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March 29, 2024, 05:26:09 pm

Author Topic: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey  (Read 17107 times)

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TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #60 on: August 05, 2020, 06:29:59 pm »
+8
UPDATE: 5/08/2020

Hello friends and welcome back to the latest installment of this very INTENSE VCE journal, proudly brought to you by a certain someone not doing work during online religion class (me).   ;)
I haven't been up to much outside school over the past few weeks for obvious reasons, but I have been able to spend a lot of time on some hobbies. Over the past year and a half, and the past few months especially, I've become really interested in a number of fields, most notably politics, philosophy and sociology to the point where I may actually consider studying these at university. (At the moment, I'm still looking at a science degree and majoring somewhere in maths or engineering, but if I study at Unimelb I could potentially do some of these other interests as breadth subjects.) In general, I feel like I have so many interests in so many different areas that choosing is going to be so difficult.  ;D

Song of the Week
Listening to this at 12:30am in the morning in a dark room with headphones was a bit of an experience, such a beautiful song, even better in the context of the album.

Anyway, moving onto my subjects...
Maff Mefods
So over the past three weeks I did my Unit 3 Methods SAC, which was my very first SAC for VCE (also happens to contribute 22% lol) We actually did it in three parts instead of two because the first one was only an hour and a half, so we did an extra half hour that was tech free later. I was feeling a bit annoyed after the first one because I knew I messed up a couple of easy questions, but I pretty much came to an attitude of "whatever happens, happens" after that and tried to not think about questions I may have gotten wrong. Well, this morning I got my "results" back, and even though I don't know what my exact marks were on each of the parts, I was essentially told by my teacher that I got a moderated score of 98% which was... the highest in the cohort  :) Colour me shocked, after the SACs I was hoping for maybe a top 4, I thought my rank 1 dreams were dead in the water. I'm just so so happy that all the work I put into this subject has actually payed off into something. Of course, it's no time to get complacent, but at the moment I have just had a triple dose of confidence injected into my veins and it feels pretty good.  ;)

Spesh
Spesh has been going along rather smoothly, we did a quick test on Complex Numbers the other day and I got a nice hundo. (The test was fairly straightforward due to the topic not really having any applications in spesh.) We're doing vectors now, which is a lot of fun, luckily I had the infamously difficult tip-to-tail vector addition already down pat thanks to 1/2 Physics  8)

Fizzics
As I hinted at above, we are tackling the notoriously hard topic of motion in physics at the moment. I have spent many hours trying to wrap my feeble brain around the concept of velocity, which is understandable given how abstract it is. I have asked my teacher if we can move on to some topics with more real-world applications like Relativity but to no avail.

la bellissima lingua italiana
please forgive me, I'm going to write some stuff in my awful italian
la settimana scorsa ho fatto una presentazione PowerPoint sulla geografia dell'Italia. (ho dovuto parlare per circa 5 minuti, il PowerPoint era solo un visivo) Come al solito, ho iniziato il PowerPoint la notte prima della scadenza nonostante il fatto che avevo scritto la sceneggiatura quasi due settimane prima. Quasi tutti gli altri nella mia classe hanno fatto un video invece di un PowerPoint, ma ho molta familiarita' con PowerPoint (ne ho fatti un sacco), pensavo che sarebbe stato piu' facile. Onestamente, il mio design era bellissimo  8) ma l'ho registrato alle ventidue, quindi la mia voce era un po' troppo silenziosa. (stavo provando a non fare rumore). Comunque, sono contento del risultato, speriamo che sia un successo.

Eng Lang
English Language has generally been pretty chill over the last few weeks with not much going on. We're looking at the history of English which is interesting enough. The state of affairs with the world at the moment has actually given us lots of things to talk about with language, e.g. the way politicians message the public about the coronavirus. I've also found the subject has had some interesting links with some sociology stuff I've been looking at (for example, why do people refuse to refer to trans women as women or use she/her pronouns because "it iGnoReS bIoLoGy" but have no issue with referring to adopting parents as "mum" or "dad". Goes to show that these words are not inherently defined by biology but also by social constructs.)

I've done enough rambling for one day, and if you noticed, at the start I said I was in the middle of RE class (which was at about 1pm), so that can give you an idea of my tendency to procrastinate.  ;) Please stay safe during this time and best of luck for the rest of the week!
for some reason the emojis stopped working halfway through writing this so there should be a bunch of weird semi colons and stuff throughout this lol
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 06:33:05 pm by TigerMum »

Evolio

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #61 on: August 05, 2020, 07:02:07 pm »
+5
Hello TigerMum!  ;D

Quote
I was essentially told by my teacher that I got a moderated score of 98% which was... the highest in the cohort. I'm just so so happy that all the work I put into this subject has actually payed off into something. Of course, it's no time to get complacent, but at the moment I have just had a triple dose of confidence injected into my veins and it feels pretty good.
A massive congratulations! 🎉 That's amazing! I'm so happy for you! It's great that you're using this as motivation for your next sacs and that you're still keeping your eye on the prize.  8)

Quote
Spesh has been going along rather smoothly, we did a quick test on Complex Numbers the other day and I got a nice hundo. We're doing vectors now, which is a lot of fun, luckily I had the infamously difficult tip-to-tail vector addition already down pat thanks to 1/2 Physics  8)
Good job on the test! I love complex numbers, mainly due to the algebra lol. Ah, vectors. Vectors are interesting because there's so much you can do with them...like in the 3 4 course, I think there are 3 topics in the textbook that use vector concepts. What's your favourite topic so far in spec? It's pretty sweet that you're doing physics as it complements spec so well, since it makes concepts easier to understand.

Have a great rest of the week and stay safe too!
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 07:08:08 pm by Evolio »

TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #62 on: August 06, 2020, 03:25:29 pm »
+4
Hello TigerMum!  ;D
A massive congratulations! 🎉 That's amazing! I'm so happy for you! It's great that you're using this as motivation for your next sacs and that you're still keeping your eye on the prize.  8)
Hey Evolio, thank you so much for the kind words!  :) Best of luck for any upcoming SACs you may have, I'm sure you're going to crush them!  ;D
Good job on the test! I love complex numbers, mainly due to the algebra lol. Ah, vectors. Vectors are interesting because there's so much you can do with them...like in the 3 4 course, I think there are 3 topics in the textbook that use vector concepts. What's your favourite topic so far in spec? It's pretty sweet that you're doing physics as it complements spec so well, since it makes concepts easier to understand.
Yeah, complex numbers are quite fun, anything to do with algebra I tend to like. My favourite topic in spesh is integration except we don't do that in unit 1/2. Of the stuff we've done this year, I'd probably say either trig or complex numbers, I just like algebra and more "pure" maths.
Thanks for replying and enjoy your week as well!

Bri MT

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #63 on: August 06, 2020, 05:02:15 pm »
+4
Velocity is the vector version of speed. I.e. speed but with a direction.

E.g. let's say you had a question about throwing a ball up in the air. First, define up as being positive. Our initial velocity is some positive number. The acceleration due to gravity is negative (-9.8 m/s/s) so this positive velocity gets smaller and smaller and smaller until at the peak of the ball's motion it has 0 velocity (it's a stationary point). Then when the ball starts moving down, it has negative velocity which gets bigger and bigger (more and more negative).

homeworkisapotato

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #64 on: August 07, 2020, 10:13:32 am »
+2
Hi TigerMum, I love your journal just as much as I love your name and amazing job for methods!
Every time I read your username I get a mental image of a pregnant humanoid tiger tho haha
2020: Biology [43]
2021: Methods, Chemistry, HHD, English, Further
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TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #65 on: August 07, 2020, 10:44:36 am »
+6
Velocity is the vector version of speed. I.e. speed but with a direction.

E.g. let's say you had a question about throwing a ball up in the air. First, define up as being positive. Our initial velocity is some positive number. The acceleration due to gravity is negative (-9.8 m/s/s) so this positive velocity gets smaller and smaller and smaller until at the peak of the ball's motion it has 0 velocity (it's a stationary point). Then when the ball starts moving down, it has negative velocity which gets bigger and bigger (more and more negative).
Oh I'm really sorry Bri, my comment about velocity was a terrible joke!  😔 At least among people in my school, I can't speak for others, but most people I know tend to find the motion in Unit 1/2 quite easy due to it being a fairly familiar and applicable topic. I tried to hint that I was joking about finding it difficult by saying "I want to move onto a less abstract concept with more real-world applications like Special Relativity". 😂
Anyway, that was a great explanation, hopefully others will find it useful!
Hi TigerMum, I love your journal just as much as I love your name and amazing job for methods!
Every time I read your username I get a mental image of a pregnant humanoid tiger tho haha
Hey homeworkisapotato,
Thanks so much for the kinds words, I'm glad you liked my username, can't say I've ever thought about it like that before!
Enjoy your weekend   :)

TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #66 on: November 15, 2020, 01:15:11 am »
+8
UPDATE: 15/11/2020

Ummmmm..... hello and welcome back to my journal! After a very long hiatus, I've decided to come back for a second season and this leading single is gonna be an absolute banger....
Well, that's a lie; it's probably gonna be super boring but I guess it's the effort that counts?
Anyway, I'm currently in the middle of my 1/2 exam period and counting down the days for my methods exams (aka the only subject I care about). I'll talk about them in a little more depth under each of the subject headings. Outside of school not much as really being going on, I did an AMEB piano exam the other day except it was a little bit different from usual; I had to record myself playing the pieces at home and then send it in online. The whole thing had to be in one take so I recorded a bunch of different times over the past week or so before I got one that I really liked. It felt a lot more chill just playing the pieces at home, and it was also easier cause it's on my piano and I know how the pedals and the touch react so that was cool.

Now onto my subjects....

METHODS

Yeah, so obviously methods is on tuesday and wednesday, and to be honest, I'm kind of terrified. I've been doing a bunch of practice exams and the pattern is pretty clear: I find the exam to be OK, get most of the hard questions right and then routinely screw over a bunch of extremely basic questions by dropping a negative sign or something. It's really frustrating because I know the content well enough to have a real crack on all the 5% separator questions but it's no use if I make simple algebra errors on easy questions. Anyway, I'm just praying that I switch into gear in the exam. And I do NOT have a study score aim, I don't want to put any more pressure on myself than I already have.

Other subjects/exams

So I've been having exams for all my other subjects, I'll give a brief rundown of how they went and how I'm feeling for next year.
English Language
Our 1/2 Eng Lang exam was fairly straightforward, there was just a short answer question worth 50 marks and an essay worth 50 marks, I pretty much rehashed a lot of arguments from essays I had written earlier during the year and that seemed to work OK. Apparently Eng Lang really steps up a notch in 3/4 so I guess I'll have to step up my game for that.
Religion & Society
Excellent news! On Thursday I did the last religion exam I will ever have to do in my life! Yeah, I have no issue with religious people, I mean whatever floats your boat, it's just not something that really appeals to me, especially organised religion. Not to mention the way I heard so many religious people talk about LGBT folk growing up in the name of "God", it kinda left a bad taste in my mouth. lol bit of a random tone shift there  :o
Italian
My Italian exam went OK, we had to move rooms after it turned out the sound wasn't working for our listening in the room we were in which was kinda funny. I understood most of the listening and I thought some of my writing responses were pretty solid and ticked a lot of the boxes. I didn't manage time as well as I would have liked and so my essay was on the shorter side but oh well. Tbh I dropped off a bit for Italian in the second half of this year, I think the exchange being cancelled made me lost a bit of motivation. Hopefully I will get into some good routines over the summer holidays so I'm ready for next year!
Fizix
Yeah of course I'm gonna spell it like that, what are you looking at? haha  ;D So I had my exam on Friday, crazy story, there was a fire in the woodwork building at my school before the exam so my school had a short lockdown. I was still in the building where my locker is and so like 20 of us got stuck in that building and couldn't get to the exam so they had to delay it until we could get down to the examination building. The exam went OK, I didn't study for it as much as I should've but I got a bonus mark for drawing a llama above my name on the front of the paper so that should make up for it lmao  ;)
Spesh
I haven't done any spesh exams yet, they are on monday and wednesday. I should be fine for them, but I'm not really gonna be studying because of methods lol. I aim to get a good headstart over the holidays for spesh like I did with methods but hopefully I don't temporarily burn myself out like I also did with methods haha

Well, I think I might leave it there considering it's almost a quarter past 1 in the morning  :o
Many apologies for the three-month disappearance, I hope to catch up on a bunch of your journals as well! Congrats to everyone for your exams so far and best of luck for any you have upcoming! Byeeee

ashmi

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #67 on: November 15, 2020, 12:48:24 pm »
+6
ITS A JOURNAL UPDATE FROM TIGERMUM WOOOHOOO!!!

You know how excited I am to see an update from you?? ;D

First of all amazing job for all of your hard work this year in Methods! You will be absolutely fine and just remember to stay calm during the exam. You have done all the work you can possibly do and I know deep down (just like everyone else on AN) that you will smash it.

And I do NOT have a study score aim, I don't want to put any more pressure on myself than I already have.
This is what I call the best positive mindset you can go in with!!! Just do your best and that is all anyone can ask of you.❤️

Fizix
Yeah of course I'm gonna spell it like that, what are you looking at? haha  ;D
👀👀🤣
If there is one thing I love about this journal, it is your magnificent sense of humour. Also, a FIRE in the WOODWORK building?? What type of monstrosity is going on over there?? (I know we PDT people are crazy, but that is just next level).

Anyway, congrats for getting most of your exams done and good luck for the Methods/Spesh exam you have coming up! I am so glad to hear that most of your exams went smoothly and that you are happy with your performance. Also, congrats on doing your AMEB Piano exam! That is definitely an accomplishment to be proud of.

Thank you so much for the update TigerMum and I really look forward to hearing more in the future from you!! ;D

TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #68 on: February 04, 2021, 01:03:22 am »
+9
UPDATE: 4/2/2021

Hey AN, apologies for the uhhh...... checks notes second three month disappearance in a row. oops. Now that school is back up and running I thought I would get back to this very sorry journal so let's see how this goes.
I have to say, it's kind of crazy to think I'm in Year 12 already, it always seemed like some distant year that would just never happen to me but it's appeared out of nowhere from around the corner and it's about to slam me in the face.
My subjects for this year are English Language, Italian, Specialist Mathematics, Physics and UMEP Mathematics. I'll briefly summarise how I feel about the subjects going into this year but don't expect any study score goals, I'm not going to put that pressure on myself haha.  ;D

Spoiler
I understand I haven't updated my journal since before ATARs and study scores came out so for those who are interested, I got a 45 in Methods last year. I was extremely shocked, even though I was aiming for/expecting 45+ before the exams I felt like I absolutely bombed the exams with dumb errors and thought a 41/42 was the best I could hope for, so I'm very happy with that.
I'd also like to extend my congratulations to the class of 2020 on here, you had such a difficult and unusual Year 12 that I wouldn't wish upon anyone but you rose to the challenge and blew it the fuck out of the water. Congrats!  :)

Subject Stuph

Spesh
Very excited for spesh this year, the course looks super interesting and it's a subject that both rewards achievement and is a lot of fun (in my opinion haha) so I know I will never be upset to see it pop up on my timetable. I didn't do as much work over the holidays as I would have liked but I've got some motivation now that the year has started and I feel confident thanks to Methods so I'm looking forward to it!  :D

Fizix
Physics and Spesh are definitely the two subjects in which I feel most confident in my ability to do well just because the STEM stuff seems to make sense in my brain. I've done most of the motion AOS and it's been really fun so far, looking at the course I think I will enjoy 3/4 a lot more than 1/2 which is good. The only problem with physics is that I start thinking about it in real life and taking note of the normal force as I sit on a chair hahaha I'll stop being weird now.  ;D

Italian
Probably the subject I feel the most nervous for. Even with the decent scaling on this subject, I feel like it's going to be my 10% subject just because Eng Lang has to be in my top 4 and I feel better about Spesh and Physics. My Italian practice lapsed a bit over the holidays which is unfortunate but I've got a few people I speak to pretty regularly in Italian, both online and in person which is nice. My reading is still substantially better than all my other skills, which is why I'm kind of terrified of the oral exam lol  :o

English Language
As I alluded to before, Eng Lang will essentially be the subject that makes or breaks my ATAR. It's by no means by strongest subject but unfortunately, it will have to be in my top 4. That said, I still really enjoy the subject for what it's worth, the content is fascinating and I love class discussions. Speaking specifically in regards to the exam, I feel like I am more suited to the analytical nature of Part A (short answer) and Part B (analytical commentary) while Part C (essay), is much more of a wildcard.

Uni Maths
I'm not sure whether I explicitly said that I was applying for uni maths last year but anyway, I got in and I had my first class this week which was pretty exciting. It was a bit weird because almost everyone else there was in a group of 2 or 3 from their school while I was the only person from my school there, so there were already established groups. I'm really looking forward to the year, especially Calculus in semester 2, learning new and interesting maths is always fun and I get to meet some like-minded people.

Uni Stuph
I'm still very much undecided when it comes to uni, and unfortunately it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. At the moment I'm tossing up between Science - would major in Applied Maths, Engineering - would probably major in Electrical Engineering, not too sure which one, and Commerce - would major in Economics/Finance. I would like to go to unimelb however I might lean towards Monash if I decide to do Engineering so I don't have to do a BSci and a Masters.

It's 1 in the morning so I might leave it there, thank you so much if you actually managed to slog your way through this snoozefest, I'll try to make sure it isn't another 3 months before I update this again. Byeeee!!  :)

Bri MT

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #69 on: February 04, 2021, 02:00:28 pm »
+4

Fizix
Physics and Spesh are definitely the two subjects in which I feel most confident in my ability to do well just because the STEM stuff seems to make sense in my brain. I've done most of the motion AOS and it's been really fun so far, looking at the course I think I will enjoy 3/4 a lot more than 1/2 which is good. The only problem with physics is that I start thinking about it in real life and taking note of the normal force as I sit on a chair hahaha I'll stop being weird now.  ;D



How am I meant to think you know velocity when you don't know what the name of the subject is??? ???

Ftr, there are absolutely people who struggle more with motion than with special relativity, as weird as that may seem. I find that my knowledge about special relativity actually tends to be more useful irl than motion stuff (throw ball up, ball come down is good to know but most of us already knew that & I'm not going to run the numbers in my head) whereas understanding of mass-energy is more relevant to, say, policy debates).

Also you have nothing to apologise for whatsoever :)

Thinking about physics all the time is real, just about every single time I'm in an elevator I think of questions about the normal force. Just make sure you don't fall into the trap w/ the normal force and newton's 3rd law. Kinda ruins some movies but picking them apart is fun in its own way.


TigerMum

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Re: My EPIC and INTENSE VCE Journey
« Reply #70 on: February 05, 2021, 10:08:52 pm »
+3
Hey Bri, thanks so much for replying!
Quote
How am I meant to think you know velocity when you don't know what the name of the subject is??? ???
>:( Grrrr I'm doing my best to spell it... nah my teacher from last year would spell it like that in emails so I decided to bring it on here haha 🤣
Quote
Ftr, there are absolutely people who struggle more with motion than with special relativity, as weird as that may seem. I find that my knowledge about special relativity actually tends to be more useful irl than motion stuff (throw ball up, ball come down is good to know but most of us already knew that & I'm not going to run the numbers in my head) whereas understanding of mass-energy is more relevant to, say, policy debates).
Yeah that's pretty interesting, I guess you don't really need to take a physics class to intuitively understand how motion/forces work. Also that's quite cool, I didn't fully appreciate how the applications special relativity can have.
Thanks again for replying, hope you enjoy your weekend and stay safe!  :)