Yertle's VCE Journey

[chooby]

Future:
T&T SAC on Thursday, a Methods test rescheduled from Thursday to next Monday, and next Thursday a SAC/excursion to Luna Park for Physics!!!

So how was the trip to Luna Park and how did your SAC go?

[Yertle the Turtle]

So how was the trip to Luna Park and how did your SAC go?

The Luna Park trip is this coming week, so it hasn't happened yet, but the T&T SAC was pretty good. It was quite easy, just a couple of things I wasn't sure about, but I think that on the whole it was pretty good.

Yesterday was our school swimming carnival, and me and a friend of mine Eevrok made school history by being commentators in Yorkshire accents for various swimming events, which was pretty fun. We also planned a novelty event, a pool-noodle riding relay, but sadly we ran out of time to do it... Now we're planning more commentary for athletics carnival, and this time hopefully we can do the whole thing rather than individual races...

[Yertle the Turtle]

Luna Park was today, and it was pretty cool! I've never been before, so it was a great experience for me. I only went on three things because of motion sickness problems, but I was glad to experience the Luna Park "rollercoaster" Scenic Railway, but man, it is so bumpy. Because I'm fairly tall, my knees constantly were touching the seat in front, and as you come up a rise it is so bumpy, so my knees are now super sore... Still, it was pretty cool! The Silly Serpent was pretty good too, but what was fun was taking out the teacher's car in dodgem cars! Mostly I just watched though, and did the Physics workbook. It was still pretty good to have a day off school, and miss a double English Also got to see a McLaren, which was pretty cool. (shrug)

We won our volleyball game yesterday, so we've still got the top spot on the ladder, with one round to go... It was a pretty fun game too, so all round it's been going well.
Physics and Chemistry are still pretty cool, and we've finally had our first 'official' lessons in the new labs, having had some unofficial ones in there before. We had a Methods test that I did pretty well on, but I'm really waiting for the marks on our T&T SAC that we should be getting back soon. All round it's been a pretty good week, with the exception of the poetry in English and getting an email from Distance Ed saying "why haven't you handed in the first five weeks of work, you're getting behind, blah blah..." when their tech wouldn't let me on to the site until 3 days ago! I hope everyone else's week has been even better!

[sarangiya]

All round it's been a pretty good week, with the exception of the poetry in English and getting an email from Distance Ed saying "why haven't you handed in the first five weeks of work, you're getting behind, blah blah..." when their tech wouldn't let me on to the site until 3 days ago! I hope everyone else's week has been even better!

How is specialist with DECV going? I've been curious as to what your impression would be.
I did philosophy DECV and I know lots of people who did Japanese through VSL, but I think both of those are quite difficult to do without face-to-face, immediate-feedback kind of teaching. Spesh I don't do, so I'm not sure what it'd be like. I'm actually imagining it wouldn't be bad, and since I'm reckoning that you would be very capable, maybe it isn't an issue. Hmmm. So, what do you think of it?

[Yertle the Turtle]

How is specialist with DECV going? I've been curious as to what your impression would be.
I did philosophy DECV and I know lots of people who did Japanese through VSL, but I think both of those are quite difficult to do without face-to-face, immediate-feedback kind of teaching. Spesh I don't do, so I'm not sure what it'd be like. I'm actually imagining it wouldn't be bad, and since I'm reckoning that you would be very capable, maybe it isn't an issue. Hmmm. So, what do you think of it?

Thus far it hasn't been too bad, with the exception of the start of this year, which was a fiasco. However, I do feel like they under-prepare students. For example, I don't find their work and exams hard at all, whereas the textbook is difficult. Sadly, when I don't have a teacher I have no accountability and am totally un-motivated, so I really don't do as well as I probably should, but I don't think that this is 100% my fault. I just don't think that they are a great school.

School's going OK at the moment, trying to improve my motivation and accountability, as well as trying to improve my attitude, which has been quite bad of late. If anyone has advice about how to improve attitude towards school, pls help!

[sarangiya]

Thus far it hasn't been too bad, with the exception of the start of this year, which was a fiasco. However, I do feel like they under-prepare students. For example, I don't find their work and exams hard at all, whereas the textbook is difficult. Sadly, when I don't have a teacher I have no accountability and am totally un-motivated, so I really don't do as well as I probably should, but I don't think that this is 100% my fault. I just don't think that they are a great school.

I think the same way. It was hard for me to stay motivated. However I really love the learning style of distance education, so I enjoyed it. But definitely, when you hit a wall it's seemingly impossible to actually bring yourself to do work.

School's going OK at the moment, trying to improve my motivation and accountability, as well as trying to improve my attitude, which has been quite bad of late. If anyone has advice about how to improve attitude towards school, pls help!

Legit same hahaha good luck!

[Yertle the Turtle]

Haven't posted for a while, so here goes again:
Since I last posted, we've had a T&T SAC returned, and I got 96% which I was pretty happy with. It wasn't a really hard SAC, but I got the top mark in a class of 22, so I was pretty happy with that. We also did an English SAC, and it was terrible. The teacher knows that I do better on structural questions, and there was one on the SAC, but for some reason that I cannot understand I didn't do it. I had a total freeze for 20min without writing anything, just because I couldn't think of anything. I don't even know what happened to me, but I feel like the SAC went really badly. We also won our first Teacher vs. Student game of the year, netball. Otherwise, not much has really happened since I last added to this. We've got a Chemistry SAC tomorrow, but after sport that afternoon we have holidays, really looking forward to that! Anyone going away over Easter?

[sarangiya]

Haven't posted for a while, so here goes again:
Since I last posted, we've had a T&T SAC returned, and I got 96% which I was pretty happy with. It wasn't a really hard SAC, but I got the top mark in a class of 22, so I was pretty happy with that. We also did an English SAC, and it was terrible. The teacher knows that I do better on structural questions, and there was one on the SAC, but for some reason that I cannot understand I didn't do it. I had a total freeze for 20min without writing anything, just because I couldn't think of anything. I don't even know what happened to me, but I feel like the SAC went really badly. We also won our first Teacher vs. Student game of the year, netball. Otherwise, not much has really happened since I last added to this. We've got a Chemistry SAC tomorrow, but after sport that afternoon we have holidays, really looking forward to that! Anyone going away over Easter?

Congrats on your fantastic mark in T&T!
Hopefully your English SAC wasn't as bad as you thought. Sometimes it isn't. I thought I'd completely botched my practice SAC - had the supervisor playing videos, people taking, and not the correct time allocated. I ended up not being able to write a whole paragraph and felt sick afterwards. To my surprise, I pulled an okay mark. Here's hoping the same happens for you.
Hope you did well on your chemistry SAC too!
I didn't go away this Easter - family came to me. How was your Easter weekend?
Best wishes!!

[Yertle the Turtle]

Congrats on your fantastic mark in T&T!
Hopefully your English SAC wasn't as bad as you thought. Sometimes it isn't. I thought I'd completely botched my practice SAC - had the supervisor playing videos, people taking, and not the correct time allocated. I ended up not being able to write a whole paragraph and felt sick afterwards. To my surprise, I pulled an okay mark. Here's hoping the same happens for you.
Hope you did well on your chemistry SAC too!
I didn't go away this Easter - family came to me. How was your Easter weekend?
Best wishes!!

Thanks, man! Congrats on your MotM, btw
The Easter weekend was good, went away up to Halls Gap, it was pretty fun. Apparently the English SAC didn't go badly, it just didn't go as well as either the teacher or I would have liked, so we'll see what the actual mark is next term. I think the Chemistry SAC went pretty well, but I can never be sure. It was all about comparing different types of cells, and I feel like I did well. However, each time I went and checked over my work after I was done I kept finding mistakes (and that was 4 times...), including finding a massive mistake where I'd totally misread the question, and it asked for an equation to explain the answer, and I'd merely explained the answer with only 3 minutes to go. Still, unless I was really badly second-guessing myself, I'm really glad I went through and checked repeatedly. That's all for this update, as the holidays continue to swallow up my time.

Update on Specialist Maths via Distance Ed:
I am gradually catching up, and mostly it is fun and interesting work, though occasionally mind-blowing. Though it's not as mind-boggling as Physics sometimes is, Yay Physics!!!

[sarangiya]

snip

Thank you! I was very surprised. I'll try to contribute more in the future haha.
Halls Gap sounds great! Bet it was busy.
I'm glad to hear your SACs seem okay. I'm sure all will be well.
Glad you're enjoying spesh, too. It must be great. I've heard from friends that Physics is just a big wtf did i just learn but that's probably what makes it fun, right?
All the best!!!

[turinturambar]

Holidays swallow up your time?

[Yertle the Turtle]

First week is done, so here is the update:

Had 3 SACs returned last week, the Chemistry, Physics and English ones. Really happy with the Physics and Chemistry SACs, 88% for both of them, but much less happy with the English SAC, with 21/30
Had our school athletics carnival last week, and it was pretty fun, had some time to have some fun with my mates, so in the end my last aths carnival ever was the best. Specialist is not going as well as I would have liked, still about 4 weeks behind, had one weeks work returned with 33%, and the SAC is coming up in 2 weeks. On the plus side, it is calculator-allowed and doesn't include anti-differentiation, so I'm pretty happy about that. In Physics yesterday we burned out a power-pack, short-circuiting it in a (failed) attempt to observe a magnetic field around a wire, there was a puff of grey smoke that looked pretty cool, but stank to be honest. Ah well... I'm rambling again. On the whole, the first week back (and a half) went pretty well, sorta looking forward to this term, hopefully it continues to go well.

Went to a couple of the AN VCE lectures, got to meet legends @zsteve and @insanipi, great to meet you guys. Massive shoutout to the people who run those lectures, a great job was done. Really good job from Luke and Stephen in the Chem and Methods lectures, keep it up guys!

[Joseph41]

First week is done, so here is the update:

Had 3 SACs returned last week, the Chemistry, Physics and English ones. Really happy with the Physics and Chemistry SACs, 88% for both of them, but much less happy with the English SAC, with 21/30
Had our school athletics carnival last week, and it was pretty fun, had some time to have some fun with my mates, so in the end my last aths carnival ever was the best. Specialist is not going as well as I would have liked, still about 4 weeks behind, had one weeks work returned with 33%, and the SAC is coming up in 2 weeks. On the plus side, it is calculator-allowed and doesn't include anti-differentiation, so I'm pretty happy about that. In Physics yesterday we burned out a power-pack, short-circuiting it in a (failed) attempt to observe a magnetic field around a wire, there was a puff of grey smoke that looked pretty cool, but stank to be honest. Ah well... I'm rambling again. On the whole, the first week back (and a half) went pretty well, sorta looking forward to this term, hopefully it continues to go well.

Went to a couple of the AN VCE lectures, got to meet legends @zsteve and @insanipi, great to meet you guys. Massive shoutout to the people who run those lectures, a great job was done. Really good job from Luke and Stephen in the Chem and Methods lectures, keep it up guys!

Bummed we missed each other at the lectures somehow, but glad you enjoyed them!

[Yertle the Turtle]

Hi all, it's good to be back. I don't really know why I haven't posted on AN in forever, but I just never really felt like I could, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I'm back now, and mean to stick around for quite a long while now. Here follows a long and complicated update on the present which I would advise you to skip if you have any wish to maintain your sanity.

Life update

I'm in India at the moment, braving the heat. I've been sort of wanting to come on here, but at the same time I just felt uncomfortable about it, I don't know why, but being here away from my friends has reminded me of this awesome community, so here I am. It's good to be back, now that I am. There isn't really much else to say about my life...

School update

Here comes the meaty part of the journal. In terms of where I'm at at the moment, I'm pretty confident about school at the moment, really feeling good about it. The aim wavered for a while, but now I'm back to intending to go to Monash and do Engineering, and an excursion to Monash's Engineering and Science faculties strengthened this intention.

English

I still loath English with a deadly loathing. The teacher keeps telling me that I'm good at English and then gives me mediocre marks. I don't understand the point of writing all the rubbish that I am forced to. Why should I analyse books and articles in the way we have to, when I can see what they are trying to do without writing a long flowery essay on why the author put a comma after this word and how he/she/it is trying to get me to throw myself into the nearest pond. I don't understand the point, and until I do I will keep ranting about it. Anyway, I'm still confident of a 35. English is a subject I do on sufferance, I don't pretend to enjoy it, I just do it.

T&T

T&T is just boring at the moment. The teacher just stands up the front at lectures us from slide after slide of notes, that few, if any, students copy or do anything with. 90% of the class play games on their laptops, and even I struggle to concentrate, and I have pretty good concentrations. We just slowly go through chapter after chapter of Luke, learning very little and being bored to death. On the plus side I'm still in the top 2 in the class, and in such a small state cohort (~350 students) I can probably get high 40s if I do well in the exam.

Methods

At the moment Methods is pretty easy. I haven't really struggled with anything at all in Methods this year, with a really nice 92% in the first SAC. I enjoy maths, so this is pretty good. There's not much to say about Methods...

Specialist

Almost caught up, after a semester to do so. It feels good to be nearly caught up, and once I have got through differential equations it should be a pretty nice run for home, with just probability and Physics left in the course. I find Spesh level calculus quite difficult, despite finding Methods calculus easy, but once I get past that it should be all good. It's hard not having a physical class to work with, but I'm coping OK I think.

Physics

Not very happy with Physics at the moment. I expected 100% on the SAC on Transformers, but missed out because I forgot to put a title on graphs. I don't know if I have mentioned before that we have to class-share with another school, but their teacher is dodgy. She marked that SAC and took a mark off because I answered a question with 1.2kV rather than 1200V although the question was in kV and did not ask for the answer in V. That was the second hint that she was dodgy after her marking of the previous SAC had her class vastly outscoring mine, despite it being the other way round in the first SAC. We have complained, and our teacher is getting the SACs cross-marked, so hopefully my 57% will get a bit of a boost... On the whole though, I find the course itself really fun and much of it is quite intuitive, and quite easy.

Chemistry

Chemistry is quite fun at the moment. Organic and food chemistry are really interesting and not too hard. We got an excursion to Monash for organic chemistry which was really interesting. Now I just want to know how I did in our mid-year exam. It was the NEAP Unit 3 practice exam, and they are really hard, so we'll see how it goes. I was pretty happy with it though, so hopefully my feeling as to how I did was right.

There, now if you got through all that well done. If you read your way all the way through that, feel free to PM me (be honest ;P ) and I'll give you... I don't know, an emoji of a piece of cake and some kudos. Is that good enough?

It's really good to be back in this community after ages away, I look forward to catching up with y'all soon. Cheers!

[Joseph41]

^Really nice to see this updated again! When are you back in the country?