5 Biggest things to avoid this HSC year

This is it. The HSC Year.

We’ve all heard the tales of what’s in store for us over the next 10 months: hours of cramming, dozens of all nighters, ludicrous amounts of caffeine and the list goes on. But often what people forget to mention is that the HSC year is bigger than the HSC itself. It’s a year stacked full of 18th's and ‘last time ever’s’, and is the most full on, fast-paced year of school; blink, and you’ll miss it.

This doesn't mean that there won’t be nights of worrying about your marks or you ATAR, but at the end of the day it’s how you approach it that will make or break your final schooling year.

So without further ado, we’ve thrown together a list of the five things you should definitely avoid doing in order to make this hectic ride ahead a little easier and more enjoyable:

1. Don’t go it alone.

Going it alone is probably the worst mistake you can make this year. And I mean going it alone in all its forms.

You have a whole year group who are in this together; feeling all the same emotions you’re probably feeling, as well as your family and teachers who are there to help you out. Deciding to ride this HSC roller coaster solo means that you’ll not only miss out on sharing those ups downs with your friends, but you'll also miss the opportunity to build an incredibly useful support network, which trust me comes in handy every once in awhile.

Having a support network is not only good for emotional support, but it also means that you can have great chats with your friends about certain content areas or ideas, which is actually one of the best ways to: finish your study of a particular topic, learn new ways of thinking about or memorising something, and is such a great way to find the major gaps in your own understanding.

In a way you should consider everyone as a mentor for any subject. Emailing your teacher to read a practice essay may be a reassuring and reliable way of getting feedback, but you shouldn’t see them as the only one with the power of track-changes. Instead, get a group of mates together and arrange to do a regular swap of responses, proofread each other’s work and give each other some constructive criticism. Not only will you learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll also be able to improve your own response before sending it to your teacher, meaning that the final result will be even better.

Listen, as corny as this sounds you’re all in this together and as competitive as the HSC might feel, going it alone will only cause you to fall behind.

Use each other and work together - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

2. Don’t put your life on hold.

It’s Year 12. Unless you’re some prodigious fifteen-year-old baller, you’re most likely 17 or 18 years old. These are among the best days of your life and you’re not getting them back. Something you have to understand is that there’s a time for work but there’s also a time for play. Any great thinker you know of took time off – Bill Gates holidayed in Napa, Steve Jobs took a pilgrimage to India. The list goes on.

You absolutely can’t let yourself get swamped by a ‘study at all costs’ mentality, it simply doesn’t work. Hopefully as we take you through your Year 12 journey with our videos, you’ll get to see the value and method of working smarter not just harder.

This gives you plenty of time to do things for yourself. Things like playing sport and taking road trips with your mates. Getting to do things for yourself will not only keep the stress down, and the fun high, but often, it’ll help you approach your study in a deeper, more focused way.

A lot of people fail to realise a really important fact: just like you have a physical health, you also have a mental health. For a lot of us, there’ll be a point of time this year where we might feel like our future is crumbling around us, and our dream life will never become a reality. Taking a step back, going out and socialising and letting people know how you’re going are a few super important parts of a successful HSC Year.

So as important as a good ATAR may seem, your life certainly shouldn’t be consumed by these 6 or so exams that you’re going to be sitting in October. It’ll be a year of highs and lows so be aware of it and keep on top of it, but whatever you do, don’t put your life on hold!

After all, we wouldn’t want to burn out...

3. Don’t burn out.

If there’s a token image of burn out, it’s a cyclist smashing their way ahead of the chasing pack and suddenly…they hit the wall. A ten-minute lead evaporates almost instantly, and suddenly they’re alone on a mountain with a 100 kilometres left in the race.

It’s a lesson in pacing yourself like no other. In the end, you too can be ahead of the pack the whole year because you’re smashing session after session of intense study, but when push comes to shove and you want to kick it into a new gear for trials or the HSC you drop off and finish well behind because you’re tired and overworked.

So pace yourself and study smart not hard.

4. Don’t only study when you have an exam.

Studying only when you have an impending exam or assessment is putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. Kind of like tying your writing hand tied behind your back to sit an exam. Why would you do it?

Dominating any subject is like anything in life; it requires sustained and consistent practise. Athletes have a sports pre-season and so do you. Musicians practice their instruments even when they don’t have a performance coming up. The same should go for your exams!

The key problem with studying only at crunch time is that you’re not spending nearly enough time on each subject. Even if you cover the content, you’d be rushing through it without actually understanding it and gleaning over the smaller, more interesting material that really sets you apart.

On this point, the top, top students know the go: Have all the content done and summarised by the time exam periods roll around so you can cut out the cramming and focus on practise questions and having critical discussions in class. That’s when you truly understand a subject and can start to see the big marks come into play.

There’s a pro tip in it for you too: it’s a great habit to get into for uni where you’ll have less time to study and more content than you’ve ever experienced!

This brings us to our fifth and final rule:

5. Don’t rely solely on textbooks and past papers.

It’s amazing how many people get to uni and do maths and say “I never really knew what I was doing in high school, I wish I did!” Textbooks and past papers are hypnotising psychics in disguise. They trick you into thinking that true mastery of a subject comes from bulk questions alone, but it doesn’t.

For the seasoned blog readers out there, you may have noticed the implied theme in our blog. Basically real mastery of any subject in the HSC involves all form of study. Everything from the more traditional methods of taking notes and doing questions, to more modern and scientific approaches such as explaining concepts to your mates and using flash cards, which will actually help you understand the content better.

The problem with textbooks is that they are only somewhat useful as they only teach you the foundations and theory of a specific topic. There are plenty of creative ways to build on textbook content that’ll really help you apply what you’ve actually learnt. Textbooks are also not you’re only source of information. As much as we love to toot our own horn and encourage you to keep up to date with our videos as you maul through content.

It’s the same for past papers. If you stick only to the BOSTES past papers and their answer sheets, you’ll find yourself boxed in pretty quickly, confined to knowing the method to some types of questions but not really understanding how it links to the subject as a whole or the syllabus for that matter. This’ll only make it harder for you to hit your true potential and be ready to smash any question they could throw at you in an exam.

So if you keep these 5 things in mind as you head into your HSC year, you’ll be able to have an enjoyable and successful final year, without burning out.