"How to cruise through the HSC with a state of ignorance" A story by Fergus

[Fergus6748]

It's a bit weird that we are in our final term of school. 13 years of schooling leading up to these last few months. Huh weird, anyway, I've just been plugging away at my english tables for the modules which has been a pain to do. My trials are next week, well exactly a week away, kinda scary thought. I'm just trying to go over as many papers as I can and worry about my other study notes until after the exam block. That's pretty much all I had to say, so cya later

[jamonwindeyer]

It's a bit weird that we are in our final term of school. 13 years of schooling leading up to these last few months. Huh weird, anyway, I've just been plugging away at my english tables for the modules which has been a pain to do. My trials are next week, well exactly a week away, kinda scary thought. I'm just trying to go over as many papers as I can and worry about my other study notes until after the exam block. That's pretty much all I had to say, so cya later

Good luck with it all mate! Like your strategy, practice makes perfect

[Fergus6748]

Good luck with it all mate! Like your strategy, practice makes perfect

Thanks Jamon, to be honest feeling pretty overwhelmed with the trial prep particularly for English.

[Fergus6748]

Good news everyone!!!

I'm feeling much better for my english exams!!  I've just gotta smash out my Mod C tables and get a few essays  written and WHAMMY!! I'll be all set.

Can't wait to just get through these exams and relax for a few days!! I was pretty close to getting my Ps but with trials I'm just gonna put it off until after I've finished exams. I've just got about 8 hours left!! Otherwise, since applications opened for UAC on the first it's really hit home how close we are to finishing year 12.  Buuuut, I put in my preferences and I'm pretty happy about them. Although in saying that I might diversify my selections a bit since they consist solely of engineering and science!! My preferences, more or less in this order are:

1. B Advanced Science (Honours)/B Engineering (Honours) at UNSW
2. B Engineering (Honours)/B Science at USYD
3. B Advanced Science (Honours) at UNSW
4. B Science at USYD
5. B Engineering (Honours) combined with B Arts or B Science or B Science (Computer Science) at UNSW

It's really exciting!! As you can see I want to go into science with a bit of engineering on the side. Although I've been thinking about swapping one of them out for a double degree in economics and science just to diversify a bit. Ideally, I would like to get the top degree on that list but it has a 95 Selection Rank requirement, which I think I can get especially with adjustment factors. Well that's me, till next time.

[Fergus6748]

Hey guys, how's it going? It's been a couple of days since I last posted and the only thing I've been doing is working. The weekend was just preping for English Paper One at the State Library. It felt good to get work done though. Although, I of course didn't just study, I got to chill out and watch a movie or two. I'm thinking of rewatching Brooklyn Nine Nine again, cause that show is awesome!! It's quick to make me chuckle and is a welcome sight to these study-sore eyes.

Anyway, to the point, I had my Paper One trial exam and it was a lot better than I expected. I really got into my essay and it actually made it a pretty fun experience surpisingly. I spent at least an hour on the short answer questions and I didn't even finish the 6 marker, I decided to move on to my essay before I spent anymore time on it. The essay was really good, I got into the swing of it pretty easily after the short answer, although I couldn't fully remember all of my quotes, so I might have fudged them a bit, but hopefully they won't be too harsh on me. Related text wise, I was originally wanting to use Catcher in the Rye for my ORT but since I didn't have the book on hand, I decided to use To Build a Fire by Jack London, which is a pretty interesting story if a bit long, but in the end I didn't even end up using it!! It turned that I couldn't find quotes for it that easily so I decided at 10 pm last night to just use my original discovery ORT This is Water by David Foster Wallace, which is a commencement speech. That turned out really well, at least in my opinion, I guess I will find out if I did any good.

Thankfully, there was no stimulus for the creative only a question about a change in attitude leads to a significant change of perspective or something, but since I didn't really prepare my creative I left it till last. Since I spent most of my time on short answer and the rest on essay I only had about 10 mins to do my creative. I had an idea, which is my eulogy on Stephen Hawking idea, so when I actually did get to the creative with about 10 mins to go I managed to write 2 pages worth of it plus I outlined the rest of the creative so hopefully I can scrape some marks together for not finishing my 6 marker short answer. I really liked the idea and I will probably use it again once I've written fully.

Is it bad if I want to just give up and procrastinate for the rest of trials already? yeah, first exam down and I wanna just do anything but study. I've got Paper 2 tomorrow, which should be interesting to see, and then mathematics on friday so a pretty big gap between them. Maths should be fine, just gonna smash out some papers, next week is interesting with four exams in three days; Physics, Extension 1 Maths, Economics, Chemistry, in that order. So yeah, that should be fun. Really I'm feeling pretty good for my other subjects, the only worrying thing is Paper 2 tomorrow, easily the most challenging for me, considering that I write pretty slowly.

I thinks that all for me, that's a pretty nice little nugget of post for all my readers!! See you tomorrow after Paper 2!!

[Fergus6748]

Heya guys, it's been way too long and a bunch of things have happened so I'm gonna break these down into small posts like this tiny one just so I don't get overwhelmed. Also i had tryed to make a really long one but while I was writing it I accidentedly closed the tab and lost everything I wrote so Im not falling down that hole again. First and foremost, I started watching Brooklyn Nine Nine again, it was an accident at first since I clicked on the wrong thing, but then I started watching it and now I have to watch the whole thing over (cause its B99!!). Thats as good a start as any other!!

[Fergus6748]

Numero uno post (not including the first). The last time I posted way back at the start of trials. I had just completed my first paper (English Paper one trial) I enjoyed it just as I enjoyed writing Paper Two, the biggest thing that got me down though was my marks. I felt that I had prepared reasonably well for them coming in (couldve down heaps more, but Im inherently not overly motivated for english) so it was a pretty big shock when I was sitting bottom twenty people with 51% on my trial. I got my mark back a few weeks ago so Im not too angery anymore, but at the time I thought i had been scammed. particularly on discovery essay with a 9/15. Of all the parts, I felt most confident about that. I ran out of time for both papers so I didn't complete Mod A and creative and the marks reflected that (7/20 and 6/15 respectively) but that was already a given going in. I also didn't finish the five marker short answer so I dropped those marks as well (10/15). I was expecting better marks from mod b and c, particularly mod b as I smashed that during internals, I got 12/20 for both of those. English was a pretty big disappointment overall. Ive never been very good at english and havent held much love for the subject but I was pretty devastestated to get those marks. I had been seeing a tutor throughout the year and had really picked up on my english study but aparantly that wasn't worth much. I dont wanna gripe too much about my teacher since it is largely my fault for not doing well, but I seriously dont like my teacher. she hasnt been very supportive for me over the past two years and is only concerns herself with the people she likes/those who do well (namely not me), an opinion shared by most of my year, so its not just my subjective opinion. anyway gripe over. Ive mostly gotten over that anyway as if it was going to happen to one of my subjects im happy it happened to english. English is a subject that obeys no laws of reason and to attempt to better yourself by understanding it would only leave you burned for the effort. I am not an english person, and never will be. my heart is solely set upon STEM, and actually useful and constructive fields of study. Now wait you might say that english makes us think. and you would be wrong of course as english as a subject goes out of its way to belittle and insult those who try to understand it. Philosophy on the hand, is a field that provokes great thought and encourages everyone to partake without causing people to think that their perspectives don't matter. As you can see, I have very distinct/sharp thoughts about HSC English that I could go into for great length but I did say that my gripes were over a few lines up so i will leave it there. thank you for reading all my tangents about english and its uselessness within society. Until next time!!

[Fergus6748]

Kinda left the post hanging there for a bit. My other subjects ranged from fine to pretty good, or at least ranking wise. Marks wise was bit eh. I was more worried about my rank, since Im working on boosting my marks now with da past papers. Maths I got 87% which was pretty good, and Im happy with that, but Extension 1 maths I got 66% which was a bit disappointing getting back but expected. Extension kinda got put aside on the study pile. Economics 65-70% (not sure on the figure), which was alright, chemistry I got (61%) which ranked pretty well and is my average mark over the year so I wasnt too stressed over the mark. Physics got me 68% which I messed up since I didnt prepare for the optional topic very much so that cost me. Oh yeah forgot, for economics they made us study the whole course rather than the standard first three topics for the exam. so we had to press and prepare the fourth topic (we did topic three last after topic four) just before trials. That was pretty cruel and annoying but it worked out ok. Overall the trials was a stressful experience and pretty draining. I spent many weeks afterwards trying to relax and rejuvanate myself. It was a pretty difficult slog to get back into a study mindset after those few weeks off. Ill leave it there.

[Fergus6748]

Heya. I think I've gotta fess up to not being able to commit to this journal. I started middle of the year and have only made a few posts which isn't the worst.

There is a fair bit of melancholy going around as we're in the final weeks of exams, that we are finally free to do what we want. That's the thing though. After 13 years of school, to be cut off now having known nothing except school is a very scary thought and quite encompassing if you grant it space to grow. I'm honestly a little afraid of what the future holds. I what to follow my passions but it is so easy to lose sight of what's important and lose motivation to strive for your goals.

I've got four more exams left over the next two weeks. I don't think I've prepared enough for them. Every paper I do only really serves to highlight how little I know on answering exam questions. While some might be quick to say that I'm just not good at exams. Reality is that we are a community of unique people living in the rigid and uniform world of our elders, that doesn't really grant a lot of room to innovate and grow in our own directions. That's the way of it in a constantly evolving world, we are subject to the whims of those who came before. It's so easy to fall into the entrapping circular thought of frustration and anger at the issues of the world. Society is incredibly interesting and frustrating at the same time. The best thing that any of us can do is try to keep an openmind to the perspectives of others. Anger only escalates situations whereas compassion and reason provide solutions.

Not too sure what this post and further this journal is and what it is evolving into as I undergo some of the biggest coming of age changes in my life but I guess the only thing for it is to take day by day. Peace out to any one reading.

[Fergus6748]

Phew!! Two more exams done!!! So so close to finishing. Struggling to keep up the work grind to the end. Although with freedom so close, it is incredibly tempting to just relax completely. *Sigh* all well. Ever forward. So basically, I have finished Extension 1 Maths and Physics and only have Chemistry and Economics left. Whoop, Whoop!!

Extension was uber hard. From what I've been told a lot of people struggled, which is great for all of us!! I didn't have any expectations gonig in and wasnt to suprised to see that it was a really hard test after Advanced Maths. Personally, I didn't manage to finish the exam. Question 14 was really big struggle and it didn't help that I was only figuring stuff out in the last 30 minutes, aha. I spent most of the paper reading through the questions and getting the easy stuff out of the way and then trying to tackle everything else, and the last 30 minutes scrambling to write everything I managed to figure out at the end. It was a really weird feeling, Maths was one of the subjects I kinda took for granted, I didn't really put much thought to it, as it is a pretty straight forward subject and all my others needed more of my attention. So, I really enjoyed the maths classes and will miss it, funnily enough.

Physics was ok. It wasn't too hard but wasn't too bad either it was just average. I put a fair bit of work into it and felt pretty good coming out of it. Kinda blancked on the standard model question in the optional topic so I kinda just figuratively spewed my thoughts onto the page for the seven-marker. Most of my year, shared my thoughts about the test as it not overly significant. Physics is my favourite science just not my best, frustratingly enough which pretty much sums up my expereince of studying Physics in the HSC. I hope to go on and further study physics at uni and try and get into a research position or maybe even teaching. It's still pretty undecided. Overall, I enjoyed physics as a subject just not necessarily in class.

Really, it has been a really weird exam period. For almost half of our time at school has been teachers hyping up the HSC, and it really wasn't much of an experience. Granted, I haven't finished my exams yet but I'm sure that I'm not alone in saying that the HSC has been overhyped all these years, and it is not as climatic as I was expecting. To be graduated, but still going to school in exams, is a really weird feeling. We can't go back but we are still stuck in place before we can move forwards.

Thanks a bunch!! I really enjoyed school particularly year 12. Without a doubt the best year of my schooling. I will miss it.

[kauac]

Really, it has been a really weird exam period. For almost half of our time at school has been teachers hyping up the HSC, and it really wasn't much of an experience. Granted, I haven't finished my exams yet but I'm sure that I'm not alone in saying that the HSC has been overhyped all these years, and it is not as climatic as I was expecting.

This is very true, and exactly how I have felt too. Went through a similar thing when I did my first HSC exams last year, so I have managed to be a bit more chill this year haha. At the end of the day, they are just another exam.

Glad things are tracking well! Good luck for chem and eco! (Whoever put chem towards the end of the HSC period should have thought otherwise, haha  ).

[Fergus6748]

This is very true, and exactly how I have felt too. Went through a similar thing when I did my first HSC exams last year, so I have managed to be a bit more chill this year haha. At the end of the day, they are just another exam.

Glad things are tracking well! Good luck for chem and eco! (Whoever put chem towards the end of the HSC period should have thought otherwise, haha  ).

Ahaha, thanks. Exactly, it's a bit ridiculous the way its treated.