Today has been a crappy ass day. Got all my trials back, finally.
Economics was first, and it was confronting af. I thought the trial was hard (we did Independent trials), but I still expected over 80% for it because it wasn't crazy difficult y'know? Well, I got 79/100 - so underwhelming. I fucking lost my 1st rank, and I legit cried when I saw it. I was so fucking disappointed in myself, because not only did I study my ass off for this exam, but I have never gotten a mark below 85 this year until now. Worst part is, although my friends were trying to comfort me, I felt like they were lowkey relishing in the fact that they took my rank which just made me feel worse - one of them even went to ask the teacher to reaffirm the fact that she took 1st place, which although she deserves, made me feel like shit. I got 15/20 for both my essays which is absolutely horrific, considering I have ALWAYS gotten in the 17-20 range for my economics extended responses. I legit told my teacher to talk to me another time when he came around to give feedback because I was so emotionally unstable at the thought of my essay marks. I literally have no clue how my mark was so distant from my expectations, because I felt relatively okay coming out of the exam and usually that is reflected in my mark. However, I do somewhat feel like the fact that I lost my laptop over the weekend and only got it back the day before the exam, contributed to this failure because instead of refining my exam technique, I was stuck making notes on the off chance that I didn't end up finding my laptop. There were a few short answer questions that I felt weren't marked properly aswell. For instance, one of them asked me to discern between demand pull and cost push inflation. My answer was "Demand pull inflation is induced when there is an influx of demand for a good/service that is reaching its supply capacity, whereas cost-push inflation occurs when there is an increase in the input price that is passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices". My teacher circled "supply capacity" with the label "too specific", and circled "input", saying "not always". But I swear to fucking god my answer is correct, because demand pull is, verbatim, "when aggregate demand is outpacing aggregate supply". Isn't that literally the same as my answer?? I also looked at the textbook definition of cost push which says that it is "an increase in prices caused by increase in costs in factors of production" - but factors of production ARE literally inputs to the production of a good/service??? Like wtf, I legit don't understand why he deducted marks for my answer because his comments don't seem to be accurate. Ugh. I can't really contest it either because my teacher hates it when people challenge the integrity of his marking, but I swear to fucking god I should've gotten the full mark. My handwriting was also a notable issue.
Got maths back today and it almost as bad as economics. The highest mark was 81.5% lol - I got 71.5/100 which is legit horrible. But I swear it wasn't even marked properly, because lots of people got the wrong answer and were marked wrong for it? And vice versa. For example, my friend got full marks for a one marker when she wrote 50% as the answer, even though it was 82? The most annoying thing of all, was that I got absolutely NO marks for a question for NOT simplifying the fraction, even though it was theoretically correct like wtf? I got 6/21 and the "answer" was 2/7, but that's legit the same thing?? I'm kinda indifferent to maths though because everyone did shit, which kinda mitigates its impact on my sanity hahaha. I really need to work on maths coming forward though.
Got the rest of my English back (the ones I had to read to the marker because of my handwriting), and it was as I expected. I got 19/20 for Mod C and 14/15 for creative. Since I verbally presented my essay, I got absolutely no feedback on it so idk where I lost the mark. Overall, I got 96/105 for the paper, which is just over 91%. The lesson seemed endless though. Since receiving our trial, we've been going over the sheets of feedback given back to us by the markers and it has been boring af. My teacher made us adapt our creative to different stimuli today, and it was so hard because I couldn't think. I legit felt so mentally exhausted upon seeing my economics mark that I couldn't concentrate whatsoever - even my teacher picked up on this. She even said "Lumenoria you got 19 what the hell are you upset for?" lol it was so embarrassing - I told her it wasn't english. At the end of the lesson, she specifically tried to tell me that "it's not the end of the world" and that I'd work my way back up during HSC, which I thought was nice of her. Still felt like absolute crap though.
We have our HSC major work showcase tomorrow night, which I am absolutely dreading. Three people in my class got chosen for a full screening, including me, whilst others will be shown to the audience in snippets. Although I expended so much effort into my project, I fucking cringe so hard when people watch my video lol. Not keen at all.
Overall my marks for trials were;
English Advanced - 91
Maths - 71.5
Legal - 96
Economics - 79
I've been taking a break for 2 weeks now, which I intended to continue for some time, but after getting my results for trials, I feel like I am not justified in doing so whatsoever. I guess I was bound to bomb an exam at some point (as I had maintained marks over 85 for everything before today), but the fact that thy both were delivered on the same day, was too much for me. In a way, I feel like giving up on the HSC altogether because I feel like I've already ruined everything. I'm not going to let myself, but this just sucks ass. Although I'm very disappointed in economics, I think my final mark will still be roughly 85 as my 79 will be offset by my performance in previous internal assessments, but I reckon my rank has dropped to 3rd or 4th ish. I'm pretty sure I dropped to double digits for maths, although it's hard to tell when the trial average is 50% lol. It's times like these that I wish I had continued doing English Extension, because I know for a fact that it would've been counted in the 10 units since I actually enjoy English. I've legit been crying all day, and it's been great tbh.