The Depresso Expresso (fun_jirachi's HSC Journey)

[fun_jirachi]

as you can probably tell by the title this is my HSC Journey, also a place where i can vent my feelings about how dumb NESA, my English teacher, the new syllabus and a ton of other stuff is. also to cry inside when school sucks (24/7 365d)  also as evidenced by the title

Info about me:
Subjects you can look in the thing under every post I make
I'm in Year 11 rn but i accelerate two subjects (2U maths and modern history). tbh idk why i'm even accelerating; 2u maths won't even count cos im planning to do 4u and my mod marks are atrocious so they're gonna be covered up by phys/chem and more garbage english
School: Sydney Boys High
Age: 15

Sooooo today was great, had the best day in my cycle imo
tennis in the morning before school with my mate, then because we have to do sport in the arvo we get three periods of class, but lucky me its double maths and physics. got stabbed in the arm for an injection, went home and i have done absolutely no work. ngl atar notes is the best way to waste my time but feel like im still studying

any questions please ask

[fantasticbeasts3]

Hi, fun_jirachi! Glad to see you're starting a journal - your contributions have not been missed here on AN. :-)

Excited to see how your HSC journey pans out!

[fun_jirachi]

ok so today was a pretty good day 
i went to the state library, went through a few trial papers for maths
also on the way to the train station i started playing pokemon go, and seriously please don't judge me for this im just a huge fan of the series, and i just raked it in with a ton of shiny pokemon it really made my day after crapping myself with the trial papers
hope everyone else is having as great a weekend as me!

[fun_jirachi]

absolute banger last two days, tuesday was a study day and today i had two frees 
literally means i get through a ton of trial papers, but the nerves are coming thick and fast since both my trials arent till two weeks from now
why do trials exist send help

[Joseph41]

absolute banger last two days, tuesday was a study day and today i had two frees 
literally means i get through a ton of trial papers, but the nerves are coming thick and fast since both my trials arent till two weeks from now
why do trials exist send help

On the plus side, it means that not 100% of your scores come from the HSC, which is, I believe, how high school used to work back in the day!

You can do it. 👊

[fun_jirachi]

yeah thanks for all the support!!!

[fun_jirachi]

seeing all these people saying 'yay i finished trials' makes me sad  both my trials are next week (mod on monday, maths on wednesday)
mod im kinda scared because i've only done one full paper, and i broke it up into 45 min bits with 2 min break in between to rest my hand, so its not legit and the content i have to remember is getting to me
on the other hand im a lot more comfortable with maths, its no fuss
but the thing that worries me most is that for prelim i still have to keep up, and for physics we're really behind, only on module 3, and i have to keep up with all the homework
bad two weeks up ahead
hope you guys are having a better time

[jamonwindeyer]

Remember that Prelim content isn't directly assessable! Indirectly it is good to know (for Physics, for example, good to know about electricity and magnetism to give you a solid grounding for the motor effect and induction), but don't let it stress you out if you aren't quite where you should be! No big deal

Good luck with your trials! Do lots of practice papers, even for Maths, no matter how confident you are have to make sure you do at least a little bit of prep

[fun_jirachi]

so its the end of another week
i'm now three days out from my mod trial, and i feel really undercooked despite writing a few essay plans, doing a few personailty study questions (which is where im weakest, if not the core section) send help
meanwhile i feel really prepped for maths, usually just dropping 3-4 marks in the last section and 1-2 dumb mistakes here and there
also gonna hit up both uts and usyd open days tomorrow
hope you've all had a great week

[fun_jirachi]

hahaha ok so today was my mod trial
ngl i frickin hated mod until today, scared as hell up until 12:10 today, but idk it went so quick, i was on the second paragraph on my indochina essay and i saw the clock and i was like wowzers half an hour till its all over!!! for now anyway  and rn mod is totally fun again, because i get to ogle and study my favourite commies like lenin, lmao zedong, uncle ho 

so anyway heres how it went
section i im pretty ok with, unless i somehow screwed up my source analysis??? which is kinda likely, but im really going to kick myself if i got q3 of the mc wrong, because that was really dodgy, was tossing up between C and D and i picked C because my friend told me once when in doubt pick C using my intuition, obviously, because im smart
section ii ngl i was pretty happy with, they hit me up with a stalinism question and a communist theory/bolshevik consolidation of power question, you can guess which one i picked  , this was the section i felt best about, i wonder why 
section iii i felt worst about, because i totally forgot all the tiny details about early life, and they asked me to describe three events about trotsky's early life that shaped his whatever whatever so  , and then the part b was so urrrgrhgrhghfrghg, it was great people are remembered as much for their flaws as their achievements, and i disagreed, but i dunno if i argued correctly, or persuasively enough
section iv literally half my essay just made bs up went on autopilot, i didnt know what to do, i actually hate indochina, even though i love uncle ho
i picked how responsible were anti-war movements in ending the Second indochina war?? somehting like that, the other one i rejected was assess the impact of war on civilians, because that's just super broad, not gonna risk it

well maths on wednesday, time to grind for that 95+. i am pretty scared now actually because one of my mates told me today for the accelerated course a few years ago a 95 was rank 50?!?!
i know it doesnt count since im doing 4u, but i still want my good rank in the year group

hope the rest of you are having a great time! i know i am, mod's over for now

[jamonwindeyer]

hope the rest of you are having a great time! i know i am, mod's over for now

Congrats on getting through! best of luck with 2U! Bet you'll smash that 95+ goal

[fun_jirachi]

HAHAHAHAHA ITS ALL OVER until prelim anyway, and the yearly for maths which is in about two weeks (also stupidly hard and long because that's just how SBHS is, gives you exams that are harder than the yearly, shorter with a disproportionate amount of work)
 
soooo today was great, maths was totally great
rn on 97-dumb mistakes out of 100, because i missed the very last part about geometrical proof of some minimum distance thing, which i realised 5mins after the exam i had to use similar triangles, and also because i messed up a multiple choice because i can't read

so this is the mc i failed: you have the focus (-3,0) and directrix x=1, what is the equation of the parabola, and its obviously y^2=-16(x-3), because the the focus is obviously the same thing as the vertex haunted forever, hate parabolas now
other than that, all went smoothly, provided my working doesnt give the markers reason to dock me marks, should be hitting my 95+ goal!

hope you guys are having a great time!

[fun_jirachi]

soooooo its the end of yet another week, and as my two trials are now behind me i realised i could start celebrating?!?!?!?!
yeah well obviously not. my student portal was updated today, and it kindly reminded me i have two months to the external exam for 2U and Modern History like i mean why you're inducing stress way too early
also i was woken to the sad reality that prelim exists, and so apparently i was meant to have an essay for dystopia due today for english extension? but we stalled the teacher out, and honestly, even though i'll keep trying so english doesnt drag me down, idgaf about english (sorry to all you english lovers, STEM boy for life, never gonna change). this is mainly because everyone knows the english department uses a random number generator for marks is very fair (not that the people that get good marks don't deserve them, just that this whole mark allocation thing is blown out of proportion). i feel like english is getting more and more subjective, and no matter how hard i try or how much feedback i get from my teacher, im not going to improve??!?! like in the reading to write module i think i handed in 3 or so drafts and i got something like 80% (mind you not complaning over a pretty good mark, just not up to the standards i need, but predominantly want) and in the next assessment i put in more work and asked for more feedback and i got 70%? i dunno seriously, and the next dumb thing i gotta do for english is a video essay like wtf why, teacher says that visuals dont matter and you will be judged on your ability to convey whatever whatever, but honestly i think that's such bs, aesthetic ones will get the teacher's attention and make them look more kindly on the task
also another wakeup call to the fact prelim exists was the fact that we go off on exam break/period in two weeks, and that all of module 4 for chem is due as is physics very very soon. we were really behind, so we sorta rushed for both sciences. tbh its very similar content with physics (thermodynamics) and chemistry (enthalpy) but electricity and magnetism is so cool
also we started the X1 course, having the best time with X1

alsoooo who is coming to unsw open day tomorrow?

thanks for reading this (if you have and not actually skimmed it jkjk), i recognise that it was a big trek

TLDR english sucks, prelims coming up

[fun_jirachi]

so today was unsw open day
ngl it was a pretty big bummer in terms of freebies, but i think in terms of similar courses with different unis i know which one im going to
not to hate on any usyd or uts people around here but i just didnt get a good vibe from those unis like i did from unsw, like usyd just felt like it was full of fobs and elitists, even though it probably isnt, and i just felt uncomfortable walking around and as for uts i just didnt like the fact that the buildings where legit all over the shop (also not to hate on the some of the staff but they were kinda condescending, i legit looked like a hobo and they were like showing me courses with 85 atar 'and if that's too high for you, theres x and y alternative', maybe i sound a little bit whiny, but i dunno it felt like they were judging by my depressed look and clothes, and i kinda take offence when randoms call me dumb (whole different story if one of my friends does it, its just banter))
but really unsw was just great, i felt really comfortable around there and i think even though i havent pinpointed what i want to do i sorta get the gist of it now?? also apparently there's a socialist club and pokemon club, consider me impressed

so overall good day, should get better as i can watch liverpool vs leicester for free on sbs tonight

[fun_jirachi]

Another week is over which means im a week out from prelim, and the dumbest assessment task i've ever done (video essay like why please explain to me how this helps me achieve anything)
and though i felt really great after the 2u exam, hearing everyone getting their results during first period made me realise that 95+ was super unrealistic despite my feeling right after the exam. everyone in my year that did the exam was accelerating (so its an expectation you hit a band 6) and then a class's average was 64??? the others were 78 and 82, but i was so shocked like omg i might not hit my goal after all the preparation
lo and behold i don't (what a surprise) and last period rolls along and i see my paper and i get a 90. NOW THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT PLEASE I AM HAPPY WITH MY MARK AND I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT A BAND 6 but seriously i was super cut (maybe i set myself up for disappointment by aiming too high???) like i mean it felt really bad. I did get above class average (approximately 0.5 standard deviations above the mean) but seriously when i looked through my paper i did the dumbest stuff ever, like i probably deserved only to lose 4-5 marks legitimately, the rest were dumb mistakes i made in the heat of the moment under exam pressure. literally full of regrets, disappointed in myself
Take Exhibit A for example. Q11, the first question after multiple choice, and in the very last part. I did everything right until i got down to 1/3(64-1) and somehow i wrote down 64/3 as my answer. like why please send help
My rank might be terrible because its a very competitive environment, but I think I'm looking at a rank about 20-30? where I've always been for quite some time now but yeah kinda happy (good mark, its all over) and kinda disappointed, but honestly ill cop it, theres nothing i can do now. All i can do is improve for the yearly next week and the HSC.

mod marks on monday, rip me

Hope you guys have had a great week!