Update #5: 28/05/2018I have exactly 163 days till my very first exam.
what a cheerful way to start the entryHaven’t updated in nearly a month, (I’ll try to stick to a schedule of updating every second Monday). Here’s what’s new.
News No. 1VCAA exam timetables are out…
Week 1: No exams, just delayed stress and anxiety.
Week 2: Methods (Wednesday + Thursday); Ancient History (Friday)
Week 3: Literature (Monday); Chemistry (Tuesday)
Week 4: Global Politics (Monday)
I was totally hoping global wouldn’t be so late so I could watch Crimes of Grindelwald as soon as it comes outNews No. 2I’m now halfway through all my SACs for this term (3 done, 3 more to go). I still can’t believe that Unit 3 is over.
Chem: I got a B+ on the last SAC, which I would’ve been exceptionally pleased with had this been last year. But it’s now year 12 and I don’t think low expectations works. I was pretty upset that I was so close to an A.
In the end my unit 3 average (GA1?) is a B+. I know I said in my very first entry that a chem study score higher than 30 would completely exceed my expectations, but now I’m really hoping for a 40 (bit ambitious?), in order to push my lousy Chinese score into my bottom two.
We’ve started Unit 4, practical investigations. This is my chance to redeem myself.
Methods: Well, the SAC which spanned 5 periods of class time finally ended. The marks haven’t been moderated yet, but I apparently my unmoderated score is B+ (*sigh*)… I seriously hope my teacher was just messing with me, cos I need an A at least in order to hope for a 40+.
Literature: We did the SAC at the very beginning of term, and we still haven’t gotten back our results yet. Next Wednesday we’ll be having our Unit 4 AOS 1 SAC on literary perspectives, which I am NOT prepared for.
History: Our next SAC will be writing two essays on the Peloponnesian War, and I am really desperate to do well on this one, as I’m currently rank 2 in the class but I don’t think I’ll have a chance at 40+ unless I get rank 1.
Global Politics: I have an entire rant prepared for this subject so I'm gonna save it for...
News No. 3Global politics... I hate this subject. It was my best subject last year, but I absolutely
loathe it now and just dread. Every. Single. Class. Maybe it's just that I utterly despise my teacher, who forces us to rote-learn everything, is extremely unprofessional, cannot keep his political beliefs to himself, and basically tells any student who thinks differently that they're wrong.
EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED RANT! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
Last year our 1/2 teacher would hold debates during class and thoroughly welcomed a whole range of political views in our essays. Sure, it wasn't like he remained completely neutral but at least he RESPECTED the students's views and beliefs.
My current teacher though is the polar opposite. Once some students including myself were discussing about the pros and cons of capital punishment, one student said that the International Criminal Court should use the death penalty in serious cases, and the teacher just suddenly swoops in and says 'The fact that countries like US and China uses capital punishment but still has high numbers of crime shows that you're WRONG!"
TF? First of all US and China also has pretty high population so it makes sense that there would be more cases of crime, anyway I'm not even for the death penalty but I thought it was completely unnecessary for him to tell a student his opinion was wrong.
I'm not done. In one of my practice essays recently I brought up a point that he completely ignored in class about ethnic minorities in China, namely that apart from certain groups like the Uighurs who occasionally take part in religious extremism, most minority groups in China (including Islamic groups) are not only well treated but receive much more benefits in terms of welfare and education / job prospects than the Han majority (and yes I included statistics from academic sources to back up my point). He crossed out that entire paragraph and said that I'm somehow undermining the human rights abuses by their government by claiming that ethnic minorities are treated well in China and that the 'statistics are twisted by the government'. OK SURE! COS I'VE TOTALLY NOT LIVED IN CHINA FOR 8 YEARS AND SAW FIRSTHAND HOW PEOPLE WERE TREATED (pretty well).
He has also said in class (and I quote) "I would never willingly visit China... India... Cuba... (list of countries go on and on)". What really pissed me off though was during parent teacher interviews last week. My parents just wanted to know how I was going in class goddammit, but apparently that was too much to ask of this teacher, who spent 8 of the 10 minutes making sure that my parents understood his political beliefs and another minute marvelling at the fact that my parents, despite being Caucasian, willingly spent 8 years living and working in 'a repressed communist country'. With one minute to go my dad finally cut him off and said 'So how is my son doing in this subject?', to which the teacher replied 'Pretty well, but if he could stop being so sympathetic towards the CCP that would be an improvement.' at which point my parents just gave up getting something unbiased out of this teacher.
Can I just add very quickly, I've noticed a trend in my practice essays and it's that the harder I bash China/Chinese government/culture/people, the bigger ticks I get. Meanwhile if I even attempt to bring in another perspective, it gets crossed out.
Global was never gonna be in my primary 4 anyway, but last year I thought it had a chance. This year though, considering just thinking of this subject gives me a headache, I doubt I'll get good marks on it. Meanwhile, chemistry, the subject I nearly failed in unit 1/2, is steadily improving, and I think now I have a better chance of chem being in my top 4 than global. My school does poorly in global (I wonder why... with such an unprofessional 'teacher'). The highest score in my school’s history was a 36, and our average study score last year was around 27-28 (yikes). For chem the AVERAGE SS in 2017 was nearly 40 , and considering I’m ranked about average among my cohort for both subjects, I’ll definitely do better in chem.
News No. 4Not VCE related, but we had interhouse cross country last Thursday and my house won! 1st, 2nd and 3rd place of both boys and girls were all from our house, and I came 2nd! I'm off to districts tomorrow, meaning I miss double methods (cry) and double global (CELEBRATION).
Hope everyone has a great week!