The Joys of Life and VCE

Charlie

Hi.
So, my name is Chris, and I've decided to do one of these Journey Journals in VCE. Except I'm not technically in VCE yet, I'm in Year 10, but I am fast-tracking Psych, so I guess now is as good a time as any to start. On that note, I know I'm starting this late, considering it's like mid-term already but better late than never, eh?
This journal is mostly to hold myself accountable in terms of schoolwork and stuff and hopefully for random strangers on the internet to yell at me to do my work as well.
This probably won't be purely academic as I have ADHD, and I need to infodump about my hyperfixations sometimes, so expect to be reading about random thoughts that pop out of my head in regards to things I'm interested in as well as my school life.

Subjects for Semester 1, 2023

English
Analysis and Approaches in Mathematics
Food Studies
Creative Writing
Psychology Unit 1
Careers.

Additionally, I go to a K-12 school and I spend about 3 hours a week working with the kids in Foundation.

About Me

I'm 14 years old
I have 2 siblings, an older brother and a younger sister.
I own a gorgeous kitten named Spider
I'm very, very gay.
I'm neurodivergent (ASD & ADHD)
I suffer from a few mental health conditions, including Generalised Anxiety, and Clinical Depression, which are really fun. I love my brain so much.
In addition to that my physical health is kind of in the gutter, I've been sick for a bit over a year now, and doctors are only just starting to take it seriously. It's probably a heart thing but it also affects my energy levels and I'm nauseous a lot of the time. So that's fun.

Conclusion

Hopefully I'll keep up with this, I plan to update hopefully at least once a week from now on. Thank you for reading if you are, and good luck with your own studies.
~ Kisses!

NETutors

Charlie

Hi Chris,

It's great to see that you are taking your education seriously and planning ahead and holding yourself accountable for your schoolwork.

In regards to your mental health conditions, I wanted to share with you some research that has shown that physical exercise can be one of the best medicines for anxiety and depression. Studies have found that regular exercise can improve mood, decrease stress and anxiety, and increase energy levels:

A meta-analysis of 49 randomised controlled trials found that exercise was associated with significant reductions in symptoms of depression (Cooney et al., 2013).
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that exercise was effective at reducing symptoms of anxiety in adults with generalized anxiety disorder (Herring et al., 2012).
A review of 30 studies published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research concluded that exercise was an effective treatment for depression in older adults (Blumenthal et al., 2007).
A randomised controlled trial published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that exercise was an effective treatment for depression in patients with heart disease (Lavie et al., 2016).

Aerobic exercises like running, cycling, and swimming have been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Resistance training, such as weightlifting, can also improve mood and reduce anxiety.

Physical training can be likened to a type of meditation in several ways. First, both physical training and meditation require concentration and focus. During physical training, one needs to focus on their form, breathing, and movements, which can help quiet the mind and create a meditative and focused state.

Remember, taking care of your physical and mental health is just as important as your academic work and in some aspects, it is essential to academic success itself!

Take care.

Charlie

OK, so, this is just basically giving a little note on how I'm going so far in all my classes this year. Since I'm starting so late, I thought it would be a good thing to post, so that you can all see sort of what I'm doing with my life.

English

Honestly definitely not doing great, I'm very behind in this. We're meant to be reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I would be fine if we just had to read, but every chapter we have to answer questions and I find them so tedious and boring (this is why I want to do English Language next year). I think I'm meant to be at chapter 18 by today and I'm in chapter 9. So that's fun. In past years I've breezed through English but it feels a lot harder this year and I'm not looking forward to the rest of the year.

(Analysis and Approaches in) Mathematics

Normally I excel at maths, it's just one of those things that my brain can do. But this year I don't understand my teacher at all. I feel kind of bad about it because I know he's just teaching the best he knows how to, but a bunch of my friends and most of the class doesn't understand him either, so I just think he's not a good fit for the school. I don't want to transfer out of the class because I want to do Methods next year, but I'm worried I'm going to fail if I stay in this class. Advice appreciated.

Food Studies

This is honestly a really, really easy class. All we have to do is show up to the practical classes and make a flashy slideshow with a reflection on each thing we cook, and boom, guaranteed pass. I like the teacher for this one, she's very sweet and kind and fun to talk to but also really knows what she's doing. She has a Master's in teaching and she was away from our first class because she was getting her Bachelor of Human Nutrition. She also works part-time as a nutritionist and has her own business. She's really impressive and I hope she stays at the school for at least a couple more years because I plan to take Food Studies in VCE and would love to have her as my teacher.

Creative Writing

I'm really just doing this class for fun and because I can before I have to really get serious with my VCE classes. It's pretty chill, only 10 people in the class I think, and most of us are already friends because similar interests. All we have to do this term is write a short story by April 7 and I think I'm on track for this one. My short story is based on a nightmare I had when my depression was really bad last year so we'll see what the reception is.

Psychology

I know it's really bad but I'm kind of behind in Psych. We have our first OAT on Friday of Week 8 (my school is about to start Week 6) and I'm pretty sure I can catch up by then because we're looking at Child Development which is my forte, but being behind in my one VCE subject this early in the year scares me.

Careers

I honestly don't really know what's going on with careers, basically, we show up to class, they say 'keep going through the activities on the website', and then leave us to it. So I've been going through the activities but I don't know if they're the right ones. I guess I'm kinda just hoping for the best.

Conclusion

Thank you again for reading if you did, and I hope you're doing better this year than I am.
~ Kisses!

Yolk15

Hey! Nice to see another neurodivergent : )
You have a very spread out choice of subjects; what career are you thinking of pursuing in the future?

Charlie

Yolk15 Yes, we love the neurodivergent representation.
I want to go into Early Childhood Education (hence why I work with the foundation students). I think I want to be a primary teacher, I really enjoy working with children in that context (and my mentor last year - the teacher of the foundation class I worked with - said that I was a natural with them which really instilled a lot of confidence).
I know that my subjects don't really reflect that but my school is kind of new (it opened in 2019) so it doesn't offer very many subjects, especially with staff shortages, so I kind of just picked the ones that I could find ways to relate to ECE or that I knew I would enjoy.

Charlie

OK, so, I think I'm going to try to do daily updates here until I run out of motivation because it gives me something to look forward to.
I had Maths and Creative writing today, which is great because they're two of my favourite subjects.

So, double Maths period one and two. I still don't understand the teacher but I tend to be pretty independent in maths so I'm pretty much teaching myself from the textbook. We have a test next week, and I think I'm on track for that. My cousin and I are both pretty good at maths, though in different areas, and we're in this class together so we help each other out a lot, and things seem to be going well there. I'm honestly looking forward to the test because we're doing algebraic expressions and linear equations which is my favourite, and it's an open-book test so I really just get to show off what I know.

For Creative, I only have a month to finish my story which should be easy but I keep running out of motivation. My teacher though is great, he's been casually lending out books to the class and giving really little tasks. Currently I have The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and I have to say who my favourite character is. I'm really enjoying this class too, though I'm probably a bit behind in terms of writing. I'm almost up to where I want to be but it somehow doesn't feel like enough.

Tonight I'm going to try to catch up on To Kill a Mockgbird and hopefully Psych as well, plus some maths homework.
So, tasks I want to get done are:

Read to chapter 20 of TKaMb and complete chapter questions
Finish the Chapter 1 review for Psych
Clean up Psych notes & make flashcards
Make pancakes to add photos to Food Studies Portfolio
Finish the section of story that I'm currently working on for Creative
Do maths questions 1G6 - 1G9

Please feel more than free to yell at me to remember to do these things because I thrive from external motivation.

Also, NETutors.
Thanks for the advice, but I do exercise regularly, along with seeing a psychologist. I understand the importance of maintaining my mental and physical health in regards to my academics and I do try to keep active and healthy.

I think that's all for now, thanks for reading,
~ Kisses!

Charlie

So, ADHD and my being the Queen of Procrastination caught up with me and I did so little of what I had assigned myself for last night. I really have to get better at that. I did make some flashcards, and read some more of TKaMb, so I'm not doing god-awful, but I'm not doing great either. I have actual motivation to do maths right now though, so I'm hoping to remember to do that after posting this. Wish me luck.

Today my timetable looked like this:
Period 1 - English
Period 2 - Careers
Recess
Period 3 - Food Studies
Period 4 - Food Studies
Lunch
Period 5 - Psychology
Period 6 - Psychology

So, first was English where I, you know, read the book, answered some questions. I'm thinking I'm going to read the whole thing just to get it over and done with and then I'll go back to the questions, then read it a third time to find quotes relating to themes and such (please send help).

Careers was Careers, I talked to my friend about my plans for the future, looked at houses, and accidentally gave said friend an existential crisis. The usual. We don't get homework for careers and it may as well be a study session, so I don't have to worry about that for another week.

In Food Studies we made veggie lasagna. Making it was stressful and my parter sliced straight through her fingernail chopping onions but other than that it wasn't too bad. The lasagna turned out pretty good and my brother and I stayed in the kitchen all lunch eating it together. I could potentially get a head start on the analysis thing but my partner took home the recipe and our teacher hasn't put up the questions for this one yet so I would just be going off of memory.

In Psych we were looking at the case of Genie (if you take Psych you know) so that wasn't fun, but after we finished the task for that there we kind of needed a break so my friend and I started talking about things, the teacher accidentally created an inside joke that she herself was not in on, and my friend learned how to say 'sit' in Hebrew. Long story.

So, for tonight, I want to:

Read most of TKaMb
Do maths questions 1G6 - 1G9
Make more Psych flashcards
Hopefully read some more of The Graveyard Book before my creative class tomorrow.

In other news, my sister left on her last school camp with her primary school today; she's in Canberra right now and it feels kind of wrong to say it but I miss her. It's not like I've never been away from her before, I have many times, but it just feels weird, you know?

That's all for today, thanks for reading!
~ Kisses!

Charlie

Wow, it's been almost a week since I updated this. Sorry, but I did say that the motivation would run out fast.
Anyway, not much interesting happened over the week, though I did gain possession of one of my friends' arms. That was fun. I also figured out that I have to change my timetable again because I was a walking zombie by the end of last week. Don't let me forget that.

The long weekend was great, but I should have been using it as a chance to rest and catch up on work. I did not do that. I spent the weekend drinking and pulling all-nighters with my dear cousin.
On that note, can everyone please take a moment to admire the beauty that is Natasha Lyonne? God, I could talk about that woman for hours. She's heavenly.
Also, has anyone seen Firebite, and should I watch it? Because I know Yael Stone is in it and she's really cute but I'd like to know if it's any good before wasting my time on it.

I'm really stressed about Psychology, I have so little confidence in it and I'm terrified. I plan to spend my night re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird, watching American Reunion (guess why), and maybe doing a little Psych revision. Yes I am aware that my sleep schedule is terrible, but I don't have to be up until 10 tomorrow, so, does that make things any better?

Wish me luck,
~ Kisses!

Charlie

I'm back!
Sorry I sort of dropped off the face of the Earth for almost 4 weeks.
As it tends to do, the end of term got really busy and stressful and I sort of forgot about this journal. But it's over now!
My memory is absolutely awful, so I'm just going to basically summarise what happened during my Parent/Teacher Interviews in week 10 to give an idea of what happened over the past few weeks.

Psychology
My teacher said that I'm doing well in Psych, and to keep doing what I'm doing.
I got 80% (24/30) on my OAT which wasn't great but it was expected, when I finished the test I knew that I had lost at least six marks. A lot of people in our class didn't do well though, I think 9 or 10 of 20 students failed and our teacher takes some responsibility for this but also says that we have to work harder as well. So the classes are a lot more no-nonsense now.

English
I haven't been assessed on anything yet and due to health issues I don't attend English classes too much, so there wasn't much to discuss, my teacher asked how I think I'm doing and I said that I thought I was doing alright, but I'm not sure I'll get a very high mark on my essay because I couldn't find much motivation.
I really hated reading To Kill a Mockingbird and I know that there are going to be questions about it in the mid-year exam so I'm dreading that too.

Maths
Maths is another class that I don't attend very often due to health issues, and I actually missed a test (not because of the regular health stuff though, I got a bad cold and was highly contagious for like 4 days. Otherwise I definitely would've shown up for the test). Anyway, a couple of weeks later I did the test in class under assignment conditions, not test conditions. That same day I had had to do a complicated geometry assignment as well, so I was getting tired of maths but I did the test, and then my teacher graded it in front of me during the Parent/Teacher Interviews which was terrifying. I gave up on the last question but I did pretty alright despite that (85%, 34/40) and my Maths teacher said that I am 'clearly very capable' and he'll be giving me extension work, so that's exciting! I also did perfectly on the geometry assignment, in case you were wondering.

Careers
Now with Careers, I legitimately didn't think my Careers teacher even knew who I was. He has never spoken to me in class, except for on the day of the interview to confirm I was still coming. He said that he thinks I'm a good student who just gets on with it and that he has no complaints, which is really really high praise coming from this teacher. He's another one who told me to just keep doing what I'm doing.

Creative Writing
My teacher complimented me quite a bit and told me to never stop writing, so a lot of ego-stroking happened here. He mentioned holiday homework (students at this school don't get assigned holiday homework until Year 10, and I guess it was a warning) and I said 'Lovely.'. Apparently that's the first time a student has had that response.
I'm not sure how I did on my writing piece for this class, it's a very risky class to take because it depends almost entirely on personal tastes, but considering the 'never stop writing' comment I'll say I did OK.
Also, in other news, this teacher was reading Good Omens during the term and said that he read the entire thing in the voices of me and one of my friends because it suits our writing styles so perfectly, so it was decided that I'm Neil Gaiman and my friend is Terry Pratchett and that was a very fun conversation.

Food Studies
Basically me being in awe of my teacher's handwriting and her telling me over and over that I'm too hard on myself.
We're not getting assessed on this subject until next term, so there's not much more to say.

Holiday Homework
I'm looking forward to getting to rest over the holidays a bit, because the term was exhausting, but I have lots of work to do over the holidays as well. I have homework for every class except Maths and Food. My holiday tasks for each class are:

Careers
-Work through 1-2 sections of modules
Creative Writing
-Write for (no more than) 10 minutes each morning; 'Stream-of-Consciousness Writing'
-Read 'The Little Prince'
-Write a flash fiction (500 words or less)
English
-Re-read To Kill a Mockingbird (again)
-Watch To Kill a Mockingbird
-Make note of important events in To Kill a Mockingbird
Psychology
-Pre-read chapters for AOS 2
-Take notes on chapters for AOS 2

I think that's everything for now, thanks for reading and have an amazing and restful holiday! Take care of yourself.
~ Kisses!

BriMT

Good luck for psych!

Research methods will be very very important next year (and is an area students often underperform on) so I encourage you to try to make sure you learn that well.

The other big thing to try and get from units 1&2 in any VCE subject is making sure to be careful with how you answer questions - it's frustrating to know the content but lose the marks and unfortunately easy to lose them this way.

When you're pre-reading I encourage you to try to do this actively, passive reading ahead is often a very inefficient study method.

Charlie

So...
I'm not dead, and that's fun!
I may or may not have completely forgotten to update this journal for the entirety of Term 2. Sorry about that.
The semester's over now, which is honestly a huge relief, but that means only 6 months until Year 11 starts, which is absolutely terrifying.

I guess it's only fair that I update everyone on what happened in the last 9 weeks, so...
Honestly, it wasn't a great term for me. I kind of slacked off a lot, which I understand is completely on me, and because of that my grades suffered greatly.
I'm going to try a lot harder to maintain my grades next semester, because I want to end the year strong. I'm going to have different classes next semester. Biology is replacing Creative Writing (which I am so excited about, biology is one of my absolute favourite subjects) and theoretically Theatre Studies will be replacing Food Studies, but I'm really tempted to switch to Italian instead because I don't think Theatre Studies will be good for me at all for multiple reasons. I also kinda made a deal with the school leader so I may not have to do that block at all.

I only have official holiday homework for Psychology over the winter break (which I have already started on), but I want to work on some things for English and Maths as well. So, the things I want to get done over the next two weeks are:
English
-Read Macbeth
Maths
-Read textbook chapter on indices, surds and logarithms
-Work through textbook questions
Psychology
-Read and take notes on Chapter 6
-Complete Edrolo units for Chapter 6

It doesn't seem like too much if I can space it out properly but I am renowned for procrastinating until the last minute and then wondering how the hell I didn't get that tiny amount of work done. That's something I really need to improve on, but for now, just wish me luck.

A more personal update is the fact that I'm currently fostering three kittens! They're adorable, the sweetest things ever, but having them means there are currently five cats in my household, all of which I am the primary caretaker for, and my allergies are not enjoying that.

I think that's all I have to say for now.
Hopefully I'll give more consistent updates next term (I'm going to aim to update every Friday night) but I make no promises, so all I can say is:
Until next time,
~ Kisses!

Charlie

Alright. Semester 2 starts tomorrow, so I figured I'm update here before that happens and I'm once again overwhelmed with work. I kind of feel really underprepared even though I did do most of the work I set for myself. I know I'll be fine, I know most other people in my classes probably didn't even do the compulsory homework, but I still feel like I'm behind.
Whatever.
I'll be fine.

As I mentioned, my grades were not great last semester, so here are my exam scores to prove that:
English - 60%
Maths - 78%
Psychology - 74%
Food Studies - 90%
...yeah. It's not great. My goal is to improve each score (except Food Studies, of course) by at least 20%. So, for my end of year exams, I'm looking for something along the lines of:
English - 72%
Maths - 94%
Psychology - 89%
And I'd like at leat 85% on my Biology exam, which will be replacing Food in my exams next semester.
Although of course I wouldn't mind higher scores, which are definitely achievable for some of those.

I think that's all I've got to say for now, and hopefully I'll be back Friday evening!
~ Kisses!

Charlie

So, my first week back at school is over and done with.
On the social side of things it was an absolutely god-awful week, but we're not going to get into that.

As it was the first week back there wasn't too much going on academically, but I guess I'll talk a bit about how classes have been so far.
I've loved Biology class, our teacher is very chill and has basically said anything we want to learn, she can teach us, which is really fun because Biology is one of my biggest interests and favourite subjects. I'm excited.
We have a new teacher in English and I feel like she's been much better at holding us accountable to get work done. She's also pretty chill and I'm enjoying her.
Psych so far has just been reviewing our exams and holiday homework, so there hasn't been too much to do, but that's alright in the first few days of term. We're easing back into it.
I haven't had a single Maths class yet because the timetable is kind of messed up, so I think that's all there is to talk about today.

Over the weekend, the homework I have to get done is:
-Complete first two pages of Macbeth booklet
-Complete summary notes on Acts I & II of Macbeth
-Read and take notes on Psych chapter 6B
-Complete Edrolo questions for Psych chapter 6B
-Print and finish Psych worksheet from class
-Answer 'Theater in Shakespeare's Time' comprehension questions

It's not much, so I should be fine.
Until next week,
~ Kisses!

Charlie

Alright, I missed a week on here, so I'm going to try to summarise that as well.

So, Week 2 of Term 3 was still pretty chill.
We were (and still are) working on Financial mathematics, which was pretty boring to me, but it's not like I found it hard. It was a nice, chill subject to come back on.
In English we went over the context of Macbeth, made a really brief slideshow detailing our understanding of the context. Nothing too difficult just yet.
In Bio we have been taking down notes and working through content. My teacher genuinely loves biology and makes learning it fun, so that's been really nice. It's also been really easy so far, we went over cell structure and functions in Week 2.
Psych has been trudging along as Psych does. We're doing social perception and cognition which I don't really love, but it is what it is I guess.

Week 3 was also still relatively simple.
We continued looking at Financial maths, delving into compound interest and amortisation. I'm still finding it pretty easy, and I'm feeling like I'll ace the test on Monday.
We read Act 1 of Macbeth and started regularly filling out a booklet that will help make up our assessment for the term. I'm feeling pretty on top of it, though there are are still a few pages of the booklet I'll have to polish off.
We looked at photosynthesis and cell respiration in Bio, practiced out scientific drawing skills taking observations through a microscope, and we did a practical experiment involving bleaching beetroots this week. Honestly it's super fun, I've been loving it, Bio is definitely my favourite class this semester.
We've just about finished Chapter 6 in Psych, on social cognition. We have a chapter review next week, which the teacher will grade and re-teach areas of weakness, and then we'll move on to Chapter 7. I think I'm doing pretty well and have a good understanding of the concepts so far, which I'm glad about.

I go to a Catholic School, and Wednesday was the feast day of our patron saint, so we had a mass. Turns out if you have Dysautonomia, masses wreak havoc on you. I blacked out at the start of the mass while we were standing for that little intro thing that you have to stand for (I've been going to Catholic schools my whole life, it's probably bad that I don't know what that's called), and after that my boyfriend refused to let me stand up for any of the other parts or go up to receive communion (which was honestly very sweet of him, he was just trying to help). I talked to the school leader about it yesterday and she said that, because masses are mandatory, in the future she'll sit me and a few friends at the back of the church for better air flow, and that I don't ever have to stand up. I'm really grateful to have such understanding teachers.
Also, like a lot of other Year 10s, I've just done my Year 11 subject selections. So, if anyone is interested, my subjects for next year will hopefully be:

English Language (by VSV. I've convinced the school leader but she still has to convince the principal, so we're not certain this will be allowed)
Maths Methods
VET Early Childhood Education
Food Studies
Biology
Psych 3&4

That sort of seems like a huge workload and I'm a little scared, but it's alright. I'm really excited and passionate about most of those subjects, so it should be fine.

So, things to catch up on over the weekend:
-Finish off all Act 1 pages in English booklet
-Complete revision sheet for Financial maths
-Revise Psych Chapter 6
-Start watching Edrolo videos for Psych Chapter 7

I think that's all for now, so I'll see you all in a week
~ Kisses!

Charlie

Aight, I'm back. I'm really trying to update this at least once a week to keep the control freak in me satiated.

So, what went down in the last week? That's a good question.
There's a new member of leadership at the school who is trying to tighten everything up and as you can imagine, there's been a lot of resistance from students. I'm just trying to stay out of it, but school's kinda chaos for the Year 10s & 11s right now.

To summarise what's going down in my classes right now:
Maths - I got 96% on the Financial test (I lost one mark on a student mistake), and we're doing Trigonometry now. Pretty basic stuff.
English - Nothing interesting has happened, we're generally just going through the motions.
Biology - Bio's chill, we're still just going over the basics though because our Bio classes are like 50% gossip. But it's fine. My teacher is offering to start teaching me Year 11 content to 'extend' me, so that's kinda exciting.
Psych - Conformity is shit someone actually kill me. I'm hating Psych at the moment. I know I have to just keep going through the steps and getting shit done, but damn I am not enjoying this area of study.

Also, I applied to do a VET course next year, so that's something. The application was so stressful for no reason but I'm feeling pretty good about it, so that's something.

I think that's pretty much all I have to say for now.
I shall hopefully return next week
~ Kisses!