some basic vector stuff the other day (read: when we had spesh class). Spec is going alright, I know I screwed over the last question in my last assignment (by not reading the question!) but I'm pretty proud of the geo-bashy solution I had. I don't really know what to talk about in Spec/Spesh (jeez why can't I be consistent?) because truth be told, I do literally no study for this outside of class, save assignments and pre-test-bound-reference-making. That reminds me, I should work on my bound reference some time soon.
EngLang: The post-SAC vibe is real. We haven't gotten our SACs back (did I mention we did one the other day?) but the general vibe is :<. That sounds like a bit of a problem. We've progressed from informal spoken to informal written language, and I wish my teacher would go through stuff more quickly so we can have more time to prepare for the next SAC!! It's alright though, it's a chill class and we're just vibing. It looks like we'll get there in time, since I saw my classmate (in a different EngLang class) the other day learning about face needs, and we've already covered that, so hopefully we're ahead.
Bio Log E: I should get around to nicknaming all the topics in Bio. I find it helps mentally navigating the school year a lot easier in my mind and it's funny to say YEET MECHANICS! to people. We're doing photosynthesis in class right now, and we're supposed to be doing a practical soon. Actually, it was meant to be today but the teacher had to attend to something and cancelled today's class. I forgot what the practical was supposed to be about but I'm gonna hazard a guess and say.... photosynthesis! Pretty epic stuff. What would be a good nickname for photosynthesis... the light diet? Hmm.
That's all my classes. I realise I didn't comment on the Bio SAC... hahha it didn't go that well either. Hmm. Also, why are all my SACs clumped together? Does anyone else have this kind of phenomenon? I find it's like kind of suboptimal but since it's a bit of a SAC-free time period I'm not complaining.
<h> cmon you said you would talk about random stuff </h> [yeah i don't have that much to talk about]
I mentioned Education Perfect before, in the first section I think. Maybe not. I'm not looking back to check. Anyway, I got an email the other day from Education Perfect about my login details I think? I'm a fan of EP, so I immediately go check check when I get home from Luna Park, and well it turns out the government gave me an account! I've started doing some EP, and it's been really useful for VCE stuff. I'm a competitive person (goes really badly with the trait "kinda bad at everything") and it's been motivating me to keep increasing my point total.
On an tangential side note, I got an email from Edrolo welcoming me. They also wished me luck on my HSC journey in the same email. Thanks Edrolo, I'll keep you in mind when I graduate in NSW. For now, EP can carry me in VCE :D
I'll probably mention now that I'm not sponsored by EP or Edrolo.
Anyway, nothing really cool happened this week. Mainly because it's still Tuesday. Partially because I'm a bit of a boring person, but let's go with "It's Tuesday" as the reason for now. I'll wrap up this post because it's getting long and I'm running out of things to say. Feel free to analyse this EngLang-style if you want. I'll give you a pointer: it's informal written and the social purpose is to promote myself and keep myself kind of accountable? Free hedge!
Should I start doing a closing in my posts?
Goodnight everybody!
-- Sawyer