insanipi 📚
Hey insanipi! There's something about physical books that makes them special! I've seen a few street libraries in my neighbourhood, which are pretty cool (but some of the books in them are not really my taste). Thanks for your kind words! I regrettably haven't made much time to read (because VCE
) but I'll start with a nice fiction book to ease myself into it. I hope your reading challenge continues to go splendidly well!
whys 🦁
Thanks for your reassurance and support, whys! You have a way with words and making people feel at ease. Have a great year ahead
Sine 📐
Thanks so much Sine! I sure hope so. Hope your 2021 is going well so far
Evolio 🌊
Evolio, thanks so much! Congrats on completing Year 12 (and doing super well), especially in a year like last year! I wish I could say the same about the water (but seriously, this is a sign to go have some haha)! Wishing you all the best for this year
Entry #I-lost-count-but-it’s-likely-to-be-a-single-digitYo,
On the ATAR Notes forum, there are plenty of options to spice up your posts. Despite it being centered around the Australian education system, the code, "[colour]", is not valid in the all too marvelous BB code. Together, we must stop this! In this essay I will
A friend asked me the other day if I was going to update this journal and there were plenty of voiced hesitations on my end. This is because: a) a few people from school have caught onto it and figured out my identity (hi, people from my school!), b) I feel like I’m going to look back on this and realise how poor my writing is; the cohesion is questionable, and c) I might be boring people. It's interesting how much language shapes identity. I never want to write in a way that makes me come across as a piece of, you know
shit.
How's school so far? Fantastic. Keeping afloat, sort of. There are always thoughts that threaten to poke holes in my boat. The feeling-like-an-impostor business (even so outside of school). My brain ridicules me with stories like the, “My teachers think I’m stupid and weird and incapable,” story and the “When are you going to crash the car?”* story. I just need to keep reminding myself that I need to see the thoughts for what they are – words - and defuse them considering they’re not helpful. I need to be careful on the road and give schoolwork my best shot. If it turns out that I do end up not being happy with my score for my subjects, it is okay. Not the end of the world. As long as I can get into a uni course. I just want to go to uni already! Although, I know I'll high school. I am using too many ‘I’ statements eek.
In school, my teachers have been embracing the flipped learning model. The upside of this is that I can try to understand the content at my own pace (especially for chem) and then my teacher can go through the “highlights” of each chapter, yet I kinda miss passively sitting in a classroom, writing notes. Learning via simple diffusion. EngLang, on the other hand is great because my teacher gives us real life contemporary language examples to analyse (e.g. things from social media or the street). Additionally, for the time I put in to learn the content at home and do practice questions and notes, I feel like the workload is a lot. It seems as though it takes me a bloody long time to do things (e.g. if my goal for a spare period is to read the textbook, do textbook questions and notes, I’ll probably only finish the reading, textbook questions and a tiny bit of the notes at best). I’m slightly behind in chem and bio atm (not how I wanted to start the year! *cue my inner voice screaming, “have I sabotaged myself from the beginning?”*. Catastrophizing is fun!1!). For a subject like bio, it’s hard to know whether or not to trust the textbook (which explains everything in nitty gritty detail). My school’s slides lack a whole heap of detail, and the textbook as well as handouts and notes that the school supplied contradict each other in some aspects. Do I need to know about receptor-mediated endocytosis because you did not teach us that? I’ll figure it out.
Ten hours of sleep seems to be the way to go for me. I haven’t been getting that much sleep because it is difficult to go to bed before nine pm, when you have to wake up at quarter to six. Even then, I felt tired. Maybe it’s time to restart the iron and vit D supplements haha, but I don’t really want to go back to the GP for a blood test to see how my levels are doing. The one who did my venepuncture told me to do chemistry and biology, when discussing doing something in healthcare, so here I am learning about galvanic cells (yay!). Unit 3 chem is a bit conceptually difficult at times, but cool so far. Let’s hope the “cool” part of my opinion doesn’t change after the first SAC in two weeks :/ In short, I miss holidays, even though I was in a frazzled state of mind then. There was a sense of tranquillity, rather than the go-go-go state of mind.
On a more positive note, I’ll be doing UMEP Psych
next this year (the people who run the program say it like “you-mep” rather than “U-M-E-P” and it took me a second to realise what they meant the first time I heard)! I’m really excited to get a taste of uni life. Now I feel like I’m quoting the advertising for the program. There’s always the enthusiasm due to the novelty of the experience. Just like how I felt when I got my school student ID card and locker for the first time. It took a while to get a photo for my UoM student ID card because I couldn’t stop laughing for absolutely no reason. Weirdly, my friend who's also doing UMEP had a similar experience. At least we didn’t only have one take after queuing in a line on campus. My phone did airbrush my face a bit, and I only realised after I uploaded the photo.
According to the (potentially outdated) UoM subject reviews for one of the units I'm doing, an assignment for it might be to watch a sunset and write about my perception of it. Nonetheless, the units sound super interesting. Perhaps I'm too enthusiastic and naïve?
As I’ve mentioned too many times, it would be cool to incorporate some psych in my future career, whether that be through teaching it, or using it to understand people. My psych said that they use pretty much none of the theory from their undergrad in their career though
Since receiving my study scores last year, I’ve realised how little this all means (don’t want to go too deep into that because existential crises are doom and gloom). Yep, the ATAR is important but there are other ways to get to a particular destination, with the added bonus of getting some life experience along the way. So while I’m going to give it my all (for the most part, I say while procrastinating and rambling), I’ll try not to obsess over the numbers. It’s helpful to know if you’re on track to a certain study score / ATAR, but maybe I should just try my best and leave it up to the VCAA gods to decide my aggregate’s fate.
Anyways, y’all are awesome <3
*Reverse parallel parking or entering a busy roundabout make me slightly apprehensive, but I guess it all comes down to practice. The first time I went around a roundabout (on a deserted road, mind you), someone in a very loud car with a turbo engine came out of nowhere speeding behind me and held their horn. Ahhh, the joys of road rage.