Dealing with questions you can't answer

[JR_StudyEd]

You see a difficult VCAA question (Of course difficulty is subjective but bear with me if you can). You glance at it. Your heart and mind begin to shatter. You realise that your knowledge and understanding amounts to nothing. You cannot even begin to bring your pencil to write on the lines because you will just end up worsening your pain.

I am currently in the process of trying to complete practice exams. I attempt an Exam 1 from a previous year. I am able to do the relatively simple differentiation. Ok, I've got this. I turn the page. Spoke too soon. And for Exam 2, you get a beastly calculator and a bound reference. This must be a relief. I haven't yet attempted an Exam 2, but I am thinking, how am I supposed to do maths for 2 straight hours? I feel the pain whilst doing maths without time pressure, imagine how it will be when I am racing the clock to scrap every last mark I can?

I probably will not be able to answer literally every question on my final Methods exams. And the potential curveballs that are coming my way for this year's exam are unsettling me. I can do the basics, but Methods exams laugh in the face of 'the basics'.

[colline]

Idk how helpful this advice is gonna be (idk if it's even good advice, tbh) but if you do come across one of those insanely difficult 'separator' questions that you don't know how to answer, just skip it. Going from previous VCAA exams, they're always at the very end of the paper and are worth 2~3 marks max. If you spent a lot of time on it and did manage to correctly answer the separator question, but missed the easier questions on the paper, you'd still end up with less marks. Meanwhile, if you got all the 'easier' questions right and left the separator questions blank, it's not a big loss.

I don't know about 'screwing over students'. It's VCAA's job to assess the abilities and skills of the people taking each subject.