Will I struggle in spesh next year?

[shadows]

Hi guys I am currently doing GMA 1/2, and doing Methods 3/4

I've picked up spesh in unit 2, not having done unit 1. (So I have not covered vectors, sequences, circle geometry etc.)

This unit, I am finding it quite hard to wrap my head around the concepts of Polar co-ordinates, graphing them, as well as reciprocal trig stuff.

I know these concepts will occur and be assumed knowledge next year. Will it get much much harder, or does everyone find it hard first when they come across these concepts? How hard is it compared to methods?, was it a subject that required a lot of time?
Will I be disadvantaged not completing unit 1? Teacher said I would be fine if I just reviewed it in the summer holidays? From people having done spesh, you would agree? I would like another opinion. I just want to be prepared and make the realistic and sensible choices next year. I don't want to regret my decisions and realise halfway through next year it is a subject I would have rather dropped..

[BigAl]

I didn't do gma in y11 at all and did spesh in y12. I guess it was fine for me. I just put some extra work in the summer holiday (integrals and differential equations) and the rest was ok during the year. Reciprocal trig stuff gets confusing at the first time due to asymptotes and stuff..but you'll get used to it

[brenden]

In 2012 my school's Spesh class had never done GMA (pretty sure that happens every year at our school). They did pretty well, too.

[pterozachtyl]

I'm doing Specialist having only done Methods 1/2 last year. No GMA, and certainly not 3/4 Methods. You'll be more than fine. Specialist and Methods 3/4 have a massive overlap with differentiation and integration, and the new concepts (Complex Numbers, Vectors, Dynamics etc) really aren't that hard, especially if you're a strong Maths student.