Hi everyone,
This is my first time creating my own thread, might as well start in year 12.
I have a few unanswered questions that i would love answered.
- How much effect does the school you go to have on your atar?
- How do you keep youself motivated through year 12? I am having a hard time keeping focus sometimes and i feel like just giving up. Sometimes its only the stress of failing that gets me through.
- How beneficial is it to follow a timetable rather than making a list of what to do?
- Would you recommend to make my own summaries, use someone elses or mixture of both?
This is some of my personal experience with your questions (you may have a different one).
2. Generally having a clearly defined goal, can be a way to motivate yourself. I believe this is more effective if you're goal is not necessarily to achieve X ATAR, but perhaps X ATAR for Y course (as the drive attached to the course will likely be greater than the drive for the ATAR). Furthermore, you could perhaps see the HSC as the last bit of high school, and wouldn't you like to finish with a BANG? You've done 12 years of school, so now is not the time to give up in your last year where it counts towards your ATAR. Additionally, enjoying your subjects can dramatically improve your motivation in that subject. This can be difficult to find/cultivate but it is well worth it, and I personally began to like different subjects by understanding why we do it (it's purpose), the use in the real world (practicalities - both for others and how I would use it), and perhaps it's beauty "Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” - Richard Feynman. Finally, I personally found that if I've been working tirelessly and haven't had some sort of break or outlet, I will begin t feel tired, drained and demotivated. Thus, depending on the period when you are feeling demotivated, it could be good to have a break with the purpose of relaxing and having fun.
3. Personally, I used a timetable to structure my study, this generally ensured that I was doing weekly study for each subject and that they had a certain amount of time dedicated to each (rather than overloading one subject - however, some of my subjects did have more allocated time to them, either because I wanted to do well particularly in that subject, enjoyed it, it was more difficult etc.). Though I generally had an idea (or perhaps a mental to do list - and tried to keep a physical one) for each subject, so when I had the time for my study I would try and complete what was on the list. However, the timetable I saw as a "recommendation", if I was struggling with a particular topic in a subject, I would more than happily sacrifice time on other subjects that I wasn't struggling with, else the timetable would become a restrictive device rather than a productive tool.
4. Make your own summaries, however they should be a compilation of others (preferably those who have great notes and generally did well; a good set of notes for science are
jazz519 and other great notes can be found by browsing the notes section on the bored of studies forum, briefly looking these seem to be credible notes,
helloimyellow). I personally did not necessarily read their notes look away and then write from memory in my own words what they said (some teachers recommended this), but copied an amalgamation of notes and then (as there were of course slight discrepancies in information or wording) I would begin to combine them into one cohesive set of notes. NB: My notes were typed (digital).
Hope that helps
(don't forget this was what I found worked for me. You may personally find something that works better for you).
