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Thoughts on Today

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brenden:
Yooooooooooooo what's up. Look, long story short, I started using AN halfway through Year 12 and first did a small amount of 'work' for AN towards the end of 2013. Back then, AN was basically known to a broad range of high-achieving and aspirational students in Victoria and not really heard of by anyone else. God, it was so helpful. People would bleed effort into this site to give help to - heavy quotation marks - "disadvantaged" students, with a lot of people clocking up like, thousands of hours on this website. I'm talking like, a whole group of people who put in over 1000, 2000, 3000 hours into this site out of the goodness of their hart. At fifteen bucks an hour, we're talking about like, $45,000 worth of time donated by Year 12 students, by uni students, to help people in the same boat as them.

Personally, I achieved in the top 1% of the state in my English exam and that only happened after a select few people generously marked my essays coming up to exams. My school was just a lil underperforming public school like 50kms south-east of the City where in the year before me, not one person got a 40+ in English (or for the NSW peeps, not one person got a Band 6 in English). So like, my writing made a huge jump in quality through getting the advice of people who'd done really well, through ATAR Notes. The year after I graduated I was grateful enough that I reckon I marked over 100 essays. Not bad. It's that type of reciprocity that has kept this community offering completely, unequivocally free and high-quality resources for 8+ years.

It's that type of reciprocity that brought us to the point where we grew enough to actually make money from advertising... Which meant we could actually afford good email clients with good security and no glitchy shit...Which meant we could spread our content better to people who signed up! And so on and so forth. And every year there was always some lame talk about spreading our genius to NSW. One year I got fed up and just made a fucking HSC memes page. I'm not shitting you. I just posted some dank fkn memes for a year and kept asking people to donate resources, donate updated syllabus notes for the HSC which you can't really get in other places without paying.

And from that memes page I met Jamon. And from Jamon I met Elyse - she went to the same school. And from that memes page I met Jake. I shit you not. And I told them the goal, the mission... what we wanted to do... just help HSC students. And I've never seen three people work together so amazingly, so consistently and with such an amazing purpose in mid... and really, I have to include RuiAce in that, who no one even knew and then fucking bang, he's posted 1,800 times this year. They didn't start contributing to this website in earnest until FEBRUARY of THIS YEAR. And in TEN MONTHS TIME we have grown a legitimate and robust community of amazing students - just amazing students who help one another, who ask for help without shame because they know this place is fucking awesome. But really, huge props to our HSC community to letting us in, trusting us to help you even though a few months ago we were just a group of hopers. Studybuddy, birdwing, kanvinila, BlissfulMelodii, ssssss(howmanys's)r, bethjormay, Stefan K, stududds, joey9911, marynguyen18, ml125, lottie99, ayyddaan, ssarahj, HAPPY PHYSICS LAND(!!!), Bpunjabi, Neutron, WLalex, lysscass, Klexos, amandali, brontem, laurad36, roshanajabbour, vincentso69, nibblez16, Skidous, Essej, spencerr, Iha, EmileeSmith, :3,  and... I guess... even conic curve! And so many that are missing. These people have made the community. LITERALLY. Coz there's not that many of you, right? At the start it was literally just like, amandali asking 4U questions, and Happy Physics Land talking shit. And from that, more and more people start to see what we have to offer. So to every single person to made the effort to learn how to use this messy forum, that checked their emails and read the posts, that helped out where they could, that overcame the awkwardness of posting for the first time... and then the tenth time... and then kept posting. THANK YOU. We *LIT-ER-A-LLY* could not have done it without you. You're the original team. Legit. If there was a group of 30 people that started to grow us in Victoria just 8 years ago, then you are the group of... however many... that started us in NSW - and that will be true ten years from today. I hope each and every one of you stick around, get help for uni, and give what help/notes/advice you can to the next lot of HSC students... coz that's what ATAR Notes is truly about.

Today, we peaked at 4,200 people online at a time - which is a 350% increase on the measly record of 1,200 people we had a few years ago on the day ATARs were released. Monday of this week was the biggest day in the site's history. Then again on Tuesday. Then again on Wednesday. Then again today. Tomorrow will be enormous. So will the rest of October. And then? So will 2017 (*with your help). I just can't believe what we've done together. It's just the type of community that makes no sense because like, how, in this world, does something like this continue to exist for free? Everything in the world would tell you that people aren't willing to cooperate and be generous for the greater good, but that's what happens here on ATAR Notes every day.

That is something special, and something I cherish.

It's basically the reason that "succeeding" in  the aim of infiltrating NSW is so meaningful - just in general, but to myself personally as well.

Another huge thank you:

ATAR Notes Leadership Team

Every single person in this list has contributed an enormous amount to the community. More than some of you could actually imagine. From pi to insanipi, from old to new... These people are completely infungible. Heidi, Lauren, Joseph, Aaron, just... every single one of you: thank you so much.

And that's all I wanted to say. Here's to the best community in the world. And cheers to the people who made it.

Joseph41:
Outstanding. <3

heids:
Reading this kind of made my insides go squishy.

The ATARNotes vision of equal, free, generous, giving education is pretty outstanding, and it's therefore attracted so many pretty outstanding people!  This place has genuinely changed my life.  So much love to everyone who's been and will be a part of this vision - a vision that's looking ever higher and higher!

<3 <3 <3

sweetiepi:

--- Quote from: brenden on October 13, 2016, 08:35:53 pm ---Brenden's big af post.

--- End quote ---
In ATAR Notes we trust ;) . In all seriousness though, this is a terrific achievement for all! <3
(In agreeance 100% to the above posts)

jamonwindeyer:
Beautiful  8)

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