POST 1 - 19/12/2023

hi! my name is dani, and to be honest, i never thought of starting a vce journal. i’ve read countless amounts on atar notes, and i was like ‘eh that could never be me.’ but i really wanted to capture my vce journey, because i know it is going to be an extraordinarily bumpy road that i’m not sure i’m quite ready to ride. i’m in year 12, the class of 2024, and i wanted to just document the ups and downs of the year (maybe more downs that ups but that’s ok).

my subjects
well i’m doing five subjects next year; four at my in-person school and one through virtual school victoria. at my in-person school, i’m studying english (compulsory, although i would have enjoyed doing english language), general maths, business management, and psychology. through virtual school victoria, i’m studying extended investigation (explanation below).

english — i love english. i don’t care what people say about hating english and wanting to die when they go to english class, i absolutely enjoy english (despite my friends correlation between me loving english and being white 😭). when i finish high school, i want to study media + communications and creative writing at unimelb. kind of ironic how english is my lowest performing subject (mid 70’s to low 80’s on a good day), but i don’t like analysing books, and why the author chose medea to be a child-killer (yes our school chose medea for year 11 it was incredibly boring). i enjoy the creative component of english, which is why i am SUPER grateful for the new english study design where we get to craft our own creative responses, because i always do super well on those in my english sac’s. enough about english…

general math — i was planning on dropping general in year 12, because it was too easy, but then i realised “why drop it because it’s easy… it is just an opportunity to get a decent study score.” (for background information, i was going to drop this to continue with geography but not enough people from 1/2 wanted to do it so it got cancelled. then i had to chose between biology and general, and i really really despise biology [a story in itself, i might write about it later] so i chose general). i did well this year, i heard the 3/4 course is almost a copy and paste of units 1/2, so that will be interesting.

business management — HELP i will never understand how people tend to do so bad in this subject. i never dropped below a 90 on my sac’s (except the one time i realised that my teacher marked me an extra mark that when removed, it would’ve been an 87, so i didn’t tell her because what’s loyalty T-T). i feel that business is the kind of subject that where you put the effort in, you get the reward, and i do all the notes and the textbook questions assigned but i never really went out of my way to study, and still managed 90’s-100’s. definitely will change that approach next year because i’ll get lazy if i don’t. but i DO have the same teacher next year as i did this year, which is thrilling because she is great, but changed her teaching style during orientation where peoples tests grades dropped for the worse because it sucked (thank god i’m an independent learner ESPECIALLY for business).

psychology — psych has always been the stand out science for me. i feel like studying why people do what they do and how the mind works entails so many fascinating connections to what i already know, and to branch off that is just something i enjoy. i did great this year in psychology with my decent 75 year old teacher, and then she went on leave and i got an even better teacher who was by far more engaging than her.

extended investigation — as mentioned, i’m doing this through vsv, and took a LOT of convincing for my school to let me do it (gotta love having a kick-ass mum). i’m really excited, because not only isn’t there an exam, i get to look into stuff i really enjoy and it’s mostly self paced meaning i can do it in my own time… AND IT SCALES DECENTLY TOO!! basically EI as it is abbreviated is a subject where you write a thesis on a topic you have researched for the whole year, and then present it as an oral presentation to a panel of VCAA assessors. helps build critical thinking, but i want to improve my writing skills.

why i despise biology
biology this year was such a roller coaster, because i had the worst teacher imaginable. like if he had to teach to survive, he’d be a pile of ashes right now. i did incredibly bad in his class, because i had no idea what i was doing 95% of the time, and he has this mindset where he thought he was always right, despite marking our unit 1 exams wrong and screwing up multiple other marking on sac’s. BUT HE LEFT AFTER SEMESTER 1, and i got a biology teacher who has a PhD in something (finished on an A, which is like 25% more than what i finished on with the bad teacher)

goals
i guess i should also talk about my goals for the year. study score wise, i am hoping to achieve:

  • english — 30-35
  • general — nothing below a 40
  • business management — nothing below a 45
  • psychology — 35-40
  • extended investigation — 35-40

after school, i am DEFINITELY taking a gap year because school is exhausting me, before i study media + communications and creative writing at unimelb (need an 88 atar i think that it’s achievable).

a little bit more about me…
i love to talk, if you couldn’t tell by this massive first post. i don’t know, i’ve always just been so opinionated and love to talk about almost anything.

  • i love music, it is literally what keeps my heart beating healthy. i listen to varying genres, but i listen to conan gray (top 0.001% of listeners this year with him being over 1/3 of my overall streams), taylor swift (who i didn’t get tickets to because of bots and fake fans), enhypen, paramore, sabrina carpenter, gracie abrams, newjeans, mcr, etc etc
  • concerts are something else i really enjoy, despite being to only two. i saw conan gray in 2022 which was MAGNIFICENT and then paramore (opening night) in november 2023. my goal is to definitely go to more concerts after year 12, because live music >>
  • i also love reading, and have literally bought 55 books in 18 months. i was banned from buying books for my birthday (my parents still bought me 2 lol) and for christmas (i’m getting 6 haha). i just love living vicariously through other people in made up worlds… maybe it’s a bad coping habit but oh well.

i’m always up for music and book suggestions, as i am always running low on either, and there is only so many times i can listen to taylor swifts catalogue of music over and over. apologies for the lengthy introduction but i love to talk and that will never change. bye for now!

    wow what are the odds of me coming across another EI student… the cohort is so tiny 😭. i’ve been looking at sleep myths, since there is a huge gap in the literature - especially for adolescents. and for books, i love horror and mystery, but some of my all time favourites are ‘the seven husbands of evelyn hugo’ and ‘daisy jones and the six.’

    also thank you so much for replying, i didn’t know if anyone would see this T-T

    Ayo, fellow EI peeps! ..And yeah the cohorts pretty small (only around 20ish students get 40+) since most schools don't offer it, hence I'm doing it on VSV. I'm thinking of doing research on liminal spaces, so hopefully that'll go well. Good luck to you two!

      year 10 next year, but looking to do EI in year 11, let me know how it goes everyone!! 🙂

      • FH likes this.

      Cardamon another vsv kid!! that actually sounds super interesting, maybe i’ll see you in class online next year?

        g4rl1cg1rl oh wow, that is intriguing (i hate anything to do with history lmao). i’d definitely love to talk throughout next year with our ideas, and am also glad that we found each other, because EI seems so difficult i’m not sure if i’ll make it out alive 🙁.

        a tip that i’ve gotten from my teachers is just to confine your topic down so it is achievable in eight months, so i hope that helps get the ball rolling and confidence boosted!!

          It's unfortunate that your school school doesn't have enough people for a 3/4 Geography class since that was probably my favorite subject in Year 12.

          • FH replied to this.

            ThunderDragon i agree, i really enjoyed geography - especially going out on field trips. but i’m also enjoying EI so i guess it’s a win-win!

                FH Just completed EI this year. It is a great subject, but the critical thinking test is horrid 😭

                • jam likes this.
                • FH replied to this.

                    FH I did a ethical paradigmatic analysis of xenotransplantation through the perspective of some philosophers and medical codes. EI is the best subject that the VCAA offer, in my opinion. It is extremely rewarding and fun (if you are doing something you like of course) and it will immensely help you through university. Just as a tip, since you will inevitably face this issue towards the end of the year; you will be pulling your hair out about keeping under that small word count (trust me it sounds big, but it is crazy small). You just have to be extremely honest about yourself during the editing process and cut ANYTHING that does not relate to the question. It hurts to do as you've put so much effort into your paper, but you have to do it (I legit cut my paper down from 72 pages to 36).

                    • FH replied to this.

                        stevendort ahh now you have made me worry (it’s ok i work better stressed). when in doubt i’ll just maybe throw everything into a table since they don’t go to the word count LMAO.

                        so glad i’ve met some EI peeps now i can get some extra help 🥲🥲

                            FH No, don't worry. Every student in the state goes through the same cycle. You'll do well if you are really passionate about your project.

                            • FH likes this.

                              POST 2 - 22/12/2023

                              hi, again! i have wayyyy too much time on my hands because i literally updated here 3 days ago, buuutttt i’ve been productive in saying that so here’s update numero due (i almost failed italian both semesters in year 9 but ‘numero due’ sounded more fancy than ‘number two’)

                              i have done a fair amount of my holiday homework this week. almost finished my psychology homework, which is just research methods and skills which is extremely repetitive but it has to get done - i just have one lot of textbook questions to go. i technically didn’t have any homework for general maths, but when i went to buy some spare exercise books for my orientation classes in early november, i bought 10mm grid books for math instead of 5mm, so i’ve been in the process of, and actually completed, transferring all the work over to the 5mm books my friend bought for me because i am too lazy to leave the house! and then there is english. i went to the textbook store to buy my textbooks yesterday and they didn’t have either of the books we are studying (for reference, they are ‘we have always lived in the castle’ by shirley jackson and ‘oedipus the king’ my sophocles). they should be in within 10 working days EXCLUDING christmas and boxing day and new year’s day.

                              and then there is EI. to be honest, EI is just going to get its own paragraph at this point in time because it is so interesting and i do not regret choosing it (yet). i think i mentioned in my previous post that my topic i have found a huge gap in the literature for is sleep myths, so like misconceptions about sleep and how they might influence or impact teenagers. my teachers (there’s two of them) both seem to really enjoy the idea and see good potential, but i do need to define a lot of stuff because, as my teachers have put it to me, what is a “good nights sleep” and how is that scientifically defined. might go into the state library after the new year to do some work because i get distracted too easily at home. i also signed up to go watch top talks, which is (for non EI kids) the top EI oral presentations being presented to people at the state library, which is good for me because i’ve only seen final products in terms of the written report, not the oral presentation. for my topic however, the teachers want me (as it is mentioned in some of the literature i have read) to complete a delphi method style approach to identifying sleep misconceptions. a delphi method is basically getting scientific experts who specialise in the topic on research to identify (with support of scientific evidence of course) whether it is a myth or not. THEY WANT ME TO CONTACT EXPERTS. they said students have done so successfully but i am wayyyy too introverted to ever do something like that. self esteem levels - low!!

                              a mini-life update. i have never watched stranger things before, but i made the choice to start watching it. i was always like “i’m never going to conform to what people have to say about television shows, I WILL BE THE JUDGE OF WHAT IS AND ISN’T GOOD.” confession… it is super good. the moment i’m done writing this, i’m going to finish off season 1 (i have 3 episodes left.) i also applied at a nando’s store for work, because i absolutely love nando’s, but i’m not expecting to land the job to be honest.

                              anywho, christmas is three days out, so wishing everyone a very merry christmas, and due to the lack of excitement in my life, i will definitely be posting another update before the new year. bye for now!

                              g4rl1cg1rl with top talks, it's during a school day I DONT KNOW WHAT EXCUSE IMMA USE WITH MY SCHOOL SO I CAN GO T-T

                                14 days later

                                POST 3 - 05/01/24

                                hi, again! i haven’t put anything here in a week or so, and i’m really bored, so i figured to put up something here just to waste some time.

                                i’ve tried getting ahead in some subjects the last few days when i haven’t been out, which is boring as hell because i’m trying to bide some time until my book store orders my set texts for english (we have always lived in the castle for unit 3 and oedipus the king for unit 4). i started my general bound reference, which can be super tedious because i hate making mistakes and i get distracted super easily, so i’m always making mistakes. also been working on some psychology revision notes for the first half of AOS1 which we covered in orientation.

                                extended investigation has been a total bloodbath. i have done absolutely nothing. zero. i’m really lacking motivation, which is bad because you need it for this subject. i got an email from my teacher with some other homework (i haven’t really read it properly) but it is like 10 questions + article reading so i guess it isn’t too much considering school starts in 25 days.

                                i finished stranger things a week or so ago, and i’m really surprised i haven’t watched it earlier because it was super good. currently half way through all of us are dead, which i also regret not watching earlier. also got bored and ranked every taylor swift song here.

                                i might go on hiatus until school resumes, so thanks for reading!!

                                • Yona likes this.
                                • Kay replied to this.

                                  FH i'd love to hear your thoughts on "we have always lived in the castle" because i STRUGGLED through that one and cheered when it was over, but then I paused and was like hmmm maybe not that bad?

                                  • FH replied to this.
                                      9 days later

                                      Kay i started reading it a few days ago and just finished chapter 4 and i have no idea what’s going on. if you have any materials to help me i’d really appreciate it!

                                      • Kay replied to this.

                                          one of the chosen texts for my literature class this year is medea and it genuinely looks so boring!!

                                          • FH replied to this.