Half Yearly Results: Why You Shouldn't Stress!

You’ve done it, your half yearly exams are finished!! You are officially halfway through your HSC. Give yourself a pat on the back, you’ve done an amazing job and you should definitely give yourself a break for a bit. Soon, your half yearly results will start coming back (and just when you had forgotten about them, dammit). These results might be amazing, or they might be a little less than amazing. If you fall in the latter category for some of your subjects, it can be stressful!

I know this from experience. My Maths Extension 1 half yearly was probably the worst exam I have ever sat through. I passed, but only just, and I dropped from first in the cohort to second last. In the exam, the questions absolutely baffled me, my brain shut off; I did not react well at all.

Everyone has these “brain fart” moments, it is just a part of the game. But when they happen in high pressure, seemingly high stakes situations, it can really mess with you and give your confidence a Chuck-Norris style kick in the face. Here are some of the things I wish I could tell my post-half-yearly self, because with the gift of hindsight, less than desirable half yearly results may not always be such a bad thing.

Use Your Setbacks as Motivation for your Successes

You know how the old saying goes, carrot in front of you and a stick behind you. Everyone focuses on the carrot, meaning the good score at the end. But a little bit of a jab never hurt anyone.

After I got back that Extension half yearly and realised that I didn’t meet my expectations, it didn’t get me down and out. It got me motivated. I HATED the feeling I had coming out of that exam, and I was like: “Right, I’ve got to fight even harder now.”

I think it’s kind of a mental thing. When you are running a race, you run harder when you have been overtaken. Footy teams push harder when they are behind with 5 minutes left (or at least they should, bloody hell Newcastle).

In just the same way, falling a little behind with your half yearly results at this point isn’t exactly such a bad thing, especially if you’ve been cruising along a little bit like I had. It gives you a bit of a wake up call, that the HSC is here and you need to put in that extra effort to do well.

Half Yearly Results Don’t Matter Much in the Long Run

The other thing I want to add is that half yearly results don’t mean that much to begin with anyway! It is just one exam!

Think of it this way. Say you were aiming for 80% in your exam, and you got 55% instead. So you lost 25% of the mark for your half yearly, compared to where you wanted to be.

The average half yearly is worth about 30% of your internal school assessment mark. So you lose about 7 marks from your total.

7 marks, from your school assessment mark. That mark only counts for roughly half of your final mark, so let’s approximate it to 3.

3 marks, ignoring all the scaling and the moderation and stuff, is worth 3 out of 500 marks for your aggregate, which turns into an ATAR. So 3 out of 500, 0.6%, so maybe a 0.05 of an ATAR point? At the absolute most?

Now that’s simplifying things pretty drastically, but does that sound worth worrying about to you? Probably not. And definitely not when you consider the time spent doing the math I just did could have been more usefully invested in doing work to improve. When you consider the way it actually works (which you can do by clicking here) it matters even less – Seriously, in the long run, the impact is minimal.

Half yearly results will not matter in the long run, as long as you work hard. Take it from someone who realised, and trust me: It is not worth the stress.

So Where to from Here?

So, half yearly exams are done, you get a holiday, now what? It can seem a little anticlimactic at times, especially when you aren’t happy with a result, and it is left to stew in your brain for two weeks.

For anyone coming out of half yearly exams, I totally recommend a few days off. Do something fun, ignore the HSC for a little while. I am still the kind of person who needs to decompress after stressful weeks; I did a massive Xbox binge after my most recent set of university exams. It helps!

After that time off, I would try to get back to work. It can feel a little aimless, I know, when you have time off and no imminent tasks, like why the heck would you be doing work? I discuss this and how to get some motivation in another blog.

The Most Important Thing…

The absolute, most important, super vital thing I want to stress. Don’t let setbacks get you down. Seriously, don’t stress at all about your half yearly results, even if you think you should.

Everyone has bad days. Everyone screws up. It happens.

Success comes to those who persevere. I could use the old Tortoise and the Hare story, but there are more relevant examples. Steve Jobs was, for all intents and purposes, fired from Apple in 1985. JK Rowling was rejected by a dozen publishers before Harry Potter got into stores. I could go on. The people who win a marathon are the ones who keep running even when their lungs burn and their heart is beating out of their chest.

Perseverance is key, you are only half way through the HSC! There is plenty of time to improve any less than desirable results, initial humps just make the finish more dramatic.

If you want to improve your half yearly results, try our FREE HSC TUTORING! We answer questions, mark essays, and give all the help we can to help you get the results you deserve.