#4 Angel

“When I – learnt it was like specialised around science that kind of caught my attention because in primary, like in my old school science is my favourite subject, it was like the subject I really excelled in. And I just love biology and chemistry so I was just like I really want to come to school for the science and I – when I was younger I already kind of decided what I wanted to do which has change, well I’ve got different options now. But it was veterinary science so I was just oh if I get into this school it could help me more and help me understand more about the concepts behind science and stuff. So that really, that’s kind of what made me want to try harder to get into the school, yeah…

Biology, since primary – my year 6, my year 5/6 teacher she introduced biology to me and I fell in love with it. I was like the kid in the class that knew everything we were learning about biology and I still love it, I love how life came about and about what’s under the microscope and what we can do with the knowledge we have of our biology and it’s just really fascinating about what’s inside us and what we as humans can do with our body. Yeah it’s just really fascinating for me… 

In chemistry I’m in the 90’s which I’m really happy about so that would be my – one of the biggest successes this year in chemistry I’ve been doing really well…in chemistry I see myself as a high achiever, in physics not so much, maths I’m kind of in the middle, average, same with English … Issue studies I see myself as a high achiever. It depends on the subject for me really but overall I think I’m like an average achiever yeah… 

 Okay I guess but kind of like average, just kind of like finding my ground so it’s okay at the moment I guess academically for me. But I don’t know how to describe it though…

At the start it was weird for me to get average scores I guess but – so I used to be really sad and stuff about that but now I’m just kind of, I can’t cry over it because it’s too late, I have to move on, the least I could do is at least take on the feedback and do it better next time. So now I’m not as sad about getting a bad score because I’m just – if I’d made a mistake last time preparing for this exam or assessment I just need to fix that mistake and then I can get a better score and try harder…

 In my old school it was relatively easy, I found it easy to get the marks but here the expectations are a lot more higher and the marking is a lot more tougher so I had to adjust myself to meet those standards… 

I kinder of felt sad because I mean that – that I wasn’t maybe good enough for the school or I wasn’t good enough to achieve those grades and I kinder of, like I was unsure on how to achieve it; I don’t know how to improve myself and what I can do to get the grades, cause I was just like in my old school I gave 100% and that got me my grades but here I give my 100%, I only get, I don’t get those grades. So I was kind of unsure on how to put in extra work to achieve the grades…

The most failures I’ve had would probably be in maths, I struggled with maths in the first semester, I think it was because – I don’t know the different way they were teaching cause it was – in my old school we only had 30 kids, one teacher so you only had one, like the teacher would show you one way of teaching or their way of teaching. Here it’s like you got two different teachers so I think that kind of threw me off because I was just – oh I don’t know which method to use or how to do this so and also they introduced Mathematica so it’s like a maths software for us to use and that was different as well cause we had to learn how to use a whole new program and that was also a bit difficult cause we have to use that for our exams as well. So I struggled a little bit also with the workload but I’m good now, yeah but maths was probably my biggest failure in Semester 1.

Well I really hate maths at certain points because I just feel like maths is just really stupid…

I think the thing that made me anxious was tests because especially my first semester I didn’t get exceptional grades so I think tests just made me really anxious and I’d just be stressing over it like the week before I’d just be like really stressed and worried about it. And I’d be – I haven’t done enough, I haven’t done enough study for it and when I feel like I’ve done enough study and then when I get my tests back I’ll be like okay I didn’t do enough study. So they made – when a test came around I would feel really anxious about that but other than that nothing else…

At the start I wasn’t very confident but now I’m just like, I was just, I just needed to believe in myself and I could do it but yeah…

I think it’s – at the start I was scared about how good I was but – and adjusting to it, so it was like a lot of things going on at once but now it’s – I’ve settled down, I’m not as anxious I guess…

Pretty happy but a little stressed, yeah in especially at this time of the year, a little stressed…

I think it’s mainly because the – school’s different they have higher expectations and then I’ve got family and friends that have expectations for me but I think it’s like I have a high bar of – like standards for myself that I put for myself so it’s just sometimes I’m just like I really don’t want to reach those standards but I want to – I want to, I push myself to it and it gets a little stressful because I feel like I’m taking too much work at one time. Yeah like especially near the exam time where I just have all this stuff and I’m just trying to juggle school life and personal life I guess, yeah… 

My mum wants me to go into the research side of veterinary science; my dad kind of supports both ideas but he’s kind of yeah I want you to be an engineer like me. And when I was talking to my family, my cousins, they’re all just – oh we thought we’d expect you to be an engineer because your dad’s an engineer and you seem to like engineering. I’m like – oh I never realised that’s what other people thought of me…”