Thoughts after half-yearlies.. :( +maths ext2! +your experience? (1 Viewer)

[joyster]

I just finished my half-yearlies this week, and i wanted to share my thoughts on it.

First of all, I do following subjects:
*english standard
*physics
*chemistry
*maths ext1
*maths ext2

I felt alright for all exams except maths ext2. I prepared so much for it, and it was the second last exam of half-yearly. I felt quite good walking into the hall and writing down my name on the attendance slip, but I became so anxious to find myself having trouble with lots of conics question. I was SO FREAKING DEPRESSED when i couldnt 'prove' or 'show' the answer!! And then I momentarily felt guilty for dropping down to 10 units.
I asked my friends how they went, but they seemed to have left out a lot of questions blank. They all said the test was hard, but that doenst make me feel better in any ways.. Today I sat down for chemistry, my last exam, and it was so much easier than maths ext2.
But just because of that MATHS EXT2 exam, I feel like I have failed this half-yearly miserably. It's been 2 days and I still see the questions floating on top of my head.

Q. How do you motivate yourself again?
Q. Also, do you konw that feeling when you thought the exam was easy but not too easy, and then your friend seems so confident and cocky about it? And he/she tells you that they've finished everything.. When I hear them saying these things, i feel so bad :/ So how to find my own pace?
Q. How was your half-yearlies? I'd like to know everything!

 

[turntaker]

Ext 2 will pay off. Dont give up and be consistent. No pain no gain

 

[klee98]

Absolutely dreadful...
Conics was a killer, had me starring at the paper for a full 30min.

I think its a good thing. You don't want your mid terms to be easy. Learn from the mistakes and make sure you give your absolute best in ur trials and so on. Well at least, that's what i tell myself.

 

[turntaker]

Absolutely dreadful...
Conics was a killer, had me starring at the paper for a full 30min.

I think its a good thing. You don't want your mid terms to be easy. Learn from the mistakes and make sure you give your absolute best in ur trials and so on. Well at least, that's what i tell myself.

what kind of conics questions did you get

 

[Ekman]

Absolutely dreadful...
Conics was a killer, had me starring at the paper for a full 30min.

I think its a good thing. You don't want your mid terms to be easy. Learn from the mistakes and make sure you give your absolute best in ur trials and so on. Well at least, that's what i tell myself.

In my opinion, complex number questions are still the harder types of questions in Ext 2. As long as you have a lot of practice, conics isn't as hard as you make it to be.

 

[Katsumi]

While the half yearlies are a topic of discussion i'd like to direct everyone to this thread in the "General Discussion of the 2014 HSC" section. It helped me tremendously motivation wise and lets you put things into perspective on the chance that you get a bad result.

 

[sida1049]

I'm doing all your subjects... plus two units of economics.

Our Extension 2 exam made me a nihilist.

Don't worry about it though, you don't need to excel or have even a 50%+ mark to get a decent ATAR contribution in the end. Chances are if you are struggling, then so is the rest of your year (and the rest of the state, for that matter). A couple years back the lower 30% of Extension 2 students had an ATAR equivalent for that subject of 98.

The biggest motivation you can have is simply realising that the HSC is quite arbitrary in the course of your life. It isn't the only path to your (university/life) goals.

Worry not about how other people go in their exams, if your friend found the exam relatively easy, good for her. But honestly I've found that the feeling of an exam's difficulty has little correlation with your marks. Nothing is certain until you get your exam back, and good luck! Don't stress too much about these things. Go out for a long walk! Strolls solves all problems in life*. Your friend may have seen the problems before in past papers, especially the HSC and trials papers from the previous year as many teachers use questions from those.

Our half-yearlies was alright. English was as expected... except the moment when we were allowed to open the paper; I flipped to section 2 to see the creative stimulus, and I was met with "refer to section 1 as stimulus". That sucked. Chemistry was fairly standard, it had a lot more calculations than anticipated. Extension 2 maths rekt us so bad ): While walking out of the examination hall, I looked into the eyes of my fellow student and we both reached a mutual understanding as we began laughing pathetically. The first thing our rank 2 for our first assessment said to me was "I failed". And mind you, this is a guy who did Preliminaries maths in Year 6 and has probably finished the Extension 2 course. We rekt Extension 1 like how Extension 2 rekt us. Physics was surprisingly dense, but borderline manageable, albeit I'm getting mixed signals from other students.

Anyway, don't feel too anxious about your MX2 mark! Out of all your subjects, MX2 is probably the one where you can set your standard 15-20% below what you aim for in other subjects.

*Except cancer. That probably won't work.

 

[joyster]

I'm doing all your subjects... plus two units of economics.

Our Extension 2 exam made me a nihilist.

Don't worry about it though, you don't need to excel or have even a 50%+ mark to get a decent ATAR contribution in the end. Chances are if you are struggling, then so is the rest of your year (and the rest of the state, for that matter). A couple years back the lower 30% of Extension 2 students had an ATAR equivalent for that subject of 98.

The biggest motivation you can have is simply realising that the HSC is quite arbitrary in the course of your life. It isn't the only path to your (university/life) goals.

Worry not about how other people go in their exams, if your friend found the exam relatively easy, good for her. But honestly I've found that the feeling of an exam's difficulty has little correlation with your marks. Nothing is certain until you get your exam back, and good luck! Don't stress too much about these things. Go out for a long walk! Strolls solves all problems in life*. Your friend may have seen the problems before in past papers, especially the HSC and trials papers from the previous year as many teachers use questions from those.

Our half-yearlies was alright. English was as expected... except the moment when we were allowed to open the paper; I flipped to section 2 to see the creative stimulus, and I was met with "refer to section 1 as stimulus". That sucked. Chemistry was fairly standard, it had a lot more calculations than anticipated. Extension 2 maths rekt us so bad ): While walking out of the examination hall, I looked into the eyes of my fellow student and we both reached a mutual understanding as we began laughing pathetically. The first thing our rank 2 for our first assessment said to me was "I failed". And mind you, this is a guy who did Preliminaries maths in Year 6 and has probably finished the Extension 2 course. We rekt Extension 1 like how Extension 2 rekt us. Physics was surprisingly dense, but borderline manageable, albeit I'm getting mixed signals from other students.

Anyway, don't feel too anxious about your MX2 mark! Out of all your subjects, MX2 is probably the one where you can set your standard 15-20% below what you aim for in other subjects.

*Except cancer. That probably won't work.

HAHA!! Thanks man sorry for late reply though
Well it turns out that my extension 2 was by far the worst out of all my other subjects, but still managed to get 60% and i find this quite good (considering the fact that i made sooo many silly mistakes!)
I was lucky enough to do well on english and chemistry, got ranked 1 in chem omg

looking back on my marks, as long as my ranks are alright (and im assuming top 10 for everything.. except maths ext2!) i think i'll be okay
how did you go?

 

[dan964]

60% is fine. I just missed out on getting a band 6 in Maths X2, getting 60% (that said the hsc exam I did well, but so did the a good portion of the state)
Aim for 65-70% and make sure you prep. well for the HSC.

 

[sida1049]

HAHA!! Thanks man sorry for late reply though
Well it turns out that my extension 2 was by far the worst out of all my other subjects, but still managed to get 60% and i find this quite good (considering the fact that i made sooo many silly mistakes!)
I was lucky enough to do well on english and chemistry, got ranked 1 in chem omg

looking back on my marks, as long as my ranks are alright (and im assuming top 10 for everything.. except maths ext2!) i think i'll be okay
how did you go?

The half-yearlies for me was alright. Top mark for Ext. 2 was 92%, followed by 90%, and a third place of 76% which I managed. Yup, the disparity was ridiculous. We only have one class and the lowest mark was 20%. Most people got within the 50%-70% range (I go to a school ranked in the 90s). English, Physics, Ext. 1 Maths, Economics were all alright. I honestly thought Chemistry was the second easiest exam (finished with 40 minutes to spare and everything), but the marking criteria was ridiculous and I've only managed with 70% (and given the difficult marking, that's 5th).

Your results are quite good so you know, worry not. Woah, congratulations on the rank 1! I've only attained a rank 2 and two rank 3s for the half-yearlies (then a 4, 5 and something else anywhere between 5-15). Based on your results you've set yourself a great foundation for your HSC!

 

[joyster]

The half-yearlies for me was alright. Top mark for Ext. 2 was 92%, followed by 90%, and a third place of 76% which I managed. Yup, the disparity was ridiculous. We only have one class and the lowest mark was 20%. Most people got within the 50%-70% range (I go to a school ranked in the 90s). English, Physics, Ext. 1 Maths, Economics were all alright. I honestly thought Chemistry was the second easiest exam (finished with 40 minutes to spare and everything), but the marking criteria was ridiculous and I've only managed with 70% (and given the difficult marking, that's 5th).

Your results are quite good so you know, worry not. Woah, congratulations on the rank 1! I've only attained a rank 2 and two rank 3s for the half-yearlies (then a 4, 5 and something else anywhere between 5-15). Based on your results you've set yourself a great foundation for your HSC!

I'm getting my report back tomorrow! Can't wait to get them back.
You did well on your ext 2 congratulations! and I totally understand how you feel with your chemistry, i've had the same issue with my physics assessment a few months ago but if teacher marked harshly then its likely that the ranks are spaced out pretty evenly (like everyone wouldve gotten bad marks) its ranking that matters not your mark! 5th in the school ranked in 90s is good
I'm busy trying to boost my ranks for english though i'm not sure where I am just yet, assuming 2-5st but oh well its never late to try!

Good luck on your remaining HSC journey

 

[joyster]

60% is fine. I just missed out on getting a band 6 in Maths X2, getting 60% (that said the hsc exam I did well, but so did the a good portion of the state)
Aim for 65-70% and make sure you prep. well for the HSC.

How did you study for maths? Do you just have to put a lot of effort, because right now I'm focusing on english, physics and chem

 

[Kaido]

Hmm, right now, it seems like you're stressing over your work ethics and looking for alternatives. Tbh, if you can trust yourself to do a set amount of past papers every week under exam conditions, i think your problem should be easily solved. Be confident in your methods, i guess thats how i feel about the hsc year anyways

gl

 

[joyster]

Hmm, right now, it seems like you're stressing over your work ethics and looking for alternatives. Tbh, if you can trust yourself to do a set amount of past papers every week under exam conditions, i think your problem should be easily solved. Be confident in your methods, i guess thats how i feel about the hsc year anyways

gl

thank you