HSC Stuff > The HSC Journey Journal

Just Another HSC Journal

<< < (8/14) > >>

alice343:

--- Quote from: Justin_L on June 30, 2020, 08:36:41 pm ---Hey y'all,

I finished my History Extension today!!! I cannot begin to describe the satisfaction I had when I signed off on that declaration sheet and handed my essay in. Quite fittingly, it was my very last assessment this term, and thus my last hand in assessment ever! It's all downhill from here, whoo!

--- End quote ---

OH MY GOSH!!! I am so happy for you, congrats! That must feel AMAZING. Enjoy the rest of this week to mentally prepare for the studying ahead  :(

Justin_L:

--- Quote from: katie,rinos on June 30, 2020, 08:43:06 pm ---Congrats on handing in your history extension major!!  :D

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: owidjaja on June 30, 2020, 09:03:22 pm ---Congrat's on submitting your History Extension Major Work!

--- End quote ---

Thank you so much!


--- Quote from: owidjaja on June 30, 2020, 09:03:22 pm ---Highly recommend applying to UNSW FEAS!! I have many friends who got into engineering through FEAS so it's a great opportunity for anyone even if they were confident in getting 90+ :) Although I will say, don't lost hope on that 90+ ATAR. A lot of students tend to be pleasantly surprised with their ATAR ;)

--- End quote ---

Haha, I really hope so. The application process is pretty daunting though (I hate videoing myself)


--- Quote from: alice343 on July 01, 2020, 05:08:19 pm ---OH MY GOSH!!! I am so happy for you, congrats! That must feel AMAZING. Enjoy the rest of this week to mentally prepare for the studying ahead  :(

--- End quote ---

It really does! I think this term has probably been the most intense ever, which has only made this more satisfying. Definitely looking forward to the next few days!

Justin_L:
Term 2 Review

A week into T2 holidays, I thought it's be helpful to review the past term and my progress so I can plan out what to focus on and what I have to prep for next term. Term 2 definitely didn't go how I wanted it to go, but I'm mostly satisfied with how I did. Our school refuses to give ranks, so I'm just going to guesstimate how I'm doing in each subject. While I like the idea behind it because it discourages petty competition over ranks, it also makes it a bit hard to tell how you're progressing.

English
To be honest I feel like I haven't learnt anything at all this year in English. All we really did this term was a "dramatic reading" of the play, as well our Craft of Writing task, which I'd pretty much drafted over the T1 holidays and only needed to polish up. Upside of that task is that I have a fairly polished Persuasive and Imaginative done, although my Discursives are still terrible. I'm hovering just below a A range level based off my marks, so I'd really like to change that around for trials. In terms of rank, I'm probably somewhere in the middle of our cohort.

In terms of trials, I think I might be slightly screwed considering the last time I handwrote an English essay was for Yr 11 Yearlies. That's really my fault, nothing I can say about that. Right now I think the best thing I can do is to start constructing quote tables for all of my texts, so that I can start building up modular paragraphs to mix and match later. It's super time consuming though, and hard to know where to even start. I've decided to group them thematically, which seems to be working well so far.

Maths
I've looked through my advanced paper, and I think I mostly went wrong in that in the beginning, I realized I forgot my calculator and panicked. I lost around the first ~5 minutes of the exam because I had to ask for permission to go out and get it, and then I came back flustered and ended up making lots of silly errors in the first few pages of the exam. I also didn't properly understand integration, which lost me a whole lot of marks. I think that if I had done the exam with a clear head and even a basic understanding of integration, I could have easily lifted my mark from a 30% to a 60%.

In terms of extension, I didn't get much of a chance to look at it and so I really can't say where I went wrong. I suppose it does make sense though, because the exam tested Trigonometry and Calculus, which have always been my weakest areas and couldn't have been remediated with any sort of last minute study. There is a massive amount of content I need to cover for trials, so I suppose the only thing I can do is crunch through as much as reasonable. I'm going to focus on the core skills like integration, so that I lose as few marks as possible on foundational content. Luckily, I'm doing 12 units so only 1 unit of math will be counted in my ATAR assuming I do well in all my other subjects.

History
History's been going well, I'm consistently getting high marks and I'm guessing I'm probably in the top 10 at our school for Modern. I'm mainly worried about Russia and the Soviet Union and the Arab Israeli conflict, since those are guaranteed essay responses and my weakest areas. I have a solid set of notes and readings from our teacher's powerpoints and handouts, so I'm going to focus on making detail tables and consolidating my knowledge, especially for the core study which was a while ago. I also need to revise all my content for extension, seeing as I haven't touched constructing history in over a term. Our teacher did say she'd go over the entire process how to formulate a history extension response next term which is quite reassuring.

Tech
Software and Entertainment are going well, we've finished all course content and it's such a small and highly skilled class that ranks are largely irrelevant. Just past papers from here out, although the thought of it is super tiring considering each paper is 3 hours. Even if I do the paper in sections, just the mere thought is tiring. Still, I'm quite optimistic.


Trials, Holiday, and Careers Stuff

I've been taking things easy for the past week, and taking advantage of a more laid back schedule. I think online learning has really helped for my self discipline and organisation, in that I've been able to keep up my regular day and sleep schedules more or less. I've been catching up on a lot of things that I didn't have the chance to properly watch or read through during the term, particularly some of Richard Buckland's videos. He has some really cool insights into education and computing, which gives a good insight into some of the courses I may want to do if I end up at UNSW.

On that note, I've been reconsidering a lot of my uni preferences. Originally, I wanted to study a combined Advanced Computing / International Security degree at ANU, but with the new fee changes and resurgence of covid, studying a double computing and humanities degree interstate doesn't make much sense with increased fees and the distinct possibility of a resurgence in travel restrictions, considering how covid is performing globally.

I haven't put together my UAC preferences yet, but I'm probably going to redo all of my planning on what unis I want to apply for. I have an ANU Early Entry application active right now, so I'm waiting to see how that pans out. I'm planning on applying to the next round of UNSW FEAS, now that I'm not sure if I want to go to ANU. I'm not sure how many rounds there actually are or how it affects my application, but I'd like to polish up my previous projects a bit so that I can talk about them.

Anyways, that's about it for now. There's so much to do and think about, and I've been keeping quite busy despite the laid back break. This turned into a massive info dump, and if you actually bothered to read the whole thing, my sincerest apologies. Hope you've all been well, and good luck for the new term!

EDIT: 50th post, and am now a "Forum Regular". Not sure if this is a good thing or not 🤔

Justin_L:
Hey guys, just wanted to do a quick start of term update.

I got my history extension major back today, and I got a 21/25, a bit below the class average. I was honestly a bit disappointed despite it not being too much of a "bad" mark by any means, but I can certainly see why I got the mark I did. Looking back, my topic was very historiographical but my argument lacked nuance and had some valid issues with structure and references. My biggest issue was probably my not entirely academic tone and the fact I didn't fully quite know where to and not to footnote, and so I said a lot of stuff that wasn't backed up properly. Considering the circumstances, I still think I did my absolute best and put everything I had into the project last term. But looking back, I really should have used a reference manager early on and started drafting Term 1 at least so I could have more time to spot these issues of nuance and structure.

I also officially dropped maths extension today. It was something that had to be done, and I feel like I'll really be able to improve my maths marks now that I don't have to split my time between 2 maths subjects. I talked to a lot of people about dropping and got a lot of conflicting views. My friends all heavily discouraged me because they know I want to do computing and that the scaling will boost me, but they're also pretty much all doing Extension 2 maths, so they're all a tad biased.

I talked to an engineering student from UNSW who said that I should be fine for assumed knowledge considering I've essentially done the whole course and that I can cover any gaps in my knowledge in the gap between HSC and Uni, or even during first year. Personally, I know this is the right choice since getting all of my maths foundational skills nailed will help me more than having a broad but weak range of skills. But a part of still feels like I'm admitting failure by dropping, and that this is some sort of admission that I'm not "good enough" for higher maths. A lot of the content I learned in the course is relevant to what I want to study in uni, with things like mathematical induction, differential equations, and vectors being directly linked to computer science proofs and engineering content. Dropping feels like I'm throwing that away, despite the fact I've technically already learned all of it since we've finished everything other than projectile motion after trials.

Anyways, while I was chatting about maths I was talking about how I wished I could also also look into engineering stuff in a computing course, and I was suggested to look into mechatronic engineering, which is essentially a combination of computing, electrical, and mechanic engineering from what I've read. It look pretty cool, and I'll definitely need to compare the courses in more detail. 

I have trials coming up in a week, and I an honestly so lost as to how I can cover all of the content in a week. Dropping extension has freed up time for me to work on advanced, so I'm going to try and make the most of that time as possible.  I'm a lot less scared after coming back from holidays and hearing how my friends are just as lost as I am, which did make me feel better but really isn't a good attitude to have. But still, it's only been 3 days back but it feels so much longer.

Thanks for reading, and good luck to anyone else going into trials

Justin_L:
Hey! Seeing all the people starting or have started their trials this week, I just wanted to wish you all the best of luck! It's been a pleasure reading all your journals, and I'm sure you'll all smash it! I'm starting my trials tomorrow, but seeing every else going through the same thing has been reassuring in a weird sort of way since it's something that everyone has to go through, regardless of prepared you are. At this point, I feel like everything has been leading up to this whether we all realised this or not, and it really comes down to everything done throughout the year and while last minute things like quotes or details can boost you up, a fundamental understanding of the content will be the real driver.

See y'all on the other side!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page