Hey guys! Update time, a nice long one as well. I haven’t been as productive as I wanted to lately which majorly sucks but I have regained some motivation miraculously (after yesterday) and I’m slowly trying to build it up. Hopefully, it reaches its peak soon because I have a lot of work to do and it keeps piling up.
Specialist Mathematics I don’t know if I said this before but I finished all the content for the first SAC, EXCEPT for Exercise 6G which I skipped because it looked hard. I need to complete it by tomorrow. I’ve also finished the chapter reviews for Vectors (basically) and Differentiation, meaning I still need to complete ‘Complex Numbers’ and ‘Trigonometry’ which is taking a long time. I don’t know why. From Checkpoints, I’ve finished Complex Numbers and Vectors extended response, still need to do Differentiation and Trigonometry but I can’t really find many Differentiation questions without having differential equations thrown in randomly. Still though, I need to practise that stuff. This subject is hard, like really hard, but I’m getting there, trying to understand the nitty gritty of the concepts, so I think my understanding is getting better? Apparently, we’re starting Antidifferentiation tomorrow so I have a strong feeling it’s going to be added to the SAC, which is TBA.
Literature Oh, I really hated this subject for 4 weeks or so(still do a bit), meaning I did absolutely NO WORK FOR it over the three-week holiday period, including last week. Yeah, that’s how much I HATED IT. I hated it because I didn’t understand it but also because of the high subjectivity of the ‘content’ and it was a bit confusing as well. This is really weird because I thought it’d be my haven in Year 12, but boy, did I get that wrong. Anyways, I regained my motivation for it yesterday and got some clarity on what we’re doing which was great. Hopefully, I’m really productive this week for my subject because I am really behind and our SAC is in Week 4 which isn’t that far away and it’s really scaring me. We haven’t even gotten our feedback from our last SAC when they said they’d give it to us like three weeks ago. Like, how are we supposed to do the next SAC, IF WE HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN FEEDBACK FOR OUR LAST SAC???!?!? The point is to improve with our previous feedback so that we can perform better, but apparently not.
Psychology Ahh, my favourite subject right now and the easiest. I don’t need to spend as much time on it (unfortunately) because I’d love to just have one subject for Year 12: Psychology. Honestly, it’s so different to the other subjects and the content just clicks. I always feel confident going into class and answering questions relating to it, which is not the case for my other subjects. I need to finish the short-answer questions in Checkpoints so that I can do the AtarNotes Topic Tests and A+ Notes and other resources so that I’m super super confident with the content. Like, super. Psychology’s the only class where literally all our lessons are synchronous which I LOVE! It’s like being in the classroom and it doesn’t really seem different. It’s reminding me a lot of last year because the teacher we have now was the teacher I had last year.
Chemistry I haven’t done much for this subject, until yesterday where I was like ‘NO! Stop slacking off and do some Chemistry!’ Because I didn’t do any of the set work last week(yeah, really concerning, I know). However, I feel less stressed now because I’ve nearly finished all the extended response for SAC 2 (from Checkpoints) and the information’s coming back to me. I still need to do the other resources and clarify some questions with my teacher. Since my main goal this year is to UNDERSTAND the content, rather than just memorising it, I’ve really been aiming to understand stuff and whenever I try to, there’s always a limit, because when I research online or ask my teacher, they’re like ‘it’s way beyond the course, no need to know’ but I’m like ‘But, I really need to get this otherwise I won’t have a good understanding’ but that’s that and we can’t change it.
UCATNearly forgot this lol even though it’s the thing I’ve been dedicating most of my time to. Okay, so progress has been made, albeit very little. I am officially doing timed for all sections, except QR which is being neglected. I started timed for Decision Making a few days ago and I was sort of happy with my results because I got more correct than I expected to. There’s this specific question type which is sabotaging my performance but I’ve been practising and I’m getting better. I hope. VR is good as always. SJ is mediocre. Like, sometimes I get really good results and sometimes really bad so… gotta work on that. AR is the bane of my existence! It’s so hard to do it timed and get 90% of them correct!!! Like, how? Yeah, I need to practise A LOT but I don’t see myself getting better so I really need to dedicate the next few days JUST on AR so I can really hone my skills. QR is going extremely bad, I’ve only done like 20 questions compared to the hundreds I’ve done for the other sections, so I need to start that tomorrow. Also, I have a more specific goal in mind: I’m aiming for a 3000+ for my UCAT score. I don’t know if I’ll achieve it but it’s there, so I’m going to try.
ExtracurricularsSt John: We had a Zoom meeting today and we played games and it was great lol. And funny. I'm glad we're still doing St John during these uncertain times, despite it being very practical based. Next week, we'll be doing first aid so looking forward to that!
Leadership: It’s waaayyy more busy now (when we’re online) compared to when we were at school. Like, I have like 4 meetings every week just for this and it’s taking up a lot of my time. It’s okay though, I guess. I mean, it is a break from study and Netflix. Although, my phone is vibrating like every hour with updates/notices/information. I'll be stepping down from this position soon so that's going to be sad but I'll have more time to focus on VCE. I'll probably still come to the club meetings though.
Other stuff- Our school signed all the VCE students up for EdUnlimited since we don’t have access to our library (duh) and I literally screamed with joy when I saw the email! I can’t wait to use all the resources because there’s so many and I’m bursting with excitement! You guys probably think I’m weird but it’s okay. Really though, I'm really grateful to the curriculum coordinators at our school for doing this.
- I’ve been waking up at 8 which is a drastic change to the normal 6 am which is a big shame. I want to start waking up at 6, like a normal school day, so I get more done and I’ll also feel more tired when I go to sleep at night because lately, I’ve just been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning, staring out the window, counting sheep, for like 1-2 hours, not able to fall asleep. I think it’s because I had a lot of sleep that day so I need to cut down on it and sleep how much I do on a normal school day
- I really need to start getting back into exercise, especially because I have so much time to go on walks now!
- I've been reading through my Journal posts and wow, have I changed! It's like I'm going back in time to 2 years ago and it's really interesting to see the Evolution of Evolio. This journal's really special to me and I'm so glad I made one!
- I've realised that I shouldn't stick to a strict schedule anymore. For example: my schedule (especially on weekends/holidays) was study in the mornings, then around lunchtime watch Netflix for 2-3 hours, study and then watch for 3-4 hours until I sleep. I'm realising now how much time I could be using for studying and how this could make a BIG difference. So, I'm trying out going to sleep later. Of course, I won't be sacrificing my sleep but I've figured I function better on like 7-8 hours of sleep for some reason.