Cassandra Sos

It is I, Cassandra Sos, ex-student, 2020 graduate from Bethlehem College, contacting you from THE OTHER SIDE.

The OTHER side, as I like to call it is life after high school. The past 13 years of your life has most likely comprised of going to school 5 days a week for 6 hours, and doing that over and over again, but what happens when you don’t have to anymore.

Well, you end up here. Having nothing to do, and nowhere to go, with the constant looming fear of your ATAR, now that doesn't sound too fun does it. All I can do as a senior citizen is provide my wisdom and knowledge....or at least that's what I like to call it.

Its Year 11 and 12 when things start to get serious, people you hadn’t heard of start topping the class, you have to start taking notes and considering your future pathways. To me year 11 and year 12 were very similar, now your probably thinking senior years are gruellingly hard and study, study, study 24/7 but my journey was very different.

For the most part of year 11 and 12 (other than the exam blocks at end of term) I went to work 2-3 times a week for 6-8 hours, hung out with friends on weekends and after school... and how could I forget: Homework. To be honest, only a small fraction of my time went to homework and that's something you can achieve too.

When I entered Year 11 I felt as though I had to change something in my self, as though to look for a driving motivation, some peoples motivation was a specific ATAR, a specific course and soon, personally, I didn't know what to do, so I started with small goals. The most effective of these small goals would be listening in class, I cannot stress enough how much just simply listening can help.

Now to listen doesn’t mean you will not be able to talk to your friends for the whole period, no, but it does mean you might have to take our earphones out and hear what the teacher has to say. Each teacher is different, just as each student is different, what I found was that if I didn't always understand the teachers I would bring my actual textbook into class with me, and the topic the teacher was talking about in class I would follow on in my textbook, therefore I could fill. in the gaps and see visuals/diagrams and examples within the textbook.

A typical Year 12 class for me would be sitting on a table with my friends, I had my workbook open and textbook open, I would write down what the teacher said, add some extra information from the textbook and maybe copy a diagram too. Hence when I went home I didn’t really need to write notes as they were already done for me.

During school is the perfect opportunity for you to actually write things down and ask questions as all the possible resources you need are around you, I found that listening is one great aspect but asking questions is even better, it really engages your mind and gets you passionate about the subject, as a result, you can go home and CHILL.

Don’t be concerned I didn’t do this every single lesson of my Year 11&12 journey, of course, I occasionally had my computer open just watching youtube and TASTY videos....just don’t do it every day, maybe.

So... I had written some haphazard notes in class, but when Trials came around the corner that was not enough, instead I became best friends with EDROLO. Hopefully, you all get the

opportunity to use it, basically its a website (you could say its like educational youtube) that has videos on every syllabus dot point. Pretty much every single person I know relied on EDROLO for their life; listening to these in class with and without teachers and at home. They are really great as it is a slideshow with educated professionals narrating and explaining the slides, it goes through all the basic knowledge of the syllabus, give you examples, diagrams and recent statistics.

Every few nights I’d go home and watch a couple of videos on 2 times speed and copy all of the info off the slides HANDWRITTEN as it helped me visualise and memorise things better, as well as preparing you for the 3 hour long exams you have to do. I’d go home and watch one subjects EDROLO videos for maybe a week or two and then switch to another subject as I found doing it in big blocks kept me focused as it was revising similar content every night for a week. These videos were very simple and easy to understand, I would even go ahead and watch videos

on Modules we hadn’t yet covered in class, therefore when I went into class I was able to grasp things quickly.

Now I realised I’ve been writing for too long so.... Trials are likely to stress you out the most, as it is. the first time you have a BIG exam and many of them together, but you also get to have a break from school during this period so you have PLENTYYY of time to study at home, then there's HSC.

The moment of your life you have been building up to for 13 years, the HSC is was actually not that stressful, it is basically a re-run of Trials, it is the EXACT same content, so if you revised for trials there really is no need to worry, you can use the exact same notes and read over them again.

The only difference between Trials and HSC is Trials is more of a: learning lots of content and compiling it into notes, whereas HSC is: using the same notes, doing extra practice questions on areas you didn’t do so well in Trials.

You have probably heard stories of people who did not leave the house for the whole HSC period, studied till 3 am and never went out on weekends. That was not me, but I am admittedly not the smartest person either. I have somehow managed to write a whole essay on ‘how you should listen in class so you have less homework to do at home’ but nevertheless, I hope some of the information I have given helps...

ADIOS :)

BEST resources I used for MY subjects:

Economics: EDROLO & Presentations on Google Drive

Chemistry: EDROLO & Text Book

Biology: EDROLO & Text Book

SOR: https://sites.google.com/syd.catholic.edu.au/sor-2020/home?authuser=0

Maths: Maths Textbook

English: Marking Criteria / Example Essays (you can find books with HSC essays on

texts you are studying in the school library)