Invaluable advice
Invaluable advice for our High School students
At High School assembly, Arielle Melamed and Joshua Leslie (Class of 2023) shared their wellbeing and study advice with the students:
Having just graduated, we would like to share a few tips and tricks to navigate the year ahead, especially the Year 12s starting their HSC year.
In a world where tik tok or the NYT mini crossword are only a few clicks away, it’s safe to say that procrastination will be one of the greatest challenges you face when trying to be productive.
To stop it from derailing a study session, prevention is key. Do your best to study in an environment that’s free from distraction as much as possible. Maybe you focus better studying by yourself as opposed to with friends; maybe you need to leave your phone outside your room or you can go to your local library – taking yourself away from your bedroom, where you sleep, zone out and doom scroll, into the presence of other studying students really does motivate you to be productive. Try to find what works best for you.
That being said, there’ll come a time, or in our cases, many times, when your preventative measures fail, and you lose a day of study to frustrating procrastination. The key here is to learn how to forgive yourself and just accept that today wasn’t the most productive day. Go to bed early, and wake up the next morning ready to start fresh and ensure that one lost day doesn’t turn into two, or three lost days, or even general existential defeat.
Continuing on to what we think is a really underrated piece of advice: make to-do lists. Make many and constantly adjust. I (Arielle) personally had pages upon pages of scribbled to-do lists that I adjusted each day, especially if I didn’t achieve all I wanted to the day before.
Breaking down your tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks is incredibly helpful for:
- making them less overwhelming – you can start with a small task to get the ball rolling
- giving you a better overview of what you need to get done, so you can prioritise your tasks accordingly, and understand how much time you need to spend studying relative to seeing friends, or playing PS4. Each tick of the list is a small victory that will give you a boost of motivation and energy, allowing you to feel productive – have a mini celebration that ‘you got something done’ – and be productive again the next day.
Always be realistic when creating your to-do lists, but if something doesn’t go to plan and you don’t get everything done, don’t beat yourself up about it! Again, go to bed early, and start fresh the next day.
Another tip is to keep a balance of social life, hobbies and studies – not only because your ATAR is not the be all and end all (and does not define you), but because maintaining a social life and hobbies will actually help you perform better in the long run. Remember, the HSC process takes over a year – 365 days in which you need to pace yourself. Doing the things you enjoy and find fulfilling are needed to refuel your tank, give you the strength to overcome obstacles and ensure you don’t burn out before the HSC is over.
Our next piece of advice for you is to try and develop a good sleep schedule.
Now Josh and I didn’t always have the best sleep schedules, but I promise you, my sleep schedule was never healthier than the month before trials and the month before HSC, because I actively made the effort to fix it. I guarantee you, you need the eight hours, and you can’t just do it the night before…
Routines take time to develop, and sleep is never more important than during intense periods of memorisation and study.
Your ability to concentrate while studying, and memorise, is strengthened while you sleep – so if you’re trying to memorise 60 English quotes or five Modern History essays but you’re only getting five hours of sleep, your essays will go in one ear and out the other.
At Emanuel, the most important resource you have at your disposal is your teachers. In our experience, our teachers were always willing and enthusiastic to give advice, feedback, and of course, emotional support. Even if you get an underwhelming exam result, your teachers are the best people to help you learn from your mistakes. Don’t dwell on the result itself, rather use the feedback to move forward in a positive way.
And, very importantly, for English and the Humanities, send in at least one draft essay for each module or topic. The feedback is genuinely invaluable, and no one knows the weird guidelines of the NESA rubric like the teachers do.
That’s all from us! We know that not everyone studies in the same way, so we hope you took away a piece of advice that was specifically helpful to you.
If you’ve been sitting here this whole time thinking “I’ve heard it all before” – you probably have, but that’s because these methods really work. No matter what your HSC goals are, it’ll almost always include hard work. You got this.
Good luck!