#fuckin ib exams being on the same days

[aroaceofthesea]

At big band were bringing back the most iconic pieces weve played till now for the christmas concert im so exciteeeed

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

actually another point that really pisses me off with extracurriculars (also called ECs in this post) and ESPECIALLY the ECs while I was in uni, was the fact that nearly all of them required a distinction (75-84) average/high distinction (85-100) average to actually participate. like this counted for even general tutoring where youd suppose a credit average (65-74) should be enough in arts subjects at least lmao.

like the most irritating ones that required the distinction/high distinction averages were like “leadership” workshop presenters and even uni promoters who’d travel to schools around my district and sometimes further afield to talk about study or the uni. but the most infuriating thing with that is that they also looked at your ATAR- ie. your uni entrance score or what would be the equivalent to like the SAT score in the US/A levels in the UK or the IB score internationally. and the ATARs usually hd to be in like the 80 zone to do anything with tutoring or leadership/study workshops etc.

like my ATAR was low back in 2013 when I did my hsc- coming back as 38.25.... but I still managed to pull through undergrad with a credit average and get into my post grad diploma. but is that enough to talk at elevate study workshops? apparently not. apparently the only inspiring people for these study and leadership seminars are people that are loaded with money (usually bc most attended tutoring during school.... if I remember my elevate workshop from year 10 correctly) so that they could achieve great marks to get into uni and know how to maintain them while they were at uni. they have the resources to do serveral extracurricular things and even some community work to boot. in short, they had EVERYTHING to get them to uni.

for me, i found the above super hard to relate to in year 10. and hell, even now. like I didn’t have the home environment or a great chance of doing anything really (or at least that’s how my 17/18yo self viewed it from her depressed and anxious thoughts in 2013) at all during my hsc to get good marks in those final exams. like in year 10 in 2011 before the hsc, for the school certificate, i basically almost had to repeat bc i’d stopped handing in assessments. one of my friends actually had to save my ass for me by writing half of my english speech for me so that I didn’t fail and have to repeat the next year. all through year 10 i was threatened by teachers telling me that my (now defunct) school certificate wouldn’t be marked bc if I wrote by hand myself.

it was the same in years 11/12. but my teachers were so tired with fighting the board of studies for a laptop for me to use during my final exams, that they relied on the BOS to tell me that I’d got one. but the BOS never told me, so I went in without studying and believing that everyone around thought I was too fucking brainless to achieve anything above a 50 atar without studying. I did have a computer for my final exams though, but I didn’t know UNTIL THE FIRST DAY OF MY FIRST ENGLISH EXAM when my community and family studies (cafs) teacher FINALLY decided to tell me.

like after all of that bullshit, I came out with 38.25. I moped and cried and hated myself bc I didn’t get a good atar and had to go to business college instead. bc they were one of the places that didn’t judge on ATAR at all. I hauled my ass through my fucking advanced diploma of marketing and got into uni. I did over 600 pages of work in my AD, with my longest assignment being fucking 75 pages!!!! like y’all I wrote a whole (super poorly) written textbook in a fucking year!!!!! like how fuckin ridiculous is that?????!!!!

like yes. I struggled like fuck through undergrad... in fact I wanted to drop out halfway through second year bc I felt like I’d done my whole 3 years already. but I pushed on through that finally graduated in oct 2018. now I’m half way through my grad diploma. like yes during that i only did one extra curricular, which was attending toastmasters sporadically when I remembered/felt like going/or my class schedule permitted. I tried the blogging thing but never interviewed anyone bc i was too shy... I basically did the blogging thing bc IT WAS THE ONLY THING that didn’t require the atar/some uni grade average to do it. it was that or a multimedia newsroom assistant that didn’t need a grade average... other than some career programs. so I focussed on career building workshops instead. after all of that I came out with roughly a credit average according to my undergrad uni’s WAM calculator.... my wam was about 68.8 or something by the time I graduated.

but like. the whole time i was at uni I was met with the question “how did you even get in... if your atar WAS THAT LOW???? you couldn’t even get into the uni college with 38.25.” i constantly got that from careers advisors and stuff. and I had to say “well it was my advanced diploma that got me in bc it was a pass/fail course.”

like why isn’t that considered more “inspiring” as opposed to shitty, snobby kelvin or henrietta over here who got all straight A’s through school, did several sports and other ECs; did a fuck load of charity and community work, did the duke of Edinburgh award by working at a retirement home for a year as a conversation giver or whatever they’re called. like I find that so fucking unrelatable bc I didn’t have the time and money to do any of that. like yes my hsc marks were abysmal and so were most of my marks in junior school (but let’s not count math and PE for this post, considering i went into arts lmao)... like surely the stories of lower achieving students that get into uni and eventually pick themselves up off the floor to get some shit done are 10billion times more relatable than Goodie-Two-Shoes My Parents Are Loaded AF Sally™️ or My Parents Sent Me To Over-Priced Tutoring That Sometimes Did My Homework For Me But I Turned It In As I’d Done It Myself Jerry™️ that are both selected as presenters for these programs.

like fuck off with your “how did you even get here if your atar was so low and how are you even still here?” Janice in careers central. or elevate leaders conference. let lower achievers speak and have a chance to do some fucking extra curriculars that involve public speaking etc.... so that they can inspire and relate to the lower achieving kids to maybe attend and finish uni..... and come out on top of the stupid rich cunts like henrietta/sally/jerry/kelvin who are usually the ones who are more likely to drop out half the time.... because they realise that they’re just doing it to make the parents proud.... bc it turns out that it’s not what they ACTUALLY WANTED TO DO in the first place.

so yeah. I think more ECs at universities should be more accomodating to people in the lower mark ranks (like credit averages or people who got lower atars than the standard 70 for most courses)..... and especially the ones that are about “leadership” or “study” or whatever.... bc like i didn’t do my advanced diploma probs wouldn’t‘ve gone to uni until much later in life (i think anyway idk). and people should be kinder to others who got into uni via alternate pathways like a diploma from an outside institution and not be all snide like “how did you even get here if your academics were so low?” like learn to acknowledge that people have problems with getting high marks or will usually nowadays get hit with bad depression/anxiety in year 12 over marks and thus not achieve what they probs could have.

anyway there’s another academia/extra curriculars rant done lmao.