Most schools and teachers will tell you you need one- the mystical study timetable, that will reportedly give you great grades, let you ace your exams, AND make sure you still have a life outside school! Probably, your school and teachers will give you advice on how to go about creating one of your very own; maybe they'll even give you samples from previous 'exemplar' students. However, most schools don't actually have a clue what they're talking about. So, here we go- a guide to making a study timetable in 7 easy steps.
Step One: Be realistic about what you're actually going to accomplish. There's no point writing in your timetable that you'll do homework from the time you get home until midnight if you know that there is just no way that's going to happen. If right now, you're only doing an hour of homework a week, and that only if you have to, maybe you should start lower. Like, you know, maybe aim to consistently do two hours of study a week, every week. Then you can change it later.
Step Two: Prioritise. In WA, we only need four subjects to get our ATAR. So if, like me, you're doing 6 subjects but you stupidly picked a subject that you suck at (I'm looking at you, physics)- why waste study time -that you don't really want to do anyway- on it? If you're only going to fail anyway (or just not do great at it) why bother? Focus on your four or five best subjects. Getting scores of, say, 80, 81, 76, 78, 82 and 80 might be more consistent, but it's still better to get scores of, say, 90, 85, 83, 87, 55, 57. Of course, you do have to do well enough in all your subjects to get the grade you need to pass, and thus, graduate. Graduating is important.
Step Three: Adjust your expectations. Remember how your teachers promised that, if you did this, you'd get great grades and ace your exams? Well, that can really swing either way- it depends on how low you set your standards! If all you're aiming for is a pass, I'd say getting 70% would count as 'aceing'. However, if, like me, you have insanely high standards, 80% is what you would term a 'disappointment' (depending on how I'm feeling, a fail, but don't worry, my friends generally yell at me until I stop whining.)
Step Four: Accept reality. Factor in time that you're going to spend doing shit all. It's much easier to just admit from the outset that, yes, even if you do have an essay due the next day, you're probably still going to spend an hour on facebook. At least if you know it's there you can plan around it.
Step Five: Write timetable. Put pretty pictures and inspiring quotes and random colours on it, if you want (I did. Well, I colour coded it, anyway.) Then put it somewhere you can see it (or several copies, all around the house, so that no matter where you go, you see it. It's an awesome way to try to self- guilt trip.)
Step Six: At some point... you're going to have to actually do some work. I know. It depresses me, too.
Step Seven: Be flexible about it. I mean, if you DO have a whole essay to write in one night, you should probably ditch some of the other subjects. Just for that night.
Additional Notes: Ok, so I've never tried this one, but it might be helpful if you need something out of a teacher/ the school admin. You know... like, "Please can you give me an extension, my study timetable says I can't make this deadline." I mean, even to me that sounds like the dumbest approach possible, but I bet it's worked at least once. If not... you should try it. For... science.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
This is why Australia is awesome
Australia is awesome. Why? Because we have beaches. Beaches that are made of awesome. So, my best friend and I spent four hours at the beach today, and came away with tan lines (well, I did, she tried her best to stay covered up because she burns even easier than I do) no sunburn and no dehydration. Also no hot guys, but, hey, we had a fun girly day. One of our guy friends was going to come along, but he pulled out.
I think one of the good things about Australia is the famous 'laid back' attitude.* I mean, I don't know about other cities, but around here in summer or spring or whatever it's totally normal to see people (well, mainly teenagers) walking around everywhere in bikinis or just boardies, even if they're nowhere near the beach anymore. Complete with beach hair, thongs (as in the shoes) and sunnies, of course. Like I said, I don't know about other cities, but I've always kind of had the idea that in most major cities, if you tried to walk through the middle of the CBD in just a pair of boardies or a bikini, you'd get quite a few weird looks.
And also this afternoon I had another driving lesson (manual) with my brother. I can now start his car without stalling, which I guess is an accomplishment... I'm fine with automatic cars, but unfortunately, I apparently need to know manual too.
* In my opinion though, at least some of it is less 'laid back' and more 'we're just lazy'.
I think one of the good things about Australia is the famous 'laid back' attitude.* I mean, I don't know about other cities, but around here in summer or spring or whatever it's totally normal to see people (well, mainly teenagers) walking around everywhere in bikinis or just boardies, even if they're nowhere near the beach anymore. Complete with beach hair, thongs (as in the shoes) and sunnies, of course. Like I said, I don't know about other cities, but I've always kind of had the idea that in most major cities, if you tried to walk through the middle of the CBD in just a pair of boardies or a bikini, you'd get quite a few weird looks.
And also this afternoon I had another driving lesson (manual) with my brother. I can now start his car without stalling, which I guess is an accomplishment... I'm fine with automatic cars, but unfortunately, I apparently need to know manual too.
* In my opinion though, at least some of it is less 'laid back' and more 'we're just lazy'.
Friday, October 1, 2010
How to deal with crazy teachers
Most crazy teachers, when you look at them closely, are really not that crazy. Unfortunately, that level is often impossible for students, at least, to find. Therefore, you're probably going to have to deal with them as is- which is going to require some specialised techniques.
The important thing is about communication, because, to be fair, they probably think that you're crazy as well. You need to stick to simple language and short sentences. This makes it much harder for what you're saying to be misunderstood or misinterpreted (although keep in mind that crazy teachers have been known to manage anyway, generally in ways other people never even dreamed of.).
Body language must be kept as open and unthreatening as possible. Imagine if you were constantly surrounded by loud, probably obnoxious people you don't really understand, how would you feel? And especially keep in mind that you should attempt to look as truthful and earnest as possible.
Lastly, what you're actually saying to them. Repetition is generally considered to be key in dealing with crazy teachers. They need to hear an idea expressed, in several different ways, before they will even begin to accept its reality. Also, if your content is something along the lines of "I need to skip your class to go to the zoo," it will probably need to be altered for the benefit of the crazy teacher. For example, phrasing it as "I'm representing the school to the general public, as part of a program studying the psychological similarities between humans and animals," may be more successful than "I'm going to the zoo." (no joke, my friends actually went on a psychology excursion to the zoo for that purpose. Or rather, that's what their teacher told the school- really, she just wanted to take them to the zoo. Gotta love that kind of crazy)
Furthermore, you will need to attempt to understand the mind of the crazy person. Don't worry- it's not as scary as you think it will be. They generally have one or two motives driving them- usually their subject is one of them. We have two especially crazy teachers at my school. One is crazy for her language. The other for his subject (geography, I'm pretty sure) and his school faction. Armed with the knowledge of what motivates your crazy teacher, you can manipulate their psyche. For example, instead of saying "my science teacher is taking us on an excursion to eat sushi as an end of year party thing" phrase it to a language teacher as "My teacher wants to help facilitate inter-racial understandings. We're going to develop cross-cultural bonds here!"
However, eventually, you are going to have to admit defeat. Some craziness simply can't be dealt with. You here have two options. Simply skip the class in question, or refuse to do the specified activity, or whatever. That's called wagging, though, don't do it. Or, you can do the far simpler option, and simply handball the whole issue to another teacher. Even if they can't make the crazy one see sense, they at least have the authority to let you do whatever it is you need to do.
And the last issue in dealing with crazy teachers? Yeah, sometimes, it is you, and the teacher you're calling crazy is completely rational and just trying to do their job while you, however, are being a shitthead. Which is it?
(Side note: we've apparently had FIVE fire alarms in the past two weeks. I haven't heard any of these. That's... encouraging.)
The important thing is about communication, because, to be fair, they probably think that you're crazy as well. You need to stick to simple language and short sentences. This makes it much harder for what you're saying to be misunderstood or misinterpreted (although keep in mind that crazy teachers have been known to manage anyway, generally in ways other people never even dreamed of.).
Body language must be kept as open and unthreatening as possible. Imagine if you were constantly surrounded by loud, probably obnoxious people you don't really understand, how would you feel? And especially keep in mind that you should attempt to look as truthful and earnest as possible.
Lastly, what you're actually saying to them. Repetition is generally considered to be key in dealing with crazy teachers. They need to hear an idea expressed, in several different ways, before they will even begin to accept its reality. Also, if your content is something along the lines of "I need to skip your class to go to the zoo," it will probably need to be altered for the benefit of the crazy teacher. For example, phrasing it as "I'm representing the school to the general public, as part of a program studying the psychological similarities between humans and animals," may be more successful than "I'm going to the zoo." (no joke, my friends actually went on a psychology excursion to the zoo for that purpose. Or rather, that's what their teacher told the school- really, she just wanted to take them to the zoo. Gotta love that kind of crazy)
Furthermore, you will need to attempt to understand the mind of the crazy person. Don't worry- it's not as scary as you think it will be. They generally have one or two motives driving them- usually their subject is one of them. We have two especially crazy teachers at my school. One is crazy for her language. The other for his subject (geography, I'm pretty sure) and his school faction. Armed with the knowledge of what motivates your crazy teacher, you can manipulate their psyche. For example, instead of saying "my science teacher is taking us on an excursion to eat sushi as an end of year party thing" phrase it to a language teacher as "My teacher wants to help facilitate inter-racial understandings. We're going to develop cross-cultural bonds here!"
However, eventually, you are going to have to admit defeat. Some craziness simply can't be dealt with. You here have two options. Simply skip the class in question, or refuse to do the specified activity, or whatever. That's called wagging, though, don't do it. Or, you can do the far simpler option, and simply handball the whole issue to another teacher. Even if they can't make the crazy one see sense, they at least have the authority to let you do whatever it is you need to do.
And the last issue in dealing with crazy teachers? Yeah, sometimes, it is you, and the teacher you're calling crazy is completely rational and just trying to do their job while you, however, are being a shitthead. Which is it?
(Side note: we've apparently had FIVE fire alarms in the past two weeks. I haven't heard any of these. That's... encouraging.)
Thursday, September 30, 2010
On playing the game (in essays)
High school, like a lot of things, is a sort of game. It has rules and umpires and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. However, you generally win a lot more often if you play by the rules and don't argue with the umpire. No, I'm not talking about cheating.
A few weeks back I got the results of an out of school essay competition that I and one other person from my school had entered. She was shortlisted; I wasn't; fair enough, I got over it and moved on. But then I started thinking about why. It's in a subject I'm good at; the essay was heavily edited by both me and my teacher. Now, ok, yes, it's possible it just wasn't as good as I thought it was, or else everyone else's was simply better. But the current theory between the three of us is that I maybe should have picked a different topic to write about. Why? Well, because I spent an entire paragraph criticising the whole idea of the organisation running the competition. Yeah, probably could have thought that through better.
Another story: the other day in lit we were discussing with our teacher (read: putting off work) one of her students from last year, who had failed the exam. The reason he failed was because he chose which question to answer in the exam solely on the basis of: "My teacher put this question in the exam to challenge me to prove her wrong. Quick! Prove her wrong!" (And, by the way, that question had previously been on exam papers and still is.) He devoted the whole essay to arguing about philosophical ideas and why they were wrong, rather than analysing how they appeared in the text. That made it just a little difficult for the marker to pass him, since he hadn't actually answered the question.
The basic moral of these stories is that while you can and will have your own opinions in high school... you probably shouldn't, at least when you're writing essays. Yes, even if the question asks for your opinion. Generally speaking, there's only two of three options of 'acceptable' opinions. This is just a case of 'give them what they want, and no one gets hurt'. No matter how damn awesomely you can write an essay about how the GFC was a conspiracy by space aliens and llamas, no one cares if what you were asked to do was discuss the effects of government policy on the recovery process (or something like that, I don't do economics so it was just the first thing I thought of... oddly.)
Now, to be fair, there are exceptions, and there are teachers who will let you get away with doing things like this. I'm lucky, in that, with most of my teachers, if I can give them a good enough reason why (even if it is crap and they know it, but they generally give bonus points for entertainment value so...) they'll let me change questions (although obviously not during in-class essays, but those are so broad, you don't really need to.) Case in point: the other day, discussing my research project with my history teacher, he said offhandedly, "Oh, and by the way, I don't really care if you go into the present, or whatever. Just so long as you make it interesting." And really, can you blame them? Thirty plus essays to read on the same general topic, of course they're going to want something different after a while- just don't piss them off.
Essentially: Give your teachers what they want, or you probably will fail.
(Side note: my best friend and I made our history teacher swear the other day. But in a good way.)
A few weeks back I got the results of an out of school essay competition that I and one other person from my school had entered. She was shortlisted; I wasn't; fair enough, I got over it and moved on. But then I started thinking about why. It's in a subject I'm good at; the essay was heavily edited by both me and my teacher. Now, ok, yes, it's possible it just wasn't as good as I thought it was, or else everyone else's was simply better. But the current theory between the three of us is that I maybe should have picked a different topic to write about. Why? Well, because I spent an entire paragraph criticising the whole idea of the organisation running the competition. Yeah, probably could have thought that through better.
Another story: the other day in lit we were discussing with our teacher (read: putting off work) one of her students from last year, who had failed the exam. The reason he failed was because he chose which question to answer in the exam solely on the basis of: "My teacher put this question in the exam to challenge me to prove her wrong. Quick! Prove her wrong!" (And, by the way, that question had previously been on exam papers and still is.) He devoted the whole essay to arguing about philosophical ideas and why they were wrong, rather than analysing how they appeared in the text. That made it just a little difficult for the marker to pass him, since he hadn't actually answered the question.
The basic moral of these stories is that while you can and will have your own opinions in high school... you probably shouldn't, at least when you're writing essays. Yes, even if the question asks for your opinion. Generally speaking, there's only two of three options of 'acceptable' opinions. This is just a case of 'give them what they want, and no one gets hurt'. No matter how damn awesomely you can write an essay about how the GFC was a conspiracy by space aliens and llamas, no one cares if what you were asked to do was discuss the effects of government policy on the recovery process (or something like that, I don't do economics so it was just the first thing I thought of... oddly.)
Now, to be fair, there are exceptions, and there are teachers who will let you get away with doing things like this. I'm lucky, in that, with most of my teachers, if I can give them a good enough reason why (even if it is crap and they know it, but they generally give bonus points for entertainment value so...) they'll let me change questions (although obviously not during in-class essays, but those are so broad, you don't really need to.) Case in point: the other day, discussing my research project with my history teacher, he said offhandedly, "Oh, and by the way, I don't really care if you go into the present, or whatever. Just so long as you make it interesting." And really, can you blame them? Thirty plus essays to read on the same general topic, of course they're going to want something different after a while- just don't piss them off.
Essentially: Give your teachers what they want, or you probably will fail.
(Side note: my best friend and I made our history teacher swear the other day. But in a good way.)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Introducing...
High school- a weird, kinda trippy mix of friends and study and -apparently, fire. I mean, given that we're in Australia and all, you'd expect that last one, which makes me (and everyone else in my school) wonder- who had the brilliant idea of having a fire alarm that no one can hear?
The other day: walking from my English Literature classroom across the whole school to the library, turn a corner and see the oval- swarming with students and teachers?
Me: "Uhh- miss? I, um... think we were meant to have evacuated. About ten minutes ago."
"Huh?"
Blank looks exchanged amongst us all. "So, um... 'bout that fire alarm." "Do you think we should maybe go over?"
Because you see, only about three classes had actually heard it. The rest had heard from people running into each classroom and yelling, "FIRE!" The building we'd been in still had about four classes in it.
I think the best part about this story is that my teacher (henceforth The Literary One) decided not to even both assembling with everyone else, just to skip it and keep going to the library, she cared that little.
But this isn't even the first time this has happened. Last year in the middle of summer, one of the science teachers came into my classroom and said, "You guys do know that you were meant to have evacuated about twenty minutes ago, right?"
Worst part of this? There was a fire both times. It wasn't even just a drill. To be fair, they were small and contained and very quickly put out, but all the same.
High school. Surviving it is sometimes harder than you'd think, which is saying something, since I'm pretty sure that most teenagers are having enough trouble just with your standard homework-exams-performances-friends-evilteachers mix.
Likewise, surviving Australia is... probably not as bad as most people think, but still at times a challenge. Like check out our dangerous animals.
Luckily, I have experience in both, and am here to provide... maybe not help, but at the least, commentary and funny stories, on surviving high school, Australia, part time jobs, and life in general.
The other day: walking from my English Literature classroom across the whole school to the library, turn a corner and see the oval- swarming with students and teachers?
Me: "Uhh- miss? I, um... think we were meant to have evacuated. About ten minutes ago."
"Huh?"
Blank looks exchanged amongst us all. "So, um... 'bout that fire alarm." "Do you think we should maybe go over?"
Because you see, only about three classes had actually heard it. The rest had heard from people running into each classroom and yelling, "FIRE!" The building we'd been in still had about four classes in it.
I think the best part about this story is that my teacher (henceforth The Literary One) decided not to even both assembling with everyone else, just to skip it and keep going to the library, she cared that little.
But this isn't even the first time this has happened. Last year in the middle of summer, one of the science teachers came into my classroom and said, "You guys do know that you were meant to have evacuated about twenty minutes ago, right?"
Worst part of this? There was a fire both times. It wasn't even just a drill. To be fair, they were small and contained and very quickly put out, but all the same.
High school. Surviving it is sometimes harder than you'd think, which is saying something, since I'm pretty sure that most teenagers are having enough trouble just with your standard homework-exams-performances-friends-evilteachers mix.
Likewise, surviving Australia is... probably not as bad as most people think, but still at times a challenge. Like check out our dangerous animals.
Luckily, I have experience in both, and am here to provide... maybe not help, but at the least, commentary and funny stories, on surviving high school, Australia, part time jobs, and life in general.
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