How would you rate 2020 out of 10?Right now, I would give it a 6/10 - but this would have been much lower at the beginning of the year. Things are starting to look up.
What was your biggest academic accomplishment in 2020?Last year I would have brought up an individual assignment that I did well on, but this year I feel accomplished by the fact that my academic performance was consistent throughout the year. This ultimately helped me achieve the ATAR that got me into uni (getting into uni is another big accomplishment I'd say).
If any, what's your biggest academic regret for 2020?Burning out in the middle of the year. While I am happy with my end of year results, they could have been better if I studied more for the externals. I didn't reach out and talk to teachers or anyone about it and I crashed.
If you had your time again, what would you change from 2020?Two things:
1) reaching out and speaking up when I needed help
2) pushing harder to do more for my school. I felt very disheartened as a leader this year because we were so limited with what we could do (because of COVID). But I really wish that I pushed harder to get things going. The entire leadership team was feeling a bit unmotivated and down because of everything that was happening - but I wish I could have done something to encourage them to not give up and remind them that we were still leaders whether or not we were in a pandemic.
What's your funniest story/moment from school/uni in 2020?I'd say there were a few entertaining things that occurred this year.
- my fellow college captain and I would get up on the stage at the end of whole college assemblies and we would sing and dance along to our school song (there are 1500 students and a few hundred staff at my school, so yes, it was embarrassing)
- during online learning one of my teachers would make some videos at the beginning of the week that were really entertaining and kept the mood light. They were certainly a highlight of the few weeks of online learning
- on the physics mock exam, I was the only person to get one of the questions correct. My teacher wrote a lovely note on my exam paper thanking me for actually listening in class and remembering what she tells us (it was adorable and kind of funny)
If you've had them, were your exams as expected? If not, what do you expect?No they weren't. But that being said, this was QLDs first year through the system it was hard for us to accurately guess what the exams would be like. They were very different from the mocks which I wasn't prepared for. However, the examiners marked a lot easier than I thought they would. I was definitely expecting them to be much harsher.
Results wise, I certainly didn't expect to do as well as I did in psychology, physics, methods or English.
Psychology --> because I didn't know any of the case studies in the depth that was required for the exam (I must have bullshitted really well
)
Physics --> electromagnetism and graph analysis aren't my strong points, and the entire thing was electromagnetism and graph analysis. So I was expecting to get 30 something out of 50, not 42/50
Methods --> I got a solid 16/50 on the mock so I was prepared to fail. I actually didn't even do that bad on the exam, I didn't do great but I didn't do bad
English --> the questions were shit. My essay was not my best work but it did the job
What's your best advice for younger year levels studying in 2021?Prepare early. That's it. Get started early so, in the case that you burn out, you have given yourself the best chance for success.
Outside of school/uni, what were the best and worst parts of 2020?Best:
- I've started making uni friends
- being able to watch my friends succeed
Worst:
- COVID
- my closest friend was in hospital for 2 months at the beginning of the year and missed most of the school year.
- my uncle passed away during the easter holidays. Due to the fact that COVID numbers had really begun to increase at this time, my family weren't allowed to go to the hospital to say our last goodbyes so that was pretty hard