Re: Teach myself Chemistry?
Who do you have? Are the physics/chem/maths teachers any good at our school for year 11/12?
I had Mrs. Ford for first half of Year 11, Food Science graduate from UWS, absolutely terrible, even Mr. Schomberg and Mr. Nugent agreed. Was replaced by Mrs. Kaur, I thought she was awesome the first few lessons but that was only relative to Mrs. Ford, I don't believe she understands some of the concepts behind Chemistry. Her accent kinda gets annoying too.
Ms. Ng was a former HSC Physics marker, she'll teach you everything you need to know for the HSC but if you ask her anything beyond the syllabus she won't have a clue. Her teaching methods are alright I guess but I'm personally not a fan, instead of writing in exercise books she prepares concise booklets with info and questions. She can be patronising but I think that's just due to the maturity of our class (or lack thereof).
I don't have any experience with other science teachers, I had Mr. Nugent every year from 7 to 10 until he left last year.
As for maths teachers, our former Head Teacher was very good, PhD in mathematics, former uni lecturer, taught a couple of state rankers at Sydney Boys (I think) until coming to our school. Mr. Le is good too, he's good at teaching but he won't be able to do some of the harder questions in 4U (but to be fair, many teachers struggle), he can be patronising to dumber students (especially evident when you compare him teaching a 2U class vs. 3U vs. 4U).