General Thoughts: History Extension (2 Viewers)

[FlyingKanga]

5 hours after the exam and still no thread?! What were your thoughts?

 

[jerresaaa]

Q2 was better than Q1 imo
Anyone else finished HSC now?!!

 

[FlyingKanga]

Damnit mods why the formalities. D: Yeah I hated Q1 especially how they had 2 authors so I always had to do Connelly/Blah or say Source A and it felt really off.

 

[Ununoctium]

Instead of writing Donelly and whoever the other person was, I just wrote Donelly et al. or just said Source A. Eg. Donelly's et al. assertion...

Overall the exam was excellent. I took time to really answer the question, which compromised the length of my responses (8 pages Q1, 7.75 pages for Q2, or 1.3k each). But I think I provided good answers. Quite happy!

I got really tired by the end of the exam though; it was so humid, and the supervisors were cackling like witches in the background. Did they forget that Halloween was 2 days ago?

 

[FlyingKanga]

I was about to have a panic because I had a mindblank for a good 5 minutes but eventually got around to writing 9 and 8.5 pages. I feel like my introductions were really weak but my body paragraphs were good.

 

[Ununoctium]

Overall, v. happy with the his ext exam and the HSC exams in general. I predict poor aligning this year

 

[crowley926]

I liked Q1 and the Source fit really well with historians we went through in class so I was happy with that. Q2 was a bit annoying because I didn't really know about the social contexts of my historians as well as I did their sources and methodology so had to bs and twist a few of my ideas. Time got me though so I only ended up with about 7 pages each but hopefully that's good enough.

But yeah overall really happy about the exam especially since I didn't prepare as much as I should have.

 

[RecklessRick]

Overall, v. happy with the his ext exam and the HSC exams in general. I predict poor aligning this year

lol it's always awful

I hope it scales to 50 at the 100th for once, that would be a nice christmas present

 

[lastofus]

Very good exam! I wrote 9.5 pages for What is History? and 11 for the case study! Questions suited very well to what I had studied.

 

[FlyingKanga]

I'm looking at rawmarks.info and a 44 was aligned to 48 along with some others being aligned higher? But only by like 1 or 2

 

[Ununoctium]

lol it's always awful

I hope it scales to 50 at the 100th for once, that would be a nice christmas present

I somehow think your 69/50 score will get you to the 100th.

Very good exam! I wrote 9.5 pages for What is History? and 11 for the case study! Questions suited very well to what I had studied.

How many words would that be?? I physically cannot write over 2.5K words in two hours...


I've also heard it's more important to do well on the core section, for that determines the aligning on the option.

 

[Butterscotch]

Do the options align differently? If so, how does JFK align compared to others? Or is it difficult to judge?

 

[crowley926]

Do the options align differently? If so, how does JFK align compared to others? Or is it difficult to judge?

Idk but JFK is the most done case study so markers may be more critical towards those essays since there's more to judge against? I also know that within JFK, man/myth and public and private figure are looked at more harshly than the others

 

[RecklessRick]

I somehow think your 69/50 score will get you to the 100th.

haha you'd hope so

I've also heard it's more important to do well on the core section, for that determines the aligning on the option.

It does if you're doing anything other than JFK, Elizabeth and Appeasement from memory, since no other option has more than about 50 people doing it, so every person's results count. On an individual basis, if you're doing one of the larger candidature options, it matters relatively little how you personally did.

 

[Ununoctium]

Idk but JFK is the most done case study so markers may be more critical towards those essays since there's more to judge against? I also know that within JFK, man/myth and public and private figure are looked at more harshly than the others

No - all responses are marked to a common standard. They're never harsher in marking to a particular option.

 

[evasharman]

Not really sure how I went on the core - I thought the question suited Thucydides, Windschuttle etc. really well. I basically argued that a historian is not a neutral observer as they play an integral role in the construction of history, with pretty much the factors surrounding them/their purpose/audience etc. making complete "objectivity" a fallacy. Kind of wanted an ANZAC commemorative question TBH.
The shifting depiction perfectly suited Man and Myth - basically argued that as JFK's historical portrayal is clearly a reflection of the various social Zeitgeists, (e.g. Hersh post-Clinton presidency being questioning of the administration, immediacy of assassination > Camelot) and thus a change over time is obvs core to his evolving perception!!! #verynicequestion
Overall a nice way to finish the HSC, I was not as well prepared as I should have been but I think it was quite a solid paper.

 

[HecticSandWitch]

Not really sure how I went on the core - I thought the question suited Thucydides, Windschuttle etc. really well. I basically argued that a historian is not a neutral observer as they play an integral role in the construction of history, with pretty much the factors surrounding them/their purpose/audience etc. making complete "objectivity" a fallacy. Kind of wanted an ANZAC commemorative question TBH.
The shifting depiction perfectly suited Man and Myth - basically argued that as JFK's historical portrayal is clearly a reflection of the various social Zeitgeists, (e.g. Hersh post-Clinton presidency being questioning of the administration, immediacy of assassination > Camelot) and thus a change over time is obvs core to his evolving perception!!! #verynicequestion
Overall a nice way to finish the HSC, I was not as well prepared as I should have been but I think it was quite a solid paper.

Wow what was the question for part 1? That sounds an awful lot like my major work question before I dropped it, in which case I may well have made a very big mistake ahahaha.

 

[lastofus]

I somehow think your 69/50 score will get you to the 100th.



How many words would that be?? I physically cannot write over 2.5K words in two hours...


I've also heard it's more important to do well on the core section, for that determines the aligning on the option.

Well my writing isn't small but not very big. I would say ~1300 for What is History? and probably ~1450 for the Case Study. I started with the Case Study since I memorised an essay that fit perfectly with the question. With the core section, I had to briefly analyse the source, and think about the question in more depth (I did have a scaffold/essay in mind but made sure it fit with the question). The idea of objectivity and neutrality in history is relatively simple, and I quite enjoyed both questions. And yes, I know it's more important to do well on the core section. But I made sure what I wrote for both sections was both quality and quantity. My teacher made our class do a tonne of essays, and marked each of them (as she marks History Extension for the HSC). Also, my case study essays were always around 100-150 words longer.

 

[FlyingKanga]

Not really sure how I went on the core - I thought the question suited Thucydides, Windschuttle etc. really well. I basically argued that a historian is not a neutral observer as they play an integral role in the construction of history, with pretty much the factors surrounding them/their purpose/audience etc. making complete "objectivity" a fallacy. Kind of wanted an ANZAC commemorative question TBH.
The shifting depiction perfectly suited Man and Myth - basically argued that as JFK's historical portrayal is clearly a reflection of the various social Zeitgeists, (e.g. Hersh post-Clinton presidency being questioning of the administration, immediacy of assassination > Camelot) and thus a change over time is obvs core to his evolving perception!!! #verynicequestion
Overall a nice way to finish the HSC, I was not as well prepared as I should have been but I think it was quite a solid paper.

..my essay feels like shit now. What rank were you?

 

[Ununoctium]

Not really sure how I went on the core - I thought the question suited Thucydides, Windschuttle etc. really well. I basically argued that a historian is not a neutral observer as they play an integral role in the construction of history, with pretty much the factors surrounding them/their purpose/audience etc. making complete "objectivity" a fallacy. Kind of wanted an ANZAC commemorative question TBH.
The shifting depiction perfectly suited Man and Myth - basically argued that as JFK's historical portrayal is clearly a reflection of the various social Zeitgeists, (e.g. Hersh post-Clinton presidency being questioning of the administration, immediacy of assassination > Camelot) and thus a change over time is obvs core to his evolving perception!!! #verynicequestion
Overall a nice way to finish the HSC, I was not as well prepared as I should have been but I think it was quite a solid paper.

I was relieved they didn't put in an ANZAC question, because literally everybody was predicting that they'd do it. If they did do a ANZAC question, it would have been something like how has history been used and abused...

I did Herodotus, Bede, Elton, Jenkins, Schama, Kapur and Fitzsimons for Part 1, and how their subjective ideology, contexts and social zeitgeists encapsulate their histories (as the source asserted). I argued that to a minimal extent can history be objective and neutral, even in the case of empirical histories, since history is ultimately an expression of the historian's values and, as Source A highlighted, can be influenced by the societal elite (eg. Herodotus and the aristocratic men).

For Elizabeth, I argued along the same lines as Part 1, but made the focus of my response about changing society, and its impact on the historian. Although I also talked about the role of the historian as well, since society, the historian and the past share an interdependent relationship when developing history. I discussed Camden, Aiken + Lingard (Victorians), Neale, Elton, Schama, Kapur + Potter very briefly (from Orlando, and Elizabeth's portrayal by Quentin Crisp). Yeah, just mainly focusing on how history is contextualised (eg. emergence of feminism in late 20th century, patriarchal context, Jacobean era blah blah...)

Again, the exam was good - juuuust wish I could have written 1 more page for each essay, and that my pen didn't run out half way through, but yeah, a good paper.