Thursday, 16th December 2021
Today was the last day of Year 9. And I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say that:
- It still hasn’t hit me that I’m going to be a year 10 student next year, and
- I still feel like I’m in year 8
Looking back at this academic year, I now realise how much I’ve grown, changed and flourished into a whole new person. From my grades to my classes, I’ve literally worked my butt off to achieve the results I wanted.
It was a difficult time for me during term 1, as I was giving so much of myself to my schooling activities, that I had no time to myself and became burnt out very easily. Although I pushed myself more and more to try and achieve the results I wanted in all my work and assessments, I still didn’t do my best, and I felt like I wasn’t giving or doing enough. I kept comparing myself and my abilities to the people around me, and this was evident every time we got our results back from our assessments, and my friends got higher marks than I had.
However, when Covid-19 hit again in Term 3, we were sent into lockdown for the second time and the second year in a row.
The first lockdown was quite catastrophic to say the least; there were more downs than ups, the workload was hella stressful, and I went through too many hardships to count.
The second lockdown, however, was so much better. I was finally able to breathe and take a break from the constant stress and push of school, and I was able to get back into the hobbies that made me happy such as reading (god, I read so much during lockdown), listening to music (my “drug” addiction), and styling new fits (I got very creative). I also started to become more confident in myself and my abilities, I prioritised myself and did LOTS of self care, and I began to balance different aspects of my life, such as my social relationships, my physical health and mental health. My school also became a lot more proactive in our learning and supported us as best as they could, giving us ample time to complete tasks and giving help if needed. While we had Microsoft teams meetings every lesson, it was much better than the techniques they had used during the first Covid-19 lockdown.
I was able to apply all the things I learnt and gained during the second lockdown into my “normal” routine/lifestyle as we transitioned back into normal school. There were a few hiccups, with feeling burnt out and feeling a bit “off”, as I stopped eating properly and feeling like things were just another chore to complete, but through the help of my friends and family, I was able to overcome these hardships.
As it’s my offical last day of being a Year 9 student, I want to wrap up by writing some things I want to incorporate into my academic lifestyle next year (2022).
- make a excel sheet for my assessment tasks and my marks
- this is to stay organised with my assessment tasks, and to keep a record of my marks and how well I’m doing/did throughout the year
- create document templates & presentation templates
- this is in order to keep my notes organised and aesthetic, as well as make my presentations interactive and easy to complete (good for subjects such as HSIE and DnT)
- consistently write goals and a plan/outline to follow for homework, tasks that need to be completed, and assessment tasks
- this is a method to help break my work down into manageable and completable chunks/tasks, which overall will help me complete the work in a less stressful manner
- start studying regularly + making routines to help me learn and understand concepts
- gotta get them good marks you know ;)… And actually understand concepts lmao
Thanks GHS for another year of scamming teachers (ehem Mr Bolton 🙄), questionable work (like legit, how many presentations do we actually need to do HSIE?? 😐), and straight A’s (I’m just too good like that 😌).
Anyway, here’s to the next 6 weeks of hopefully something other than scrolling on youtube all day. Goodbye school, hello boredom!