One month to go - Back to school + Working and being healthily stressed.
Welcome back! This week’s blog will feature some important tips for you to best utilise the last 2 weeks of school and how to deal with the one-month-to-go-panic.
Take the opportunity!
1. Take the opportunity to ask and revise!
This is the best time for you to clarify any problems or go over difficult concepts with your teacher. I brought all my challenging questions for help and asked my teacher to explain a specific problem for me. You’ll likely find your teacher to be an amazing resource and also an incredibly patient person (if you haven’t already)!
2. Take the opportunity to get your practice exams marked!
My Maths Methods teacher had experience as a VCAA examiner so I tried my best to get her to mark my exams for me as often as I could. Having your teacher marking your exams for you provides a fair and impartial assessment of your performance. Specifically, I put in a little request that my teacher would pay extra attention to my working out. This is because wrong/careless calculations can be fixed when you are careful but you might not be the best judge in a very important part of your score - a clear and concise answer.
3. Take the opportunity to do your practice exam at school!
As mentioned in my week 4 post, conditioning yourself to achieve better performance on the exam is a thing. This applies to the environment surrounding you and even the clothes you wear! (shocking!) In all seriousness, I strongly recommend doing your practice exam in the environment that you will likely be doing it in. For me it was the library and the VCE centre.
4. Take the opportunity to treasure your friendships!
This is not Methods-related but in my opinion it is also an essential item in your last-two-week pack. These two weeks are the last two weeks you’ll get to live the student life! You might be thinking “I can’t wait for it to be over” but trust me exams go by so fast and suddenly you’re no longer seeing each other every morning and laughing together during recess anymore. Treasure and enjoy your friendships!
Working and living with healthy stress
1. Not too much, not too little.
With one month to go, the stress is slowly setting in as part of the final sprint in your VCE marathon. Stress is inevitable and as you can see from the graph down below a healthy amount of stress will bring you the best results.
But how do you know what’s too little and what's too much?
I would like to introduce to you Anthony, Barton and Chelsea (thanks to Google random name generator) whose stress levels are respectively 0, 50, 100.
Anthony says “Whatever I still have 30 days to revise I’ll just chill for now”. Chelsea says “One month is definitely not enough I’m so going to fail this I NEED MORE TIME” and Barton says “I’m near the finishing line I am ready to put in my best effort.”
Anthony says “I’ll just do some random essays and practice exams and let everything be”. Chelsea says “I’m so stressed that I’m going to skip my meals and study at my desk all day. 4 hours of sleep is way too much.” Barton says “I’m going to be organised and responsible in revising for my exam.”
Barton has the mid level of stress and ends up performing the best in his exams without the consequences of unhealthy stress.
1. Make sure you drink heaps of water!
Water is the fuel to your body and most importantly your brain. I was given this advice by a tutor in year 12 and have built the habit of always carrying with me a water bottle and keep myself hydrated.
2. Make sure you get adequate sleep!
This is a very basic but CRUCIAL advice. In year 12 I was Chelsea for a while and regretted not having 7 hours of sleep so much. My memory was affected and I had to rely on coffee to get up in the morning. I wish I had taken care of myself, especially my sleep, better in year 12 and I hope you guys do the same!
Voila! That’s all we’re going to discuss today. I’ll see you next week!
Have a question?
In the final weeks before exams Helen will be hosting 2 Live Q&A sessions to help everyone get fully prepared for exams. If you have a question on how to best get prepared, have been stuck on an exam question or want to clarify an area of content send it through here, and Helen might answer it live!