Bianca3016's VCE Journal

[bianca3016]

English Language - I have a SAC on Monday. Guided AC and short answer questions. We had to interview a non-standard English speaker and write a transcript which will be used in the SAC. I like my ACs because there's structure to them so they're relatively black and white.

It went reasonably well. The short answer questions were a little odd, as in one of them couldn't really be answered with my transcript and three had strange marking schemes, but I wrote a lot for all of them and finished that part of the SAC. The second part was a full AC on a different text. It was a tad difficult to talk about the text, and I don't think I allocated enough time either. I finished my introduction (it was a page long, so I'm definitely going to have to work on writing more concisely) and had ~10 minutes left of the SAC so I wrote two brief body paragraphs so that I could get my ideas down at least.
One more SAC in english language... Boy will I be happy when it's over with.

[Joseph41]

How do you think your preferences will shape up atm?

[bianca3016]

How do you think your preferences will shape up atm?

Not sure... not how I envisioned them a year ago.
Definitely business, likely a double degree, not sure where, I have no idea what my atar will look like so I have no idea how to go about preferences eek

[not.yet.a.nerd]

Not sure... not how I envisioned them a year ago.
Definitely business, likely a double degree, not sure where, I have no idea what my atar will look like so I have no idea how to go about preferences eek

Does your school give you a predicted atar? That might help for deciding potential uni courses.

It's been interesting reading your journal - you've had such a varied vce journey! I'm pretty boring in comparison - mainly stuck with the same vce subjects for 2 years. Are you still playing in the orchestra?

Also, what's it like working an office job? Do the employees treat you differently as you're a student?

[bianca3016]

Does your school give you a predicted atar? That might help for deciding potential uni courses.

It's been interesting reading your journal - you've had such a varied vce journey! I'm pretty boring in comparison - mainly stuck with the same vce subjects for 2 years. Are you still playing in the orchestra?

Also, what's it like working an office job? Do the employees treat you differently as you're a student?

Hello! haha Thanks for reading my journal - it definitely has been a bit of a strange journey and I've changed so much in the past year or so. Sticking with the same vce subjects doesn't make you boring - just makes you decisive and dedicated, which aren't bad qualities by any stretch of the imagination haha
I'm not playing in the orchestra anymore. I was going to join the flute ensemble again but gave it a miss because I was doing so many other things. Do you play an instrument or sport?

Our school refuses to give us predicted ATARs or study scores - they have them to send to interstate/international universities but they're really weird about not giving the students any information. I've tried using atar + study score calculators to get a rough estimate and just put in the lowest possible scores so that I don't end up with no viable preferences, but yeah.... incredibly annoying situation.

The office job is fantastic. The employees don't really treat me all that differently since I just do basic work and I'm as qualified as anyone else who would have my position. There is one employee who is only qualified as a bookkeeper (not accountant) who was a little weird when they first started, but I guess they realised I'm not competing for their job or whatever (yet ) so yeah... it's a really fun job though.

Hope your assessments are going well!

[AngelWings]

Our school refuses to give us predicted ATARs or study scores - they have them to send to interstate/international universities but they're really weird about not giving the students any information. I've tried using atar + study score calculators to get a rough estimate and just put in the lowest possible scores so that I don't end up with no viable preferences, but yeah.... incredibly annoying situation.

The same happened at my school for the majority of my subjects (the only one I got an estimated SS was for Methods). We also never got told our rankings. Reason for this was so we all wouldn't get hung up on numbers and do the best we could, which I am thankful for. I countered this by just putting in preferences as I wanted them, since you can just switch them after ATAR Release Day (Change of Preference week). I wound up not changing preferences much in that period. 

[bianca3016]

The same happened at my school for the majority of my subjects (the only one I got an estimated SS was for Methods). We also never got told our rankings. Reason for this was so we all wouldn't get hung up on numbers and do the best we could, which I am thankful for. I countered this by just putting in preferences as I wanted them, since you can just switch them after ATAR Release Day (Change of Preference week). I wound up not changing preferences much in that period.

Sorry, this may seem like a silly question, but can you change preferences entirely or just reorder the pre-existing ones?
I guess not knowing your predicted scores has a lot of benefits that I'm happy to reap, but I'd love to have, like, a predicted ATAR that changes with every sac I do haha

[AngelWings]

Sorry, this may seem like a silly question, but can you change preferences entirely or just reorder the pre-existing ones?
I guess not knowing your predicted scores has a lot of benefits that I'm happy to reap, but I'd love to have, like, a predicted ATAR that changes with every sac I do haha

Please take this with a grain of salt, but pretty sure you can change them entirely. There is one giant exception: you won't be able to get into any courses that require additional tasks and such e.g. medicine (assuming you didn't do UMAT) or design (which have interviews), since they would've passed. 

[bianca3016]

Please take this with a grain of salt, but pretty sure you can change them entirely. There is one giant exception: you won't be able to get into any courses that require additional tasks and such e.g. medicine (assuming you didn't do UMAT) or design (which have interviews), since they would've passed.

Oh sweet!
Thanks so much!!!

[Bri MT]

Please take this with a grain of salt, but pretty sure you can change them entirely. There is one giant exception: you won't be able to get into any courses that require additional tasks and such e.g. medicine (assuming you didn't do UMAT) or design (which have interviews), since they would've passed. 

Yeah,  you can add in new courses and get rid of old ones as well as reorder. Having my course in my preferences list from the start was useful because I was sent email reminders that I needed to compete a supplementary form for it by November. The other thing to be aware of its that some courses have early application dates, so it's best to check this as well.

[bianca3016]

I realised this morning that I only have 4 Mondays left as a high school student... insane, really.
Accounting; I spoke to the teacher last week about my results and what I am likely to be looking at in terms of study scores and he gave me a number well above what I believed I could do. Usually this would make me less willing to try hard, as I know I could always fall back on this score, but it has actually made me work harder + more consistently in this subject than ever. The trickiest part is keeping up with all new concepts (for those of you who are new, I didn't do 1/2 and went into accounting on a bit of a whim) but there are no serious problems that can't be fixed within a few weeks.
Economics; oh my goodness I love monetary policy. It's like everything from units 1-4 came together to create this beautiful topic that finally makes complete sense. I'm not saying much about the SAC (don't want to jinx it), but it's definitely the most confident I've felt coming out of one. Shame that we end the year on supply side policies - feels like it may be a bit of a let down.
English Language; I hate this class more and more every time I step foot in to it. Bad vibes, bad grades, mediocre teaching, mediocre resources, awful presentation of concepts, and poor organisation/attitude from the school. We had to get a different teacher one day a week due to a timetable clash (usually I'd be upset that younger years got preference over year 12s, but) and this teacher is incredible - I feel like the subject isn't nearly as much of a mess as before. I have it as my first period 2 days a week... boy is it hard waking up those days haha Oh well, almost over soon
Mathematics; I've realised I may actually miss maths in uni. We're on to matrices now, and I do find them a whole lot easier than last year. I wish our other module wasn't geometry/trig though, I suck at it...

Kind of a negative sounding post, but I'm /generally/ happy with school at the moment. I hope everyone reading this is doing well too <3

[Bri MT]

I realised this morning that I only have 4 Mondays left as a high school student... insane, really.
Accounting; I spoke to the teacher last week about my results and what I am likely to be looking at in terms of study scores and he gave me a number well above what I believed I could do. Usually this would make me less willing to try hard, as I know I could always fall back on this score, but it has actually made me work harder + more consistently in this subject than ever. The trickiest part is keeping up with all new concepts (for those of you who are new, I didn't do 1/2 and went into accounting on a bit of a whim) but there are no serious problems that can't be fixed within a few weeks.
Economics; oh my goodness I love monetary policy. It's like everything from units 1-4 came together to create this beautiful topic that finally makes complete sense. I'm not saying much about the SAC (don't want to jinx it), but it's definitely the most confident I've felt coming out of one. Shame that we end the year on supply side policies - feels like it may be a bit of a let down.
English Language; I hate this class more and more every time I step foot in to it. Bad vibes, bad grades, mediocre teaching, mediocre resources, awful presentation of concepts, and poor organisation/attitude from the school. We had to get a different teacher one day a week due to a timetable clash (usually I'd be upset that younger years got preference over year 12s, but) and this teacher is incredible - I feel like the subject isn't nearly as much of a mess as before. I have it as my first period 2 days a week... boy is it hard waking up those days haha Oh well, almost over soon
Mathematics; I've realised I may actually miss maths in uni. We're on to matrices now, and I do find them a whole lot easier than last year. I wish our other module wasn't geometry/trig though, I suck at it...

Kind of a negative sounding post, but I'm /generally/ happy with school at the moment. I hope everyone reading this is doing well too <3

One of the things I value about this post is that you talk about negative things (because VCE isn't all sunshine and rainbows) but you've also considered the positive aspect for each point you've raised - which is great to see since it can be easy to get sucked into spirals of negativity, especially when you're stressed.


Good luck for your results and continued engagement in your topics!

[bianca3016]

One of the things I value about this post is that you talk about negative things (because VCE isn't all sunshine and rainbows) but you've also considered the positive aspect for each point you've raised - which is great to see since it can be easy to get sucked into spirals of negativity, especially when you're stressed.


Good luck for your results and continued engagement in your topics!

haha I'm trying to see the positive sides of things more - negativity won't get you far especially in vce
Thank you so much for your support (I think I forgot to thank you for your help with preferences a little earlier too, so thank you again!!)

[bianca3016]

This week is a little heavy on the SACs. I had maths part one and eng lang yesterday, maths part two today, eco on Thursday, and accounting on Friday. After that, I only have one accounting sac (next term) and then I'm officially finished. wowow has time flown.
I'm most scared for eco because I feel as if I have no idea what is going on. Supply side policies seemed fine before I realised how messy the topic is - compared to my favourite, monetary policy, which is very straightforward and organised. Speaking of which, I truly thought that sac was going to be my best... it wasn't. My teacher marked it insanely harshly (same for a lot of people in the cohort) and we're not sure why. I lost only a couple of marks for content mistakes (nothing I didn't know, just mixed up one transmission mechanism oops) but lost a lot of marks for silly, structure-related things. I don't believe it's fair, but I'm waiting to get the feedback sheet to see what he has to say about the marking scheme... bit disappointing considering how well I knew the topic.
Accounting is on budgetary policy, which has little to no bookkeeping, meaning I can probably do well. However, it's an online sac and I always tend to make silly mistakes! I'm actually looking forward to this, and my teacher remains optimistic of my scores, which is good.
Maths is going well. I think I mentioned this previously, but I'm quite liking matrices this year. Part one was okay, I know I'll lose silly marks but as long as I keep my average up I don't care - the exam is all I'm fussed about at this point.
Eng lang was blah. Not good, but not terrible. Again, my average and exam is all I care about in this.

I can't believe high school is coming to an end? Seems like time has flown by faster than I could have ever imagined.

[bianca3016]

Hell week is over, and now exam preparation is in full gear (apart from one accounting sac next term).
My sacs last week were pretty bad... flunked accounting, eco was pretty terrible, got maths back and one was amazing but the other was horrendous, and eng lang... no idea.
I also had a meeting with my eng lang teacher about my progress thus far, and I'm keen to get down and do a lot of prep for that subject (nice little change to my old attitude in eng lang).
I emailed my eco teacher to talk about the sac I thought I was going to do well in but didn't, and he never replied. I found this kind of odd, seeming as he usually replies to all emails within the day... If he doesn't reply in a week I'll send another because I'm not sure on the way it's been marked. Otherwise, this is one of my favourite subjects to study for - it's quite satisfying seeing it all come together.
Maths prep is all laid out for us by our teacher, so basically as long as I keep up with the prac exam schedule, I'll be fine. These holidays, apart from exams, I just need to refine my bound notes.
Accounting needs a lot of work. I'm considering hiring a tutor for the next month or so, just so I'm 200% prepared. I have a lot of respect for this teacher and would feel absolutely awful if I didn't get a decent score for him.
Term 3 is officially finished. 2 weeks of term 4, exams, and then I'm completely finished... wow.
Likely won't be updating this during the holidays, but we'll see.
Good luck to everyone preparing for exams!