#year12

it’s kind of early holidays however we don’t want to completely forget what we’ve learnt however we value mind-off time however this is year twelve however physical and mental collapse ain’t welcome please and thank you so here you go.

some baby itty-bitty lil light things to do here and there so holidays aren’t advancing you towards that next spicy burn out sesh but also so we don’t return to school as useless as the school planner they hand out at the start of the year... if we actually even go back hah... the idea is that these are short and pack a punch:

open your math/bio/chem/phys/whatever textbook to a random chapter and do three random questions - make sure you mark your responses and if you struggle, congrats! you found an area you’re a bit rusty on and can revise briefly now or note it down for later. the main thing is- ensure you do something about it some point soonish.

pick a syllabus objective for a subject or a topic in a subject and blurt out everything you know - write, draw, sketch etc. down everything you know, or if you’re super lazy, just say it out loud. if it’s on paper, check what you’ve written and add things you’ve missed by looking at notes or a textbook. active recall, peeps.

watch a khan academy vid or a crash course vid - five minutes while lying in bed and then you can go back to that episode of glee whatever. what i like to do with my current glee obsession: between each episode, watch a biology video related to ecology. expose that brain to info again.

set a timer for fifteen minutes and do as much of an assignment as you can, and do it as focused as you can - if you can, stretch it out to a few pomodoro sessions (twenty-five minutes work, five minutes break, repeat) but lately my motivation and concentration has been pretty low so i’ll opt for fifteen minutes on my history assignment, and then i’ll disappear into the pool for an hour and then hop out and do another fifteen. the key is the bite-sizedness of this method: do this four times a day and that’s an hour of focused assignment work. for holidays, that ain’t bad at all...

make a mindmap - pretty easy on the brain and can be fun (pull out the ol’ coloured pencils). make links between topics (i do this for bio a lot) and summarise main categories/characteristics/points of info. will probably do a whole post on mind maps, i- cannot recommend enough. good study tool when it comes to exam season as you get a nice umbrella view of what you need to cover.

drill through flashcards for eight minutes - don’t know why, but eight minutes is the magic number for flashcards. don’t have any? quizlet, or time to make some. don’t have to be pretty. facetime friends and drill them together.

read through the exemplars for the assessments coming up - if you haven’t already, have a squizz at the sample responses for each assessment that have been released by your state currriculum authority. note what you have to do to achieve a high level response, and what’s the difference with a high level and mid or low level response. try to maximise your marks. look at the assignments you’re doing right now and see how you’re comparing so far. keep doing this throughout the year. 

organise your binder/papers/folder/desk/bag/pencil case - not really a proper study thing, but staying on top of your shiz can seriously keep you efficient and improve that academic performance. if you’re like me, by the end of the term, your bag and desk are a wild jungle of paper and just- trash. finally got the time to reorganise- so do it. 

day 5/100

Hi everybody, I hope you’re all having a great day, so today I was much more productive than normal, which is great because the pressure is on to finish the course as much as possible. I made mind maps for my play and I love how it turned out.

So I a few days I received in the letter box a ‘motivation letter’ that I wrote during Year 12 camp. Early this year we had to write a motivation letter and give it to our house leaders. They told us whenever we felt unmotivated or just not feeling it, we were told to go to see them and ask for our letter. Obviously with the coronavirus and online learning we haven’t been able to go and collect our letter whenever we were down. So the school mailed them to us, and I’ll admit, I forgot that we even wrote these. 

Reading the letter made feel that my past self (which was only in February) was kind of naïve because this year turned out to be so different to what we planned it to be. But it was at the end of the letter I said something along the lines- ‘enjoy every single day’. And damn I just felt like I needed to enjoy more. Every single day I’ve just been wanting for the school day to be over so I could just relax and not look at my laptop screen any longer. But now I realise that I want to make the most of every single day and not take it for granted. 

I forget that I only have about 2-3 months of school left and it’s terrifying and exciting. This year has been crazy and I’m not sure if I truly spent it the way I envisioned to. Obviously not, but part of my craves for a normal school year so I can enjoy little bits of it. I think now I’ve kind of accepted this state of Year 12 and don’t expect much anymore.  

Also here’s my motivation letter in case you wanted to read. Name is blocked out for privacy reasons 

*has barely revised

*notes only 3/4 finished

*done no practise exams

Me: it'll be right