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March 29, 2024, 05:23:39 am

Author Topic: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.  (Read 1691 times)

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h0wLze

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Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« on: September 05, 2019, 09:40:08 pm »
+12
Hey everyone.
I am year 11 VCE currently.
Just thought I might keep a little journal in order to motivate myself.
So, the subjects I am doing are a little weird, in that they don't really compliment each other.
I'll mark them with the SS I am aiming for.

- Further Maths (SS 42+)
- Biology (SS 42+)
- Physics (SS 38+)
- Legal Studies (SS 40+)
- English (SS 38+)

My favourite subject is definitely Physics. At the start of year, people thought that I had a death wish choosing Physics without Maths Methods, but so far I am the second best in my class (tests so far: 72, 86, 97%). My least favourite subject, probably Further. It is so boring and repetitive. I feel like I'm trapped there for not trying hard enough in previous years.

I've had a good year thus far. In fact, this is my best year. By how much? 40%. My average grade has improved by 40% since last year, where I received a 49% yearly average. Now I am up to an 89% average. I thought that it would require a fuckload of work, but honestly it's just 1 or 2 hours a night, still, I seriously need to amp it up in order to get the 90+ ATAR I am hoping for. It's really a shame that I didn't try harder in previous years. I can see here, going through my reports. I remember that I actually decided to do the work in year 10 Core Maths for a semester. Looks like I got 100, 100, and 97% for those tests, which is pretty telling I think. I'm sure I'm capable of doing well, I just need to stick to it. It's actually pretty suspicious that I have improved by such a substantial amount. It makes me think that maybe my school is low ranked and easy, and that I need to work extra hard to REALLY do well.

P.S when school is over, I am definitely teaching myself Maths Methods, it looks really fun and interesting.

Anyway, I'll just post some recent results I got and what I thought about them (warning: I am extremely boooooriiiinnnngggg)

Biology: Enzymes Prac Test - 96%.
I was hoping for 100%, and I was disheartened to see that people where getting 80s and 90s, and someone got 100. I know that in order to do well, you need to be better than your cohort. Oh well, still a pretty good mark.

Legal Studies: Criminal Case - 94%.
Damn! Thought I would do better than the last one. Keep making silly mistakes.

English: Opinion on an Issue - 85%
I don't even know what I did as an improvement from last, but I did just receive my best English mark ever, so I'm pretty proud of it.

Physics: Motion - 97%
Hell yeah! Top of the class, baby! I'm pretty happy with that. I was also the only person in the class who got the last question right LOL. I'm still worried for year 12 Physics, I don't know if I'm doing good enough yet, but at least these marks show an increase in performance from the start of the year.

Uh... the date is 5/9/19... I'm out. See you guys next time!

h0wLze

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2019, 08:11:31 pm »
+3
11/9/19

Had a pretty challenging biology test today on Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration.
I know I missed at least one mark, because I answered a question about where chloroplasts are located on a leaf wrong... damn it.
I'm hoping for at least a 90%, which is a bit disappointing as I thought I would be capable of 100%.

I have a physics test coming up soon, so far no problems there.

Anyway, that's it, pretty uneventful sequence of days.

Bri MT

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2019, 08:13:14 pm »
+1
11/9/19

Had a pretty challenging biology test today on Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration.
I know I missed at least one mark, because I answered a question about where chloroplasts are located on a leaf wrong... damn it.
I'm hoping for at least a 90%, which is a bit disappointing as I thought I would be capable of 100%.

I have a physics test coming up soon, so far no problems there.

Anyway, that's it, pretty uneventful sequence of days.


Losing marks where you know the answer can be super frustrating but imo it's better to know and get lower marks than to fluke i and not know. Good luck for physics!

Joseph41

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #3 on: September 12, 2019, 10:58:39 am »
0
Awesome to see your journal pop up. Incredibly improvement from last year! What would be your top advice for somebody in a similar position to what you were last year? How have you turned things around? :)

Oxford comma, Garamond, Avett Brothers, Orla Gartland enthusiast.

h0wLze

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #4 on: September 20, 2019, 02:18:57 pm »
+6
Hey, I sort of forgot about this journal for a bit... but I'm back now (ikr, exciting). Not much has happened, I got into chess... that's about it really. I joined the chess club and ended up beating a couple of my friends at it. If I recall, I won 5 games and lost 1. Although, I did play against my younger brother 7 times... and lost all 7. That's a given though, he's infuriatingly smart.

Biology: - 93%
I ended up with a 93% on that biology test, top of the class :)
I'm in heavy competition in biology with a classmate, who has been fighting for the number 1 position against me since the start of the year. On this test, he got 91%. Looks like I still have lots of room for improvement.

Further Maths: Bivariate, Univariate Data - 100%
This was so stupid. I finished the test in 14 minutes and somehow got 100%, which ended up being 29% better than the person who got the second highest - insane, right? So far I am CRUISING through further maths. However, I am a bit worried that I might actually be dragged down by my low cohort, I've read that if the results in year 12 are generally low, they scale you down even if you got an excellent mark...

English: Montana 1948 - 78%
78%... fuck. I made such laughable mistakes, such as including additional information in my conclusion, having an inaccurate contention against my arguments... so stupid.

Legal Studies: Civil Case - 100%
100%... again... :) I wonder what could happen if I manage 100% all the way through year 12 in legal studies. It's really interesting how people are approaching me in class asking ME for help, when last year I was supposed to be the dumb kid of the class.

Physics: Physics Application - 86%
86% on a much harder test. 2nd in the class this time, but I did score higher than all my friends who are in Spesh and Methods, which I think is quite funny. I wonder if I can keep this up...

That's just about it, not much happened.
Oh, and @Joseph41, my advice for people in a similar position to me last year... fucking around, getting shit marks... is that it's not too late for you, no matter how bad you're doing at the moment. Also, don't get involved with the wrong crowd - they will negatively influence you. I was apart of the "bad kids" from year 7-10, and it seriously fucked me.


h0wLze

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2019, 09:09:18 pm »
+7
Hey everyone, it's been pretty uneventful thus far, but I felt that I should update this journal so I don't end up neglecting it.
I've had a drop off in study. I don't know what happened. I guess I got burnt out? I have to pick it up again to prepare for the exams... but it's hard to find motivation, you know? Despite my lack of effort however, I am very happy to say that I am still crushing it :)
We had a talent show for some reason, and I memorized 300 digits of pi in celebration of 300 years of our school lol, which got me second place (somehow! I thought that if I REALLY sucked up to the school administration I might take the W). There is an excellent technique for memorization which is beautiful, really. It's sort of like a mind hack - it utilizes your more powerful visual memory to aid with memorizing large sequences of numbers. You've probably heard of it; "The Mind Palace", if you've ever watched Sherlock Holmes (or been really bored when revising for biology like me). It's what I used to memorize 300 digits of pi in 5 days :)

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899
8628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284
10270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612845564823378678316527
1201909145648566923460348630454326648213393607261249141273

I'm pretty sure that's right, at least. That's what I recited in front of the whole school. Oh shit, I hope it's not wrong - that'd be embarrassing.

Anyway, here are some more marks I've been getting:

Biology - Experiment: 96%
- I did my biology experiment on yeast anaerobic respiration, which I think is a really fascinating topic. I used monosaccharide glucose and disaccharide sucrose in yeast fermentation, and measured the volume of CO2 emission against different concentration solutions. As predicted, glucose produced more CO2 volume than sucrose, because:
 *glucose is membrane permeable because of it's monosaccharide classification, so the frequency of exosmosis is reduced significantly
 *glucose doesn't have to undergo the process of hydrolysis, again because of its monosaccharide classification
For some reason, think it's really, really, beautiful to see results correlate to theoretical work. I don't really understand why.

Physics - Experiment: 100%
- Bruh moment
- I did my physics experiment on the "affect of speed on the deceleration of spheres within water".
- My teacher wrote "wow :)" in the marking rubric, which I thought was pretty awesome.
- I tied at the top of the class with that kid who I keep fighting against for the number 1 spot >:(

So yeah, not many results back, but they are really good.
Okay, the date is... 15/10/19
C U next time :D
« Last Edit: October 15, 2019, 09:26:44 pm by h0wLze »

Snow Leopard

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #6 on: October 16, 2019, 08:49:20 pm »
0
Congrats on the Physics mark!

Snow Leopard

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Re: Mediocre VCE Journal! WARNING: Generic.
« Reply #7 on: December 27, 2019, 02:43:50 pm »
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Well done on your 50 in Further!
How have your holidays been so far?