Now that Term 2 has kicked off and you’re returning to school refreshed, revitalised, and enthusiastic for the new workload to begin (or, let’s be honest, frantically scrambling to finish your holiday homework whilst dreading the return of 7am wake-up calls), it’s a good time to review your progress thus far.

Consider how you’ve been performing based on your current marks, but also think about your study habits and whether you think you’ve found suitable means of coping with your Year 12 workload. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands give yourself a pat on the back because you will be in a great position heading into the next stage of the year. But if you’ve been less than satisfied with your outcomes or think there’s still room for improvement, don’t worry! There are still plenty of opportunities for refining your approach or even a total turn-around in results. But unless you’re prepared to take a long, hard look at yourself, that improvement won’t magically happen just because you want it to.

And if you stumble into Term 2 unsatisfied with how things are going but unwilling to properly evaluate your performance or try a different tactic, you’ll be left making the same ol’ mistakes like this poor bloke…

arsen

…and no one wants that. So read on for some pro-tips to avoid the classic Term 2 traps people fall into.

1. Neglecting your revision

Although Term 2 brings with it the promise of even more content to learn, you’ll have to strike a balance between this and revising what you’ve already been through. Neglecting to keep up with your revision throughout the year will mean having an even more hectic lead-up to the exams as you frantically re-learn months’ worth of material for all your subjects. By contrast, if you manage to stay relatively on top of things throughout this term, you’ll be in a far better position heading into the end of the year.

Obviously there are times when revision becomes less necessary; if you have a topic test for a particular area of study on Thursday, then don’t waste all of Wednesday night rereading and revising your notes on a completely different topic. But for the most part, slowly chipping away at revision tasks throughout Term 2 shouldn’t be too demanding, and can even be incorporated with the rest of your study. For instance:

          For English subjects:

If you’re now studying a different text for a different essay type, consider occasionally revisiting your previous text as a means of breaking up your current study regime. Let’s say you’ve set aside an hour this evening to go through some essay topics for the novel Romulus, My Father. Within that one-hour window, you can deliberately set aside a five to ten-minute break in the middle which you spend going back to your Term 1 text (e.g. Shakespeare’s Macbeth) and read through your quote repository. It’s okay to prioritise Romulus if that’s what you’re working on in class, but don’t neglect Macbeth if you think that’s a text you might choose to (or have to!) write about on the exam.

This can help make English a much less fragmented subject since it’s all too easy to forget everything you know about, say, Macbeth after you’ve finished studying it, and focus 100% of your attention on your current text instead. The smarter thing to do is to aim for an (approximately) 80/20 ratio of current study vs. revision. That way, you’re still predominantly focusing on the material that’s most relevant for your upcoming assessment, but you’re also still making progress in other areas to cut down on the potential workload later.

A student whose study plan is always a reflection of what’s being covered in class at that point in the year often won’t do as well as a student who knows their own strengths and weaknesses. After all, there may be a whole area of study in English that you’re extremely confident with. The texts are awesome, the essays are easy to write, and you always have a heap of ideas to unpack. Conversely, there may be another area you’ve struggled with for years and still can’t quite wrap your head around. Your school will likely just devote roughly equal amounts of time to both, but it would make far more sense for you to spend more time on the latter area of study (i.e. your weaker one) in order to catch up, rather than devote your time equally between the two and end up wasting effort on stuff you already know and insufficiently covering the stuff you need assistance with.

You may also find it valuable to think ahead to your English exams and consider which texts you will be writing about in that context. Sure, current assessment tasks are a more immediate concern, but the exam period will be upon us before you know it, so spread out the workload and you’ll be thanking yourself come October.

         For Maths subjects:

Much like English, it’s very tempting to just see Maths subjects as a series of individual topics that don’t relate to one another at all. And although there’ll definitely be questions on your exams that are purely based on, say, probability and have nothing to do with graphs of functions, you’ll also have some application questions that combine knowledge from different parts of the course. Therefore, unless you get used to thinking about formulae in conjunction with one another, you may be left in a lurch when it comes time to answer those tricky extended response questions at the end of the year.

And, as with English, often revising your skills is as simple as shaking up your studies to incorporate other material. Assuming you’ve been assigned questions 1-6 from chapter 4 in your textbook, you could make a point of doing two or three quick questions from chapter 7 every time you complete a group of questions from chapter 4. This makes things much less monotonous for you as your brain bounces between different topics as opposed to slowly trudging through the same old stuff and barely paying attention to the content. So if you’re the kind of student who needs constant change and challenge to stay alert and engaged, shuffle up your homework tasks and force yourself to cover a variety of different topics.

Another popular means of revising for Maths subjects is to test yourself through that most coveted of resources – practice exams! Now, the uninitiated amongst you may think there’s no sense doing practice papers until you’ve learned all of the content. And there’s certainly no point sitting down to do a two hour sample exam when you’ve only covered 10% of the course. However, as we approach the middle of the year, it’s actually incredibly valuable to look over the kinds of questions you might see at the end of the year and determine:

1. What stuff you have covered and are able to answer
2. What stuff you have covered but can’t answer
3. What stuff you haven’t covered

Obviously you can just skip those type c. questions and leave those for later. But the difference between type a. and type b. is extremely important, and it’s one of the quickest ways to spot gaps in your knowledge. So if you’re flipping through a practice exam and realise there’s a section on statistics which you went through in Term 1 but have totally forgotten about, then you’ll have a good indication of which topic you need to start incorporating into your revision.

         For Science subjects:

Here, you can apply similar strategies as you would in Maths subjects (i.e. going through past papers to determine areas of weakness). But, unlike Maths where it’s more about applying formulae and working things out, Science subjects also come with a decent amount of content you need to have memorised. Whether it’s definitions for Biology or a valency table for Chemistry – Science is testing your knowledge as well as your application skills. As such, most students consider it common practice to compile revision notes throughout the year which they can refer back to.

The ultimate aim here is to end up with a document that, come exam time, encompasses everything you need to know in order to do well. And, more importantly, you should be constantly revisiting and this document to make sure you know it well, since it is far easier to just revise what you already know throughout the year than it is to relearn entire blocks of content just before the exam. Don’t get me wrong – that last minute cram sesh where you fill your short-term memory with as much info as possible is great, but there’s no substitute for properly understanding stuff and being able to recall and communicate that knowledge at will.

         For Humanities subjects:

These actually have a lot of overlap with science subjects, surprisingly, and activities like compiling revision notes and going through practice exams are also very useful here. However, humanities subjects tend to involve more short answer or extended response tasks that depend on you being able to articulate your knowledge effectively, unlike sciences where you often just need to demonstrate that knowledge through application tasks and by following formulae. As such, learning how to answer questions in your humanities subject is vital to your success. And now that you’ve got a bit of content under your belt, you can start to look through exam-style questions and contemplate your answers. Don’t stress if you come across some that require knowledge you haven’t yet covered in class, but do endeavour to answer those that you think are within your capabilities right now.

This is especially valuable if you have some sample responses available to you, since comparing and contrasting your work with that of other high-range or mid-range answers is an excellent way to determine what you need to do to improve.

Remember, the aim is not just to not forget things you’ve already covered, but to actually improve your skills in those areas. If you’re averaging 80% for a particular area of study, you shouldn’t keep revising in order to stay at 80%; you should revise in a way that’s going to help you break that 80% barrier and bump your mark up even higher!

2. Failing to plan ahead

So far, we’ve mainly been concerned with looking backwards at all that crucial Term 1 content we can’t afford to forget. But it’s also highly advantageous to be able to look forwards as well, especially when it comes to foreseeing any really heavy assessment periods.

I didn’t think I’d have any problem with this in Year 12, and I was the kind of student who could quite happily just plan one or two days in advance and get by for most subjects. But at the start of Term 2, I figured I should be a bit more conscientious and make an effort to map out what my calendar would look like.

And boy am I glad I did.

Allow me to show you what the last week of Term 2 looked like for me back in June 2013 when I was in Year 12:

calendar

^Notice that rainbow week from hell? Yeah. Not fun. I do still believe there was a hidden whiteboard in the staffroom at my school where teachers would plot out assessment tasks to deliberately and with malice aforethought bombard us all at once.

And although there are a lot of homework tasks or pieces of assessment that you can simply revise the night before, these kinds of weeks are a lot more demanding, and there’s no conceivable way to only plan a day in advance, especially when it comes to huge projects like art folios or heavily weighted coursework due dates. If something’s worth, like, 30% of your mark, it deserves more than a last-minute cram-sesh!

You cannot allow these weeks to sneak up on you! You WILL suffer the consequences in Term 2 if you’re not adequately prepared!

Not only is this true in terms of formal assessment tasks, but you should also take into consideration other external concerns. If you’ve got your best friend’s 18th coming up in Term 2 the Saturday before a heap of assessment is due… you should probably try and finish that stuff off before Saturday rather than assume you’ll be in the mood to work on Sunday after a night of hardcore partying. All sorts of other extracurricular concerns like part-time work, school events, sport or music commitments, and even family stuff can potentially impact your personal calendar. And without some foresight and effective planning, you may end up having to compromise these activities in order to stay on top of your studies (or else compromise your marks in order to fulfil these commitments.)

This kind of planning is very closely linked to the idea of knowing your own limitations too. For example, I knew that those Indonesian Vocabulary tests we had every Tuesday in Term 2 weren’t going to require a five hour revision stint every week. A few minutes set aside on Monday night and then testing myself on the bus to school on Tuesday morning was usually sufficient. However, things like group projects or practice essays required a little more preparation, and so although there may have been one or two things I could just fine-tune the day before, I generally needed to at least start those tasks a few days in advance. Way down the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got things like visual design folios which are ostensibly the product of a whole semester’s worth of work, and little changes the night before aren’t going to accomplish much unless a substantial amount of work has already been done.

So whilst it’s okay to factor in last-minute revision as a viable means of preparing for assessment, it’s vital that you plan ahead for Term 2 so that you don’t get too overwhelmed towards the end of semester.

3. Imbalanced study habits

Another very common issue amongst Year 12s in Term 2 is the tendency to slip into imbalanced, impractical, or unsustainable study regimes. If you found yourself constantly handing in homework late and barely keeping on top of things, then you’ll want to use Term 2 as your turnaround point to shift your priorities and change the way you approach your study.

That’s not to say you have to design some immaculately detailed and restrictive homework plan where every spare minute of your day is devoted to particular subjects, but perhaps a few adjustments to the way you handle work outside of school might be necessary. You could start keeping a record of all the due dates for major tests or pieces of assessment, but deliberately set them back a few days. Then, force yourself to treat that day as your deadline, and get into the habit of doing everything you need to do before then. That way, when that week rolls around, you’re on top of all your revision on Monday, and the test isn’t till Thursday, giving you three extra days to relax, work on other subjects, or maybe just keep refining your knowledge ahead of the test.

Perhaps you’ll benefit more from compiling a few to-do and must-do lists and could use a more definitive schedule to help you stay on track. You could even just focus on little changes in your perspective, like reminding yourself that although the content might be easy for now, as things pile up, you will feel like you’re under a bit more pressure. Or, on the other hand, you may need to tell yourself that it’s okay to struggle with certain topics and tasks, so long as you make more of an effort to seek help and rectify those uncertainties throughout Term 2.

Here’s the thing: if you’re constantly going from a 1 to 100 on the stress-o-metre then of course you’re going to end up tired and burnt out by the time those weeks of heavy assessment roll around. The safer, smarter thing to do is to try and operate at a consistent 30-40% level where you are persistently putting in the effort, but not staying up till 3am every day trying to cram all the content into your brain.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a few days or even a whole week off to keep your mental health and wellbeing in check, and if you study smart in Term 2, you’ll be surprised how much more relaxing and manageable the workload can seem.

4. Getting stuck in the Term 2 rut

But perhaps the most common mistake out of all of these is the potential for students to get stuck in a study rut where they become so complacent that they end up just going through the motions of eat, sleep, homework, repeat.

If you’re bored by the work you’re doing or you don’t feel as though you’re actively improving your skills and understanding of the content, chances are your study tactics are ineffective or inefficient, and it’s time to shake things up.

Think about the other means of studying you could employ – if you learn best by reading, then devise an elaborate series of highlighting and annotating notes and textbooks that forces you to pay more attention. Or, if you learn through talking and conversing with others, then rope some of your friends into a group discussion where you have to explain concepts to one another. This can be great as both a means of reinforcing your knowledge, and a way to uncover any possible misunderstandings you have. Even seemingly little things like going somewhere new to study can be all you need (e.g. plan out a bus route to take you to a library you’ve never been before, or find a nice gazebo at your local park and crash there on a nice, sunny day).

Without these variations in your study regime, it’s inevitable that you’ll end up bored and lacking in motivation. But sometimes it’s less about how you’re studying than why you’re studying. Yes, we all know that the end result of an ATAR is the obvious final destination that dangles over our heads like a particularly delicious carrot on a particularly long stick. But in terms of short-term achievements, think about the kinds of goals you’re setting yourself, and whether they’re quantitative (i.e. based on the number of hours you spend studying, or the numerical marks you’re aiming for) as opposed to qualitative (ie. based on definable standards and ‘things’ rather than ‘numbers’)

As a general rule, qualitative goals are far better for you than quantitative ones. Don’t think “I have to study for two hours tonight, and then four and a half hours this weekend.” Think: “I have to memorise those key principles for Genetics, I should write an English introduction for that really difficult prompt we got in class, and I need to go over Chapter 8 again for Maths because I’m not sure I fully understand how to graph hyperbolas.”

Those qualitative aims will give you far more direction in your study for the duration of Term 2, and can help you break out of the cycle of neverending hours of work. Plus, it can help you feel a sense of real achievement relative to your accomplishments – knowing that you spend three hours doing homework last night isn’t exactly a source of pride or excitement. But knowing that last night, you learned how to answer those ‘Evaluate…’ questions in Legal Studies and you memorised 10 more quotes from your English text – that’s something you can feel good about because you know for a fact that those skills are going to be useful to you later on in the year.

5. Thinking it’s too late to change

Finally, for most of your subjects, less than 15% of your mark has been determined so far!

Year 12 isn’t like some Olympic sprinting event where if you had a bad start and are a few seconds behind, you might as well just give up. It’s more like a marathon, and a rocky beginning can lead to some stumbles early on, but in the grand scheme of things, you’re barely at any disadvantage at all.

What will negatively affect you, though, is obsessing over those poor results or freak out about the fact that you screwed up a few pieces of assessment. Becoming overly stressed or despondent about your marks is pointless even if it’s a week before your final exam because there’s something you can do to boost your score. But we’re not a week out from the exams right now. It’s Term 2, and you’ve got months till you have to deal with end-of-year assessment. And you’ll have all sorts of other content to learn and tasks to complete in the meantime.

Your results aren’t finalised until the end of your exams. Everything that happens after that point is out of your hands, but everything that happens before that point is stuff you can take control of!

So if you’re unsatisfied with your marks at the moment, or you’re not confident in where you’re at right now, it makes no sense for you to continue doing the exact same things whilst expecting different results. A change in outcome is only possible if you’re changing your behaviour and approach (excluding the possibility of divine intervention or some spontaneous change of heart in your teacher’s marking style.) But most of the smart, high-scoring students across the state aren’t the ones who just get lucky by banging their heads against the wall so many times they create a hole. No; the smart ones hit their head once, take a step back and think ‘oh look, there’s a door over there, I’ll just use that instead.’

Don’t be afraid to admit that what you’re doing right now isn’t working for you. Because you’ll be in a better position if you acknowledge that now while you still have plenty of time to reconfigure your approach, rather than waiting until the exam is over to think about all the things you could have done differently.

And most importantly: don’t let little setbacks drag you down.

Instead, channel the spirit of Australian hero Steven Bradbury – the speed skater who won accent at the 2002 Winter Olympics after literally everyone in front of him fell over.

ZDgXmVu

6. Bonus Mistake: Not signing up to be a member of ATAR Notes.

When there are tens of thousands of Year 12s out there enjoying the benefits of free notes and free resources, you’d be silly not to give yourself the same advantage.