I always see these success stories where they state "I wasn't smart, I just put in the hard work and dedication"and they took all the hard HSC subjects.
Hot take:
I think this is kinda bull, u really need to have some natural smartness to do well in hard subjects like physics, chem, ext math, etc. Some people even though they study like crazy for these subjects they just aren't gonna do well.
nah disagree with your take
for context i failed selective exam in victoria, was pretty much a straight B student with a couple As in some subjects when i moved to nsw (pretty much ist and japanese) for year 9, year 10 lockdown made stuff pretty easy so i managed to get mostly As but i certainly wasn’t like a good student or talented or whatever in any subject except maybe ist. then i moved schools again in year 11, managed to get into a half selective school (still as a non selective student, and a top 200 school so again nothing special really) coz year 10 was troll easy and nesa grades looked good. tbh i wasn’t doing well in year 11, i did study a lot but i was just kinda hitting a brick wall, for every subject but software i was getting C’s and B’s, but i kept going and my prelims were decent for most subjects although nothing special, got A’s in math (barely scraped) and software and english (i think they just boosted everyone’s nesa grades coz i never got an A in english), B in biology and C’s for physics and chem. spent even more time in year 12 and ended up doing well, went from barely passing year 10 maths in term 1 to band 6 in ext1 and 2, again i wouldn’t say i was really talented or smart it’s just that i spent literally all my time studying in hsc, whether it was healthy or not.
now i do agree that there’s probably some people online who went to a top 50 selective school, did chem bio physics ext 2 math and english and are probably really “naturally smart” as in they have always achieved really highly who are saying you can just work hard, but those people likely put in a lot of effort from early on in their life and were in a studious environment so it just seems like they’re smart now. i have to say that the earlier you put in the effort, the easier it will be, i kinda wish i went to a better school in year 7-9 especially (i went to a school that basically gets the equivalent of 1 band 6 a year) and year 9-10 too where i could’ve done stuff like accelerating if i took studies more seriously, or even just had more focus on schoolwork coz it would’ve made hsc much easier. so i think that hard work does supersede talent, its just a question of how much hard work is necessary, and if you’re starting the hard work in year 12 it might be impossible to do as well as people who’ve been doing the hard work for years
