HSC Journey- From Prelims to HSC

[fantasticbeasts3]

I hope trials are going to be okay!! I was in the same boat w/ CSSA trials, like what the flying frick is Modern and Maths on the same day? So stupid. You'll get through it though :-)

Hope you have an awesome week!

[emilyygeorgexx]

Hey guys,
So school's back. Except I just saw the timetable for my trial exams and I wanna cry ;-; So I have 2U math and Modern on the same day askfjhsfeh. And then I have physics and Society & Culture are also clashing during the same time :/ I'm not entirely sure how this is gonna work. I would assume I'm gonna have to do Society & Culture first and then physics in the afternoon since physics is a 3 hour exam and Business Studies (which is also a 3 hour exam) is after Society & Culture. I'll have to ask my Curriculum Coordinator about it.

I have homework to do so this is gonna be a very short update.

See you soon!

- Olivia

My trial timetable is not amazing as well. I don't have any double ups but I have 4 in a row in the first week, 2 in a row in the second week and 1 in the third week!

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,
It's second day back at school and I'm slowly getting my marks back. I got physics yesterday and I kinda figured I would fail that exam. The annoying thing is that my teacher said there was room for scabbing- if there was room for scabbing, why didn't he just give us the mark in the first place?! On top of that, there were a lot of dodgy questions, like the projectile question in the multiple choice but none of the options had the right answer. Or the fact that the transformer question in the multiple choice didn't have the label 'input' and 'output' in the diagram so there are two correct answers. And then there's just me being salty over the fact that I didn't get full marks in the question about momentum, Newton's 3rd Law and launching a rocket. When we went through it in class, the marking criteria said we had to explain the 3rd Law, state momentum needs to be conserved and apply Conservation of Momentum. However, I mentioned that the 3rd Law (equal opposite reaction etc) and I mentioned that momentum needs to be conserved so there needs to be same amount of momentum when launching etc. Then there were really weird questions like asking us about ablation (even though he mentioned that he rarely sees ablation in HSC papers) or mentioning a specific type of nylon used as an insulator for transformers (and that was also rare as well). I handed my paper back for scabbing but I'm kinda annoyed at how dodgy the paper is. Or maybe I'm just salty.

Math I kinda figured I would fail as well. I mean, I am kinda improving from last year but it's a really slow improvement. If my rate of improvement is this slow, then I don't think I'm ever gonna get at least 90% in the HSC. Last year, I would barely scrape a pass and now I'm passing- my teachers like to include HSC questions in our paper, which I think is quite dodgy because we're all working towards HSC level, which means we shouldn't really be working at a HSC level yet. Sure we need challenging questions but that doesn't mean they should be throwing us HSC questions. Anyway, my math teacher is kinda bitter over the fact that the person who came first in 2U wasn't in our class and he's all like 'There's always room for improvement because no one got 100%.' WTF no one gets 100% in the HSC so how is he expecting us to get that.

Anyway, I'm also a bit salty over my SAC mark. I did well in the speech but I wanted the 20/20 lol. My teacher said I didn't show a strong connection to the five SAC concepts. Will always be salty over that -_- And I'm also salty over English. I'm always like "Remember that time when I was second in English." I mean, I'm ranked 5th in the exam (rank 4th overall) but I wanted to maintain my 2nd rank from last year. Both essays I got an A but I feel like I just managed to get that mark. The only validation I got was the fact that I included a lot of textual references lol- and then there was like 3 paragraphs on how to improve.

I'm a bit nervous for Modern History- that was the only subject where I maintained my first rank throughout prelims and starting Year 12. If my rank dropped I'd probably be slightly bitter but also because of the fact that the girl who sits next to me loves to talk crap about me (since Year but she's always salty how I get higher marks than her, especially in history. If she gets higher than me, she's gonna rub it in my face. Like, in Year 9, our science teacher was horrible and she was like to me "Remember how I used to be first and you used to be second? Yeah, those were the good times." I don't need someone to rub my rank in my face -_-

Anyway, that's probably enough saltiness/bitterness from me in one day. I'm probably gonna get salty when I get SOR back, only because my teacher always says my practice responses are really good but when exams come around and I include the main points in the exam responses, I don't get full marks in my responses.

On another note, is there anyone going to the HTA History Study Day? Really curious if anyone's going.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,
Short update today but I'm really excited to share this. Over the holidays, I was offered the position to write for a UK-based NGO called We Make Change- the process felt like applying for a job because I had to apply, then do an interview, sign paperwork and I have a work email lol (I just realised the wording is weird. I applied for the position and they offered it to me, just to clarify). Anyway, since this week is RSPCA week- I'm assuming it is in the UK, according to my Head of Research- two of my articles finally got published:

Pangolins: The Most Trafficked Animal You’ve Probably Never Heard Of


Exposing Australian Live Animal Exporters

Kinda annoyed that they still haven't set up my Wordpress account so the author is credited to the blog manager (this is also happening to other writers as well) but I am excited that my article is up.

The reason why I'm excited is because today the Labor Party announced that they will phasing out the live sheep export and RSPCA will be helping by donating to farmers to minimise financial losses. I just found it cool that the day after my article got posted, the Labor Party announced their policy.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

[Poet]

Hey guys,
Short update today but I'm really excited to share this. Over the holidays, I was offered the position to write for a UK-based NGO called We Make Change- the process felt like applying for a job because I had to apply, then do an interview, sign paperwork and I have a work email lol. Anyway, since this week is RSPCA week- I'm assuming it is in the UK, according to my Head of Research- two of my articles finally got published:

Pangolins: The Most Trafficked Animal You’ve Probably Never Heard Of


Exposing Australian Live Animal Exporters

Kinda annoyed that they still haven't set up my Wordpress account so the author is credited to the blog manager (this is also happening to other writers as well) but I am excited that my article is up.

The reason why I'm excited is because today the Labor Party announced that they will phasing out the live sheep export and RSPCA will be helping by donating to farmers to minimise financial losses. I just found it cool that the day after my article got posted, the Labor Party announced their policy.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

Hey, Liv!
Been reading your journey journal for a while and always find it relatable and enjoyable.
Just skimmed through these articles and they look amazing!
I've been passionate about pangolins for ages, so I'm overjoyed someone shares my sentiments.
This is a great achievement - well done! 

[owidjaja]

Hey, Liv!
Been reading your journey journal for a while and always find it relatable and enjoyable.

Ahaha my saltiness and pettiness over everything is relatable?

Just skimmed through these articles and they look amazing!
I've been passionate about pangolins for ages, so I'm overjoyed someone shares my sentiments.
This is a great achievement - well done! 

Thanks I found it amusing because my Head of Research didn't expect me to submit 2 articles within the first 2 days after I got settled in (other writers have other commitments so they don't submit articles like everyday).

And yes! Pangolins need some love! They're awkward and adorable little creatures! I get amused whenever I see memes of pangolins being described as how they look like they're too nervous to ask you to prom or they look like they want to discuss with you an issue in private because of their front two claws. I find their defence mechanism relatable- curling up in a ball sounds like something I would do lol. But it's kinda sad that no one really knows them and their defence mechanism makes it easy for poachers to catch them. We Make Change posted a poll on Twitter asking what the most endangered species was (in conjunction with my article) and about 21% of the voters voted for the African Elephant and the Bengal Tiger.

[Caitlynk_22]

Pangolins! Pangolins! Pangolins! They were the starting point for my art major! Gah, so glad to see that people actually know what they are. Even when referring to my previous concept my teacher says armadillo (or however you spell it).

So glad to see someone writing about them! And congrats on getting the articles published!

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,
Short update from me. I mentioned previously that I wasn't credited as the author for my previous articles, but now my Wordpress account is set up, I can now be credited as the author! I feel petty to ask my blog manager to give me access to my own articles but I keep reminding myself that I was the one that put in the effort to research and write my own articles (pretty sure my Head of Research is also annoyed at me because I really like to be updated with anything related to my own work lol). So my pangolin article is now credited under my name, I just need to wait if I can gain access over my article on live animal export.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

[angewina_naguen]

Hey guys,
So school's back. Except I just saw the timetable for my trial exams and I wanna cry ;-; So I have 2U math and Modern on the same day askfjhsfeh. And then I have physics and Society & Culture are also clashing during the same time :/ I'm not entirely sure how this is gonna work. I would assume I'm gonna have to do Society & Culture first and then physics in the afternoon since physics is a 3 hour exam and Business Studies (which is also a 3 hour exam) is after Society & Culture. I'll have to ask my Curriculum Coordinator about it.

I have homework to do so this is gonna be a very short update.

See you soon!

- Olivia

Hey, Olivia!

I feel so bad for you  But how bad is our HSC timetable with that Modern/Society day  NESA just wants to see us crash and burn  I hope the trials timetable won't discourage you because you're such a help on this site and I would love to see you succeed  It's going to be a rough time coming up for all of us but I hope it'll get better after all of this 

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,
So I'm starting to get my marks back. I'll start off with the good marks because that's the main reason why I still have hope. I got Modern back and I got 24/25, equal first. I'm not sure if my teacher would agree with me because the Modern sub teacher we had last term is a bit nicer with marking. My teacher made it clear that for those who wrote one page for Part A would only get a 6. I find it amusing that the teacher didn't point out my mistake in Part A- I named the wrong film when I was talking about Rienfenstahl's first film and I dreaded to get my paper back but he didn't call me out.

Now to the horrible stuff. Extension Math was brutal and my math teacher was like (jokingly) "I think I gained weight from marking your paper because the sadder the marks, the more breaks I wanna take and the more snacks I eat." We kinda expected our marks to be bad. The paper was 50% prelim and 50% HSC but we haven't done a lot of HSC stuff so there was a lot of trig- except most of us didn't remember how to do the T-formula stuff. So trig was our weakest. To put things into perspective as to how bad we were, our class average was 34%. My teacher was low-key savage about our marks because when we were going through the paper he was like "At this point, I'm happy if I made a mistake in marking."

The thing I'm glad about is that he mentioned that in our class there are two cases: either you're doing well in 2U but 3U is going downhill or you're going downhill in 2U and 3U. If you're going downhill in both classes then he will want to speak to you and possibly offer dropping 3U but still remain in the class because when he spoke to my math coordinator, some of us have issues with teachers (so when we go through 3U content, those who drop 3U will do 2U revision). Thankfully, I'm in the first case (I mentioned before I'm improving in 2U). He said for those in the first case, he will be conducting mandatory remedial classes during lunch and may start next week. Is all this depressing? Very, considering how our marks are so low and we have 2 assessments left and we started off a bit shaky because we changed math teachers halfway and my previous math teacher was following a different scope and sequence so that messed up our order. But I am glad he's willing to offer a solution to make our class improve unlike my previous math teacher. We were in a similar position when we got our yearlies back. To put things into perspective on how bad we did in yearlies, my rank was 7/23 but my course grade was a D. This means the highest mark was a C (in this task, only 2 people scraped a pass). But I'm happy he's willing to propose a solution to help us because our math teacher just looked at us in disappointment and moved on.

Which brings me to my next dilemma: should I drop 3U? This has been on my mind for a while now because I used to do well in 3U (my overall rank in half yearlies last year was 3rd) and now 3U is going downhill. I haven't spoken to my teacher about it yet because he's calling up people one by one when he has set us work. He believes I have potential to do well in 2U but I'm not sure about 3U. On top of that, my Curriculum Coordinator (different to last term's one because the usual Curriculum Coordinator was on leave because of medical issues and now she's back) was asking me about my units. She wasn't pressuring me to drop but she was asking how I was going and I told her I will be reviewing when I get my marks back. But now I'm not even sure anymore.

I'm also getting my overall ranks for other subjects. So my overall ranks are:
English: 4/50-ish
2U: Not comfortabel sharing but I am in top 15 out of 30-ish people
3U: Not sure yet
Physics: Lol jk I'm not last, I can tell you that
Modern: 1/20
Society & Culture: 4/20-ish
SOR: Haven't gotten anything
History Extension: Teacher just started marking it last week

So that's how I'm going. As I'm writing this, I kinda realise how all over the place my ranks are. In certain subjects, I'm doing relatively well and then I'm failing in other subjects, so I'm not sure where I'm going.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

[owidjaja]

Hey, Olivia!

I feel so bad for you  But how bad is our HSC timetable with that Modern/Society day  NESA just wants to see us crash and burn  I hope the trials timetable won't discourage you because you're such a help on this site and I would love to see you succeed  It's going to be a rough time coming up for all of us but I hope it'll get better after all of this 

Hey there!

Pretty sure NESA just wants to throw us under the bus- we're the last year group so might as well make as suffer more -_- Pretty sure you'll do well too! I guess we're on the same boat on Modern/Society day haha

[fantasticbeasts3]

Hey Olivia!

Just adding my two cents on the dropping 3U thing. If you think you're going to do better with just 2U, maybe dropping is the best option. If you want to do a uni course that has 3U as recommended knowledge, you can always take a bridging course anyway. 3U is very time consuming, especially for 1 unit and from personal experience, dropping cleared out so much time for me to focus on other subjects... so maybe that's something to consider?

Also, congrats on that Modern mark!! So good to hear about that one :-)

All the best!

[owidjaja]

Hey guys,
Feels like it's been a while since I've updated. I'm slowly feeling the burden of doing more units than necessary. I've been crying myself to sleep during the past week because of so many things going on- my PIP drafts are getting roasted, I feel like I'm behind in Extension History, I'm constantly debating to drop 3U or not. On top of that, I'm falling behind in my SAC notes and I haven't had the time to finish them. And scholarship applications are slowly opening, which means I really need to get a move on with my responses.

Anyway, I got my Extension History marks back with 22/25, ranking 1st in my class. I still haven't got my paper back so I can't really say where I fell apart. I was kinda nervous to get my marks back because I was paranoid whether I explained post-modernism correctly and applied it correctly- we haven't gone through that it class so my knowledge was based on my own reading and discussions with my Modern-sub teacher from last term. As for my Major Work, I'm slowly integrating my ideas together into paragraphs. I'm hoping to finish my plan for my third body paragraph tomorrow so I can show it to my teacher and get some feedback.

As for my PIP, I mentioned previously that I was getting roasted- don't get me wrong, I love some good roasting. Considering my introduction, Chapter 1 and 2 got completely roasted in one go by a different SAC teacher (who was also a PIP marker), I was completely overwhelmed by how bad my material was. I panicked because I felt like I was behind again, and I realised that Chapter 3 is due next week and I've only started the introduction. On top of that, my other teacher wants me to make my PIP material more appealing, even though at this stage, I'm still in the process of getting my ideas down in essay/report form. I'm really hoping to sit with my teacher again tomorrow over the feedback and submit Chapter 3 draft by the end of this week so I can focus on polishing all my material throughout the rest of the term.

Anyways, see you soon!

- Olivia

[jamonwindeyer]

Feels like it's been a while since I've updated. I'm slowly feeling the burden of doing more units than necessary. I've been crying myself to sleep during the past week because of so many things going on- my PIP drafts are getting roasted, I feel like I'm behind in Extension History, I'm constantly debating to drop 3U or not. On top of that, I'm falling behind in my SAC notes and I haven't had the time to finish them. And scholarship applications are slowly opening, which means I really need to get a move on with my responses.

Ditch those scholarship applications Olivia! They aren't due for months - If you are crying yourself to sleep, something is going wrong, and you need to take steps to fix that. Putting scholarship applications on hold wherever possible is a consequence free way to free up some of your time. Scholarships due in September should be right at the bottom of your priority list at this stage of the year!

Anyways, I got my Extension History marks back with 22/25, ranking 1st in my class. I still haven't got my paper back so I can't really say where I fell apart. I was kinda nervous to get my marks back because I was paranoid whether I explained post-modernism correctly and applied it correctly- we haven't gone through that it class so my knowledge was based on my own reading and discussions with my Modern-sub teacher from last term. As for my Major Work, I'm slowly integrating my ideas together into paragraphs. I'm hoping to finish my plan for my third body paragraph tomorrow so I can show it to my teacher and get some feedback.

22/25 isn't falling apart at all, especially for Extension History!! By all means aim higher but that's a really amazing mark!!
Remember to take lots of deep breaths - You are doing so well, try to put less pressure on yourself!

[owidjaja]

Ditch those scholarship applications Olivia! They aren't due for months - If you are crying yourself to sleep, something is going wrong, and you need to take steps to fix that. Putting scholarship applications on hold wherever possible is a consequence free way to free up some of your time. Scholarships due in September should be right at the bottom of your priority list at this stage of the year!

For Co-op, yes it's due in September (or August? I need to check) but for UTS Women in Engineering, it's due on 17th June, so I have just less than a month to write my responses. I think it's more on the thought that I don't feel like I'm gonna get a 90+ ATAR- a 96 for Co-op and 93 for Aerospace Engineering (I swear every year, UNSW keeps increasing the ATAR cut-off from 91, to 92 last year, and now 93), especially how I'm on the verge of dropping 3U math but I still haven't made the decision yet.

Remember to take lots of deep breaths - You are doing so well, try to put less pressure on yourself!

I think it's more on the fact that I'm starting to feel the burden of doing more units than necessary, which is why I'm falling apart :/ There are so many things I need to do but I just don't have the time to do so.