Last week was mock end of year exams. This is a chance for us to sit the papers we are going to be doing at the end of the year in exam conditions. These run for the whole week and you only have to be there when you have an exam. I only had 3 subjects with exams and two were on the same day, so I only had to show up for 2 days, one being Monday and the other Wednesday. I was lucky enough to get a nice long 4 day weekend.

My first exam was on Monday afternoon and it was for Geography. We only had to do 2 papers, one for skills and the other for cultural processes. I spend most of the 2 hours allocated doing the skills paper thoroughly but didn’t even write my name on the second paper because I couldn’t be bothered writing lots, and I couldn’t remember anything because I didn’t do any study.

And on Wednesday I had one exam in the morning, which was Statistics, and another one in the afternoon, which was Physics. I hadn’t studied for either of them so I knew I wouldn’t do that well. The Stats papers were relatively straight forward, with the Probability paper being the most difficult of the three. In Physics, I was completely lost. I had no idea what I was doing and knew as soon as I looked through the papers I was screwed. I still tried to answer as many questions as I could in case I could fluke a grade.

Well today i got my results back from all my exams. For the Geography paper I did do, I got an Excellence for it, which was well above the expected Achieved/Merit I would have expected. In Stats, I managed to get once of each, an Achieved, Merit and Excellence for each of the papers. In Physics, I flat out failed! This is what you get when you do absolutely no study. Although I justify the lack of study for having other priorities, my reading log assignment which is due in a few days. I will try and study for the real exams and hopefully get good grades in those ones!

Today was the start of the mid year examinations. This is from Wednesday to Friday. I however only have exams today, which are Geography and Physics, so I have the other two days off meaning a four day weekend for me.

The Geography exam was pretty straight forward. There were two parts to it, general skills and natural processes. I think I was pretty sorted with them. Although in saying that, I did have difficulty trying to work out the map resource due to it being black and white and not very detailed. Also in the knowledge exam, two of the questions seemed to ask the exact same thing, except they wanted them answered in different ways (one written and one drawn.) I was going to write and draw about the same thing but I wasn’t sure if that is acceptable so I attempted to discuss something else, which probably ended up to be a bad idea.

The Physics exam was quite difficult. It was a practical where we had to write a comprehensive method of a pre-determined experiment. That was pretty simple, but then carrying out the experiment was a challenge. We had to make a pendulum that swings on a diagonal. Its too hard for me to explain what I mean but it was very hard to set up, and even harder to run. The data was average due because of the experiment. Doing the math on the raw results was simple but then when it came to discussing the experiment, I was blank.

Staying at school until 4:30pm is really strange, mainly because it is so deserted, as well as being dark (well in winter.) I’m pretty happy that both of my exams were on the same day to allow me to have an extra long 4 day weekend. Now it is time to relax after all that hard studying, or lack there of.

Despite yesterdays awful weather, both of the year 13 Geography classes went on a fieldtrip down to the beach. The purpose of this trip was to see human interference on coastal processes. This is important because the information we will collect and the things we will see will help us with an internal assessment later on in the term.

So anyway, when I woke up that morning, I could hear the rain hitting the roof of the house. I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for better weather because I would rather stay warm and dry than cold and wet. I was sure they wouldn’t cancel the trip so I went up school prepared, with pens, paper, lunch and a camera. As I got to school, the rain had settled, although it looked like it could start again at anytime. Regardless, down at the beach was going to be wet and icky.

Everyone got on the bus, and we were off on the trip. Our first stop was down to the Dunedin City Council where we would meet with a lady that will talk about Coastal Dunedin. Oddly, she was Australian and had only been here doing the job for 5 weeks, although she did seem to have a fair bit of knowledge. She talked and there was a slideshow on the projector, but I couldn’t see that. I did have a look and touch of some plants that are down there.

After that, we started heading down to the beach area. But before we went there, we stopped outside McDonalds for people to get (and eat) lunch. It was only quarter to 11 so it was a very early lunch. Me and my mates decided to walk down the road a little bit and get Burger King instead. I got a BK Chicken Value Meal. It was really good, much much better than anything McDonalds could offer.

Then it was time to go down to the beach. We went down the St Clair beach and walked along it. We looked at the water and what the beach looked like. Everyone took heaps of pictures so we could look at them and refer to them later on. During this walk, the weather was starting to get worse. It didn’t pour down, but it was starting to drizzle. We then got back into the bus and drove further along the beach. At this point, it was raining. The teacher decided that we would stay in the bus and not go outside and do what was originally planned.

Driving around for 2 hours was interesting but started to get boring. Then we got back to school and I went home. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the weather was bad, but at least we didn’t have to go out in the rain and get cold and wet. If it wasn’t raining, we would have been collecting data of the beach such as measurements, calculations, sketches and pictures of the beach, so I suppose we got of that work. The trip wasn’t that bad because it meant a day of school. I can’t wait for the next Geography fieldtrip later on in the year, we’re going to Queenstown!

Geography Beach Fieldtrip Photographs are at http://flickr.com/photos/yum9me/sets/72157605209611191/

Today exam week starts. I have one exam today which is an Internal Assessment for ICT. That is not going to be a problem because ICT is childs play and Databases are insanely simple, well at level 2 at least I get tomorrow off which I will be studying for the last 4 exams I have.

Wednesday I have Physics and Maths. Physics is going to be a challenge because we have such a crap teacher and am going to have to properly learn everything on my day off the day before the exam. Maths is going to be easy enough but will probably have to look over the stuff I got taught at the start of the year just to refresh my mind.

Thursday I have English which I will have do try. Its my worst subject and I’m going to struggle to get the credits i need for University Entrance but it will be worth it when I get it. Friday I have an integrated Physics test which is another Internal and no one has any idea what it’s about but I guess it will be a surprise when we get there.

I probably should have studied in the weekend but I was too lazy and put it off till the next day. Hopefully I’m not going to regret that choice after the exams. Not much I can do about it now anyway. Surfing the Internet + Watching Videos > School Work + Studying