As for this topic (with specific respect to bubble sunglasses' post about chemistry): make no mistake, I DID do a sufficient amount of work in year 12.
The problem is, the work was often done under the most stressed of conditions, usually VERY proportionally close to the assessment times (I.E. hours or days before SACs and only a few weeks before exams).
I had a routine going for chemistry in the 1 hour before the SAC. The reason this worked is because I have pretty good short term memory, AND (and here is the clincher) I had AMAZING notes from my teacher. Without that clincher, it wouldn't have worked.
A TERRIBLE by-product of this routine was whilst I had to do as minimal work as possible, I felt like crap because I was under the constant stress of "oh god, what if I don't learnt his stuff right, or forget it etc." and it was just a really unhealthy way to study. So, yes, I did quite minimal work, and I did average high 90s for chem sacs, but at what cost? I was never confident in Chemistry. Ever.
And how did that translate to external assessment? We finished the course 3 weeks before the exam and I remembered almost none of chem, bar common sense stuff. I got something like 53% on my first practice exam, 3 or so weeks before the actual exam date. Not to mention that I still had other SACs to cram for. I SCRAMBLED to do something like 30 practice exams, I forget how many now but it was between 25-35, so I'll just go with 30. Much to my detriment, it somehow managed to work and I got 70/73 on the mid-year. I never learnt my lesson. I settled into the EXACT SAME rhythm for next unit, and lo and behold come 3 weeks before exam time exact same situation. The problem? I had 4 other exams.
...
Stupid, stupid, STUPID. I somehow managed to get a miraculous 30 exams done again, but they were all EXCEEDINGLY rushed and most done with the solutions open to teach myself the course. It didn't work nearly as well this time, and I dropped 9 marks on exam 2 and it brought me down, especially when you consider my performance on mid-year.
When I tell people I did little work in year 12, it's a fair statement. I didn't do consistent work, so if you averaged out my cram sessions over the year, you'd find that it came out to ~ 30 - 45 mins a day. I definitely did more work than most in the leadup to exams, I think I can be sure of that. But in terms of consistent work throughout the year - it just didn't exist for me.
In fact, I'll do a quick calculation of that and see how it averages out.
12 chem SACs = 12 hours
5 spec SACs = 4-5 hours (unimaths eased my need to study)
Consistent UMEP work in term 1 of about 30 hours (fell away after that though, unfortunately)
1 tertiary maths mid-year = 2-3 hours
6 english SACs = 18 hours
Chem exam 1 = 40 hours
Chem exam 2 = 25 hours
Spec exams 1+2 = 45 hours (~20 exams each of both 1 and 2)
English exam = 18 hours (i think i did roughly 20 practice essays in total across all sections of the exam)
Tertiary maths exam = 25 hours (~15 exams varying between 2 and 3 hours)
Also, in working out the time for practice exams, I rarely ever took the full time allotted and generally finished 1 hour exams in 45 min to an hour, 1.5 hour exams in 1 hour, 2 hour exams in ~ 1.5 hrs and 3 hour exams in ~ 2.5 hours.
Total time studied (roughly) = 231 hours.
The school year is about 322 days long (46 weeks * 7 days) - including 'holidays' as they are known in VCE, because work was done during them and they're by no means off limits during VCE (bulk of VCE work done in term 3 holidays, in fact).
so 231/322 = .717 hrs/day = 43 minutes a day of work across all subjects.
I'd say compared to most, that's relatively little time but spent in MASSIVE concentrations.
I JUST WANT TO SAY that it was an EXCEEDINGLY stressful way of studying, and needless to say I've carried this over to uni and I'm now really trying to work on getting rid of these nasty habits, because let me tell you, they do *not* work at uni. Ever. At all. For me, anyway. I thoroughly do not advise this method of studying. I also think I was very irresponsible to post this in the original thread, but I did and now I should qualify that and say how ridiculously stupid it was to study that way. It's stressful and if it doesn't work, you are so screwed it's not funny.
EDITED: To fix average calculation
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