I'll be heading into Year 11 this year and really want to know if anyone has any advice they want to give on how to prepare myself for the HSC and how to best ensure success for the upcoming years? Any tips you'd like to give that maybe you didn't have given to you, or that you wish you could go back and tell yourself? What should Year 11s DO, or start doing?
Any words of advice from previous year 12 students about anything in general would be highly appreciated
So here is a whole bunch of misc. advice.
1) Don't go crazy out in Yr 11, you're stepping up a bit to save your best work for yr 12.
2) In yr 11, you should try as many subjects as possible and keep options open. The subject set you have in yr 12 (where you prune back and set your course of study) can be a real bonus or a lag to HSC goals.
3) Still keep up extracurriculars and you can still have a life. I was away for 5 weeks of the year in Year 12, I still had time to fit in a season of 30Rock despite this absence, as well as public speaking/debating/dance. There is PLENTY of time in the year if you pace and work smart, not harder.
4) On the smart and not harder point, some study tips I swear by.
*I hate timetables. I did goal based study. Little to do lists which made me do stuff faster/more efficiently than studying an hour for X subject. I used to have a few items on the list daily with an incentive to get them done i.e cross off three, take the dog for a walk and relax for a bit, watch episode of fav show etc. This works as although you can have big goals, that impulsive part of your brain can be hard to quell sometimes so this helps.
*Set goals, but set smaller goals to help you to the big goals along the way. I set assessment goals all year and it kept me on track to well exceed my target ATAR even though I didn't meet absolutely every one of the little goals along the way
5) This site is a great resource and I learnt alot from being around here.
6) Organisation is good. I loved the folder system, and even though it's slightly OCD, I swore by my wall planner over my study diary(which I still used for the to do lists and that). With the wall calendar I wouldn't lost track of things like assessments, college closing dates etc. And as OCD as it was, I had a specific highlighter colour for each of my subs so I knew exactly what assessment was X weeks away by colour glance and what my timetable was, what I had to do for a sub etc.
Another good thing was breaking my habit of lulling around after school. I set stayfocused to block my fave timewasting sites till after dinner for a bit, but the once I took it off I still kept up that habit of getting into my work once I got home instead of leaving it all till later.
7) Everyone is different so use yr 11 to experiment with what will work for you.
8) Enjoy snr school-there tends to be a lot of fun things on. Also Yr 11 is just the next logical step from Yr 10 as is Yr 12 from yr 11. Just a boring mundane step, not the bungee jump everyone makes it out to be.
What subjects are you doing for subject specific advice?
