The End of an Era

[Potatohater]

Yo, I'm Taylor, and I don't know how to feel about having everyone read my entries but I'm gonna give it a crack anyway!
I can't believe there's only 1 and a bit weeks left of classes (since we have a lot of muck up time during week 10) and I'm still kinda in denial that I'm leaving, but at the same time it feels right. My school is my home, it's changed me and allowed me to grow and I'm gonna miss it soooo much.
Won't miss the HSC though... Ugh I'm so not ready for English!
I also find it interesting how my 1st and last exam will be drama hehe.
Today I've gotta go to work (uggh) so idk how much study I can get done but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Natasha.97]

Hey!

I can't believe it either! It's equal parts frightening and exciting at the same time :3

Isn't everyone?

[strawberries]

enjoy/cherish the last moments you have!
and goodluck for your exams!

[jamonwindeyer]

Yessss another journal to aid in my procrastination  keen to read about your last few weeks Taylor!

[fantasticbeasts3]

hi!!! welcome to the hsc journal squad ✨ (can we call ourselves a squad? we're cool enough for that right?)

interested to know why you don't like potatoes - that's not something you hear everyday

[katie,rinos]

Hey,
I also can't believe that there is only 1 1/2 weeks left!
I'm excited, happy, nervous and scared all at once!
Another person who hates/dislikes English (I think?). I feel your pain a lot and am also not ready.
I had work yesterday (what type/where do you work?). I've had to n/a from the end of school to the end of HSC.

Are we like the cool kids now (I think we can call ourselves a squad  )?
Excited to read your next updates. 

[Potatohater]

hi!!! welcome to the hsc journal squad ✨ (can we call ourselves a squad? we're cool enough for that right?)
interested to know why you don't like potatoes - that's not something you hear everyday

Yayeah! I reckon we can call ourselves a squad! As for the potatoes thing, I just really don't like the taste, and they are the only main food I dislike, yet most of the world loves them apparently?

I had work yesterday (what type/where do you work?). I've had to n/a from the end of school to the end of HSC.

I work at maccas (unfortunatley) and I've N/A from week 10 till after our formal, so I still have 2 shifts left. I'm hoping to get an RSA certifficate and maybe I can get a front of house job at the local theatre so I never have to return to fast food again when I'm done.
Will definatley keep y'all updated!

[Potatohater]

11/09/17 - The last Monday week B

Today I had 2 classes and 1 free. In Geography I kinda slacked off a bit, but to be fair my teacher wasn't there and the ppt the sub had us working on wasn't even complete so I did as much as I could do.
For my free my friends decided to be rebels and leave school grounds to get coffee, they invited me along but I said I had to study for English since it's my worst subject, naturally I was labelled a nerd haha. Only wrote a few notes though since I started falling asleep....
In Bio we had our class photo taken for the yearbook, got our final rankings (=5/50) finished communication and we started going through the 2005 paper as a class. I still don't feel like all of the points have been covered for communication, but maybe that's because I missed them while I was sick a few weeks ago, and my two friends in that class are notorious for not paying full attention.

After school I went to westfeilds to get my friend a B'day prezie and a bottle of Drayton's wine for my Geography teacher as our class present (Drayton's is our economic enterprise  ) but I was denied service because apparently you're not allowed to be served if you're in school uniform, even if you're 18! I'm kinda annoyed by that, but I guess they didn't have what I was looking for anyway.

And now I guess it's time to stop productively procrastinating, aka. writing this entry, and finish the nights study and get to sleep early so I can survive tomorrow's period 0.
Until next time, Taylor 

[Potatohater]

OMG the last proper week of school is over - only muck up week left!!

Here are some highlights of the week gone by:
Science BBQ:
The science faculty threw a BBQ for us. We got to have sausages (there were even vegan sausages so everyone could be included) cake and a cupcake for everybody that Ms Mishra made even though she doesn't have any year 12 classes this year. They also handed out 'Charlie Awards' for each class. The meaning of these were never explained but my guess is that they are for students who do well but are also special in some way, such as the physics student that falls asleep in class, the chem student the is "physically there but never actually there" and the bio student who "has 2 modes, sleep and off. and then there's the rare occasion where she is turned on, and thats where the magic happens" - just to name a few. The descriptions of each recipient were quite amusing!

Academy Awards Ceremony
For our Thursday drama lesson we held and academy awards ceremony. We dressed up in trashy dresses and accessories from the drama store room and walked down the red carpet. There was food, the Oscars sound track was playing and little trophies. Our teacher gave a speech in which she was "channeling Ellen" and then we all got up and presented awards to people (this had been sorted out in a previous lesson). Each recipient then gave an acceptance speech. Some were genuine, others were acting in character, some were funny and some threatened to make us all cry, causing my teacher to say "we don't cry in feather boas ladies" I got my award for "The best logbook" since I'm the only one that stayed on top of my logbook and wasn't finishing it the morning of submission, and my IP logbook ended up being 2 logbooks stuck together since I recorded (almost) EVERYTHING in it. We then took a heap of photos.
Following this we also had an English lunch on the senior lawn which was really just a bunch of fighting the crowds to get food.

Flash mob prep 
On Monday we plan to do a flash mob in the quad so today we learnt the dance. Unfortunately the girl choreographing decided to run this session during our Friday maths class. My whole class told the teacher they were leaving but they should be marked present and he kept saying "you're either here or you're not" Within a matter of minutes I was the only one there, alone in a class giving off the appearance of a studious teachers pet, but people from other classes kept coming in and asking me if I would join them. I was so conflicted but eventually I decided to go learn the dance too. Before I can even finish packing up my teacher just gets up and leaves. Doesn't even say goodbye! whilst I understand there was no point for him to stay there I still find the way in which he just left me so incredibly funny! I then went and learnt the dance with about half the year in the gym.

Some other things that happened on Friday - played a revision Kahoot in English. My name was J. Gatsby and I was coming 1st until the teacher said "Gatsby is in the lead, but we all know what happens him in the end" The very next question after that comment I lost my answer streak and ended up coming 2nd. If only those ranking were our English rankings though...
The better half of my group also wrote our names on our table in whiteout at recess, to carry on the tradition and leave our physical mark on the school.

In terms of study though, lets be real, not much is gonna happen now since I have a revue to write, a yearbook to create and a whole bunch of muck up activities to plan.
Until next time, Taylor 

[Potatohater]

Wow the last week of school has been so hectic I havnt been on the forum for a while, and what do I find when I return? Everyone had a meet up and I didn't even know it was happening oh well, I guess there's potentially the future.
Some brief highlights of my final week of school
- dress in our junior uniforms
- changed the school sign to say "thanks for all the support" and decorated it with old bras
- water fight and flash mob
- dress in boy school uniforms
- graduation school assembly
- graduation evening assembly
- REVUE
In terms of the holidays/study break so far I've cleaned my room, enjoyed my sisters Alice in wonderland tea party for her 16th, did an RSA course and got my competency card and finishing up the year book, as well as studying mostly for bio and English, with a touch of geo and maths. I havnt even looked at drama yet. I feel like I've been studying but now that I look back on the past week I really need to get my act together. Hopefully tomorrow I will finish my mod C essay (which I keep falling asleep while writing) and upload it to the marking thread, and finish most of my bio notes. Please future Taylor, do it for even further future Taylor.

P.S I FINALLY got my geography rank on the last Thursday - no. 1 !!!!!! I was really hoping for that but didn't expect it to actually happen, but it did! The hard work pays off kids!
Until next time, Taylor 

[Daniyahasan]

Omg thats sounds like so much fun! even my school had an AMAZING muck up day and graduation was soo good too
and WOW! 1ST RANK IS AMAZING !! GOOD ON YOU

[Potatohater]

I can't believe in 3 weeks I'll have 4 exams done!
It's nice to think there will come a time where I won't need to analyse literature in such an incredible depth and write essays about it ever again, I can just read for leisure, yay! But it's also scary because I don't think I'm as ready as past Taylor would have liked. Although I think I am starting to really get into studying now (mostly due to the little wave of stress that hit on Monday as I realised paper 1 was only 14 days away). The original plan was to run my day like a school day but lately I've been getting out of bed a bit too late for that, so at the moment I've just been studying and taking breaks as I please. I'm not sure if I should keep going like this (since I don't know weather I've actually been productive or just feel like I have) or actually implement some sort of structure.
I've also (finally) sorted out a solidish plan for my post HSC adventure rather than just talking about it. The plan is for some of my friends and I to drive out to a property in the middle of almost nowhere and camp for a few days between the last HSC exam (drama) and the first school spec rehearsal, since one of my friends is in the orchestra for being an awesome viola player. So yeah, I'm really getting excited for that!   

Until next time, Taylor 

[Potatohater]

The past 2 days I've been working on Hamlet stuff but not much has really been acheived now that I look back on it. I also started to do some maths but was distracted by the terrarium I made during my last geo lesson. "How on earth were you distracted by a terrarium?" You may ask. Well, I noticed the soil was't level so I went outside to fix it but instead made it worse! I accidentally pulled out the plant and since it doesn't have a solid root system yet it just kinda fell apart in my hand. I did stick it back in but I'm worried I've messed it up and now it won't grow, and I've made the soil even more unlevel, good job Taylor. I'm so annoyed with myself!

Other than that I'm hoping to be more productive to tomorrow, as the plan is to go to the library with my friend and pick each other's brains, but she hasn't confirmed yet.

Unti next time, Taylor 

[Potatohater]

Gosh, 1 week... I keep getting hit by mini waves of stress cause idk if I'll be as prepared as I want to be in time.

Yesterday I went to the library with my friend to do English and whilst it's good to get other people's ideas, it kinda limited productivity since there was a lot of collaboration and not much product, also we did get a bit distracted by food and chatting....
I then had my friend I met at year 10 drama camp over as a break from study and we've planned to meet up again to do drama and maths study but my dad doesn't like him and seems to think he can stop me studying with him. (Which he can't)

Today I think the foot really went on the accelerator despite the interruption of the Sydney water people. I didn't realise they were knocking on the door since I was so into my Hamlet brainstorm, so they just let themselves in the back gate and we're looking at something near the creek (I have a creek running through our property) then they left. Meanwhile I'm inside watching through the windows, shitting myself and trying to contact my parents because I just saw 4 unknown figures just casually trespass, and their van also was plain white with no markings adding to my fright. Eventully after they'd left my mum called back and told me it was just Sydney water people cause we've had a few sewrage problems. Phew!

So yeah, apart from that I actually did some work I'm quite proud of. I finished my bio notes, did some brainstorms of key ideas for each module, and started to gather my thoughts quote wise for mod A, made essay plans for every past HSC mod A question with my prescribed texts and started writing some paragraphs about different ideas. I did also try and do a timed essay but I ended up having a nap in the middle, then my sister got home from school and it all fell apart from there.

Not sure what to do tomorrow since I have work but hopefully some geography and either AOS or modules, not sure yet, gosh I suck at making study plans!

Until next time, Taylor 

[Potatohater]

Today I finished my geo notes, Yayeah! I think I still need to create some sort of visual representation of the viticulture case study though cause I kinda don't understand how everything links together just yet. I also watched a documentary called "world's busiest cities" the Mexico City episode, which was sooo good! It was really interesting and since I was taking notes on it throughout I now feel slightly more confident with the mega cities content - yay for productive procrastination!

Also did a few communication practice questions for bio and actually found some of them hard, which has never happened to me in bio before, so I left them blank and hope to seek out the answers at some point.

Tomorrow I'm going to go up to Hornsby just to do a mock paper 2 even though it's so far away, because my school did trials before learning mod C so I haven't practiced the full paper yet and don't trust myself to simulate one at home since I get distracted easily (when I do my practice papers at home I do them with all the sections separated) I still havn't compiled and memorised all my mod C quotes so this will be interesting what I do and don't remeber...

Overall I think I acheived everything I hoped to today despite not using my time as effectivley as I know I can. The only things I didn't achieve were AOS creative writing and finishing off those mod C quotes.

Until next time, Taylor