It’s now the middle of May and I haven’t given you much of an update with my studies. I’ve managed to attend each class and disrupt the lessons on occasion but the teachers know how to get things back on track…I do try not to digress away from the topic too often but the mind being old and grey tends to wander far too much. Classes are good for this as the teachers bring everyone back to the topic at hand and I then need to focus my brain again so I’m learning how to get the little grey cells working for many hours longer than normal. When I’m at home I don’t need that kind of discipline as there are so many other things to do that I can always find an excuse to be distracted and leave the computer for a while. I believe the brain takes several minutes to refocus on a task after an interruption so being in classes all day is a good thing as I’m retraining my brain to be able to concentrate for much longer…excellent for a writer, actually excellent for life in general.
I’ve felt some solidarity with everyone doing their VCE this year, I’ve been sitting SACs as well without any special arrangements and have been doing reasonably well. I’m on track to get 60% in both classes at the end of the year.
English
English has not been a doddle as I’d hoped, I have been challenged to write longer and better. The feedback I’ve received ensures my marks are increasing. We’ve been marked for two SACs (School Assessed Coursework) and an oral presentation. My analysis piece got the credible mark of 14/20, my essay on Medea received the nice mark of 22/30 while my oral presentation was 16/20, watching those marks increase is a lovely thing. Those poor people, my oral was on the Benefits of Cosplay so I took in some things for show and tell. The other students have been talking on some rather thought provoking topics.
English Language
English Language is a totally different thing and I’m really struggling, we need to answer everything using metalanguage and I’m finding it really challenging to remember the concepts, the names of the concepts and then apply them. I’m going to keep working on this throughout the year but the SAC results I received last week showed I’m roughly on the right track as I got 60%! I did spend most of the week prior to the SACs studying English Language, I had two SACs on the same day (I felt like a real student) but I put much more time into English Language and it didn’t really show. Every class I’m in just proves me right in choosing the class, though, even the homework proves I made the right choice. I’m learning so much about the English Language, how the sentences are put together, why we choose the words we choose and how to read a piece of text properly to understand the message they’re really trying to get across.
The GAT
This is the General Achievement Test. Everyone who is doing any Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) or scored VCE VET (Vocational Educational Training) Units 3 and 4 study needs to sit the GAT. It’s a three hour exam on a range of subjects: written communication; mathematics, science and technology and; humanities, the arts and social sciences. If you want more than that you can look it up yourself, I regard it as a waste of time but some people support it and I can see their point. So, Wednesday 10th June you will not see me as I’ll be at CAE doing my GAT and not stressing about it as it doesn’t affect my scores.
About the classes
They’re far less regimented than in regular schools. CAE treat us like adults. There’s a lot of behaviour we’re allowed to get away with that wouldn’t be tolerated in a regular classroom, things like leaving for the toilet or to make a phone call or even just using the internet in class are all just ignored. If you need a five minute break you just quietly walk out, the teaching continues as if you haven’t moved. Sometimes the teacher will ask a student to google a word. An example from yesterday was orthophemism, any other school the teacher would have had a definition handy or come back the next week with it. I sit there and crochet when I’m not writing…I’m making a lot of scarfs. We’re allowed food and drink, so I have a cup of Peppermint Tea on my desk in my Nullus Anxietas cup. The risk of having chips is having one pinched by my English teacher.
Last but not least
While you’re reading about updates I’m going to slip in about my 6th anniversary competition from last month. I suddenly realised I hadn’t announced the winner. It was a tight run thing but Karen Carlisle won and I’ve now arranged her prize.