good, but never good enough (vce journal)

20/08/22

Tomorrow, it’s officially one week until my biology exam. It’s both exciting and terrifying. The year 12s graduated earlier this week, and I was on the verge of tears the whole time, it really hit me that that was going to be me next year.

I remember last year, when I started VCE biology as a bright eyed year 10. We ended up having a pretty horrible year in lockdown, but that biology class really made every dreadful day a little bit better so it’s sad to see them go, but I’m sure they’ll go on to live fulfilling lives.

I’ve managed to get my practice exam average up to a 76-80% consistently, and I’ve drastically improved in multiple choice which I’m quite proud of honestly. I think that I really underestimated how much of a difference multiple choice can make to your score, and I often made silly errors just from misreading something or not caring enough to finish reading the question.

I’ll be honest, that’s a big problem of mine. I don’t read the entire question, and it’s definitely showing from the mistakes I’m making. I genuinely don’t know how the exam will go, but I can say that I’ve put my all into this subject pretty consistently throughout this whole year, and yes I’ll be disappointed if I get lower than what was expected, but at least I can be happy in knowing that I made it here today, and that’s more than enough.

I’m excited for this to be over. There are so many video games I haven’t been able to play in a long time, and books I never got to finish reading left on my shelves, and anime I said I wanted to watch but never got around to. It’ll be nice.

Thank you!! Good luck with your exams too!

I have been underlining, especially with multiple choice but I find that as I get towards the end of the paper, and to the last question or two, I start panicking about time and start skimming again. (Which is horrible bc the last question is usually experimental design ) It’s a bit of a bother but I’m at least making an improvement

27/10/22
It’s tomorrow, and forgive my language, I’m scared shitless. Getting over bad grades is hard enough, but knowing you’ve been working towards this for over 2 years now and there’s the possibility of not reaching your goal is terrifying.

I’ve been trying really hard to stop measuring my self worth off some number I got on a test or exam, but when it’s something as big as vce, where everyone seems to put such emphasis on it, it’s quite hard. Regardless though, I’d just like to say that the worst time to lose hope is right before you’re about to do something, because that’s when it matters.

It doesn’t matter if you believed in yourself a year ago, or an hour ago, if you doubt yourself as you’re doing it, then you’ve destined yourself for failure. Your mindset has so much more influence on your success than you think, and changing a negative mindset is the first step to being able to improve. I think I’ve emphasised this quite a lot in my past entries, but it really is true.

It’s such a hard thing to change, and that’s why you have to start now. Because a good mindset isn’t just thinking you will succeed, it’s being able to accept that sometimes you won’t, and that doesn’t make you any less worthy.

Good luck to my fellow biology students <3 whether we get a 20 or a 50, we all made it this far and that’s an achievement in of itself.

_sophiestudies_ I’m quite confident in my knowledge of the content, but when it comes to answering exam questions I’m a bit worried I think it’s been tough this year since we don’t really have any past papers and official marking schemes to go off.

Third party papers are a bit questionable I had one describe a CAM plant and then proceed to say it was a C4 plant

Good luck to you!! Let’s do our best!!!

28/10/22
I did it. Omg it’s over.

Late update because my friends and I went out to celebrate our newfound freedom, and also because I just needed to get my mind off it so I wouldn’t overthink. Overall, I have no idea what to think. MCQ was fairly simple in my opinion, nothing too drastic there.

Short answer on the other hand… I can’t describe it. I feel like I could’ve done as many past papers as physically possible, and I still would’ve been confused when getting there. The questions weren’t hard, the concepts being tested were (in my opinion) the easier topics in the study design. But the questions were so weird.

The best way I can describe is it that it felt more like an English or humanities exam than a biology one.

I’ve done over 40 past and practice papers, I created spreadsheets and documents analysing every possible question and concept, and how to answer them. But I got to the exam and I thought: this doesn’t feel right. I feel like you needed to be able to explain yourself well, which is something that didn’t really come up in past exams. (Other than in ethics questions, etc).

But ahhh I did it! And I’m so happy! Biology is most likely going to be one of my bottom 2 subjects so whatever I get is what I get. I was able to have the experience of a 3&4 subject, and I tried my best in that exam, (and I got some goodies from my teacher), so I’m going to remove it from my memory, and focus on my year 11 exams that are coming up.

Good job to all of my fellow bio students! Proud of you <3

Thank you so much!!! I’m worried to be honest, but there’s nothing I can do now and I just need a break and to relax

Christ I’d like a 35, but after the exam I think I’m more in the 30-33 range and that’s perfectly fine with me.

I can’t really estimate how I went on the exam because I feel like the marking scheme is going to be really specific this year, and I don’t know if the answers I wrote down were up to VCAA’s standard. Fairly confident on the MCQ’s though, maybe dropped 2-3 marks according to what I’ve seen people talk about

17/11/22
So, I received my year 12 subject confirmations earlier today. Let’s just say that you become really desperate to find friends when none of your friends are in your chem class. (which is quite the feat when you’re friends with half the cohort! They really screwed me over!) but it’s okay, I ended up finding people who I’m friends with, I’ll survive.

Quick life update, I caught covid right before my year 11 exams started. Ugh. Not ideal, I ended up sitting half my exams unwell because I didn’t want to miss too many of them. (Ended up missing Englang, which I’m sitting tomorrow, and then I’m free!)

Overall, the exams weren’t particularly difficult, honestly I thought they were all pretty easy. Do I think I did well? Probably not. I revised well enough I think, but I was just so out of it while sitting the exams I definitely made mistakes I probably wouldn’t make otherwise. But it’s only year 11, that’s okay.

I start kickstart next week… and then I’m done. I finish year 11 on the 25th of November… holy crap. I still can’t process that this is it- 13 years of schooling will be done by this time next year. That’s absolutely terrifying.

ATARs come out in less than a month too, and not gonna lie, I’m really anxious that I did really badly on biology. But it’s done, there’s nothing I can do, if I get a 25 then I get a 25, I can make up for it in year 12. I plan to reevaluate some things for year 12, and get some values and priorities in order, so expect an updated version of my goals for VCE.

On a non-school related note, I’ve succumbed to my stationery addiction (unfortunately for my wallet), and I’ve bought a journal. I’d like to start anime journaling (but not just anime: comics and video games, and books and stuff too) next year as a mindfulness thing, I’m excited for that to come in.

charmingcloud THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I thought I absolutely cooked the exam so this was such a pleasant surprise. Congratulations on your ATAR!!!! <3