How did you manage your time in VCE?

[ben_ess12]

@shinny, might sound stupid but ill ask anyways
when you said do things that were relevant, were the things you did directly related to the study guide and you thought that those things would be most beneficial to you?

[shinny]

@shinny, might sound stupid but ill ask anyways
when you said do things that were relevant, were the things you did directly related to the study guide and you thought that those things would be most beneficial to you?

It's not really a case of whether it's on the study design or not. Obviously if they're not, ignore it. Even if it is, if you believe you already understand it, what's the point of doing more work on it? The likely benefit of it will be incredibly small.

[ben_ess12]

thanks for that makes sense

[dptjandra]

I agree with most of what shinny has said

However, I would also add that my approach to VCE was a rather full on one, where I tried to maximise time constantly.  It was pretty all-or-nothing, and I would not recommend it to people who get easily burnt out (lol, and notoriously different to my "swotvac uni cram" approach).  Last year, I had to balance academics with music commitments, as well as prefectship (and organising associated with that), environment captaincy, various involvements with drama, (admittedly minimal involvement in sport except what was required!) and attempting to maintain something resembling a social life.  I adopted a method of "never wasting time".  That is, when I was at home by myself, I wouldn't waste time just watching lots of television or just sitting around doing nothing, I would actually spend that time working.  It was not unusual for me to eat dinner by myself with a book in one hand, or if there were shows I wanted to watch (House MD ), I would actually do practice like maths problems (minimal thinking problems) at the same time.  I used the same mentality on holidays, which I found very effective - I would write what I wanted to do for each day at the beginning of the holiday, and work to get 1 essay done, or a certain number of problems.

To get most of my other commitments done, I would use my hours at school, particularly mornings, afternoons and study periods.  I found that study periods were pretty useless for me in terms of actually doing any study, since I found myself just wanting to hang out with friends.  So I would do most organising different events (quizzes, frisby footy comp, etc.) or else just socialising - trying to get that pesky desire for human contact out of the system while it was possible .  Keeping work and socialising pretty separate worked quite well for me - if I were out in the city, I wouldn't try to do maths problems.  Though at home I would often keep msn open in case people wanted to ask me questions or I wanted to ask someone else questions...the challenge is avoiding the inevitable distraction that follows!

I focused most of my efforts on English, admittedly, because of its importance to the aggregate.  Effective study in each subject is something you need to work out for yourself.  For me, I was pretty confident with my writing style and control of the language, so the challenge was really coming up with good and substantial ideas/analysis under exam conditions.  Hence most of my study involved writing plans for various topics, including the sorts of evidence and arguments I would use to back it up/explore the prompt.  I didn't find writing multiple essays all that helpful.

I feel that with the others, you should spread your efforts pretty consistently unless you're sure you know which ones really don't work for you.  You never know, you might like one subject at the beginning, then get to latter parts of the course and find that you struggle immensely...it's good to have back ups later.  That said, if one subject is really not working for you from the outset, no point wasting time on it to the detriment of your other subjects!

Unlike Shinny, I actually found doing lots and lots of problem sets useful for science subjects.  While I usually didn't do ALL the questions in the book, I would probably do at least half of each question (maybe parts a, c, e, f, g or something).

Cramming for SACS = good.  Forces you to keep up completely with each part of the course.  Cramming for Exams (in science subjects, which is my area of experience) = bad.  Burns you out and achieves nothing.  Concentrated study over a period of a week is very effective (again, I set goals for how much I wanted to cover).

Hopefully some of this is vaguely helpful - I would say that my one big tip is to avoid the trap of time wasting (that is, time maximisation as a form of time management).  Socialising isn't what I would classify as time wasting (unless it is excessive, usually coupled with excessive alcohol consumption).  Seriously, save it for that huge break at the end of exams and first year uni, it's not worth sacrificing your VCE.  Most annoying thing is the "I could have done better if I had worked harder" - that's one of the worst things to hear, and one of the worst feelings to have at the end of a year.

[Greatness]

thanks for the advice dptjandra

[Andiio]

Thanks for the advice Shinny + dptjandra! So envious of your scores

[dptjandra]

Majority of Latin exam is in English and on the Virgil, so I'm not sure that your teacher's really justified in telling you to expect that - unless they're planning to teach the text badly

The unseen is marked quite harshly though, even though the grammar in it isn't too bad.

I think my 44 in 09 scaled up to 54.1 or so - I don't remember exactly!

[eeps]

My Latin teacher is warning everyone now, that they should expect a score around 20 (raw) - as a 20 in itself would require a LOT of effort.. we are a public school, highest ever Latin score was a 35 raw.

It's pretty hard to get over 40 raw for Latin. We had one student last year get 40 raw for Latin and that was about it. Note that 25 raw in Latin scales to about 40~41.

[samiira]

Another question - how did you guys estimate your ATAR on the www.atarcalc.com .. as in, did you overestimate or underestimate?

i try to underestimate jst so i dnt keep my hopes up too high

[dptjandra]

For my Latin Vocab, I wrote down my words on little system cards (which i had cut in half) with the translation on the other side...did it while watching telly and revised while watching telly!

[FatnessFirst]

math math physics math physics math math chemistry math math physics math physics math english math physics math chemistry physics math physics math physics english math ...

put two "gaming"s around each of the above words

I like the way you think.

[m@tty]

Another question - how did you guys estimate your ATAR on the www.atarcalc.com .. as in, did you overestimate or underestimate?

I think dptjandra over estimated his.

[dptjandra]

lol - the study scores I used as my "aims" (a notional 'best case scenario') were all 2 points lower than what I actually got (except spesh which was about 8 higher than I was even hoping for!).  I used the calculator more to work out what the lowest I could get in each subject was to get certain scores, rather than the other way round (cos I was just hoping for 99.90 to secure a place in postgrad med if I went to Melbourne Uni).

[flash36]

Without knowing if I did well or not, I would probably say a balance is hard to achieve if you want a good score.

I think someone said in this thread earlier that you should not waste your time with irrelevant homework, which is true. Often the homework teachers give you is basic, irrelevant or stuff that you did weeks ago, so I suggest find a way that you like to study and do that, instead of doing exactly what the teacher says. This may be different in a school with excellent teachers, or particularly good subject teachers though. But ultimately your teacher is trying to move your class along through the coursework at the same level and at the same pace, and this doesn't always bode well for students wishing to get better than the median study score for subjects.

I tended to work through the coursework at my own pace, but only on a SAC by SAC basis, never studying for a SAC before I had done the previous one. I was also told on numerous occasions throughout the year to study multiple subjects a night to break it up, but this didn't work for me; I would rather concentrate on one subject a whole night, but this is obviously up to the individual.

However it is important that you allocate adequate time for each subject; eg not doing a week of one subject and ignoring the other because you think you have it covered. However undoubtedly you find yourself doing more in some subjects than others (for me I spent little time doing Business Management and English relatively, and instead focused on Legal Studies and PE because they were my favourite subjects). In addition, at some point during the year, unless you're a freak at all your subjects which I wasn't, it will become clear to you what your 10% subject will be, based on SAC marks, enjoyment of the subject etc etc. Therefore, you should obviously spend the least amount of time on this and concentrate on your main 4 (for me this was Further Maths).

In terms of 'balance' as such, I played football during the year, starting in January up until the term 3 holidays (so basically the whole year). This ultimately consumed all the free time I had away from study, so I found myself either studying or being occupied by footy. Nonetheless I recommend an extra-curricular/out of school activity to mix things up a little; I would have gone insane had I studied for 5 or 6 hours every single night of the year. Also, I recommend doing a rough plan of each week, which can just be in your head if you don't want to write it down, of what you plan to do/study for each night, and also on the weekends. This makes things less confusing as you know exactly what you're doing when you get home from school etc.

With regard to study habits, I did the majority of my study in my room, with music on always. Most of my time was spent doing summaries of the coursework for the upcoming SACs, learning it, then doing as many practice questions/tests that I could find, which most of my teachers provided me with heaps of. Come the end of the year, all my summaries for each SAC were typed up, so all I had to do was join them together and I had a full set of comprehensive notes for each subject by the September holidays. This allowed me to already be doing practice exams throughout the last 3 weeks of school, and feeling confident going into the exams that I had done as many practice exams as possible. I essentially ran out of practice exams to do for most of my subjects by the time the exam came around. I also recommend to clear anything up with your teacher/with other resources as soon as you come across a problem in your subjects. This way you won't forget that you don't quite understand it, and come exam time all the main concepts will be clear in your head. You don't want to be learning major concepts in the September holidays.

Reading my advice, bear in mind I didn't do any Sciences this year (so arguably I chose 'easy' subjects), hence this advice may not work for those doing Chem, Spec Maths etc. I did Business Management, PE, Legal Studies, Further Maths and English.

[Furbob]

I didn't manage time, time managed me.

because in Russia, time manages you!