THINKING CLEARLY: James Sheahan Catholic High School students Nick Allan and Nick Abraham survived the first HSC exam. Photo: LUKE SCHYULER 1015exams010
DESPITE being thrown a curveball in the first Higher School Certificate (HSC) exam, students have come out in good spirits. This was the first year the first english paper was run in the afternoon, instead of starting at 9am.
James Sheahan Catholic High School year 12 coordinator Kerry Denney said she did not agree with the change.
“They’ve been stressing about it all morning,” she said.
The theme for the exam was belonging and interaction with people from different areas of the world.
Sheahan student Anthea Basha said she did not expect the essay question to include belonging in the context of both people and places.
“Usually it’s just one or the other,” she said.
Student Georgina Gregory said she was pleased with how she went, although she was concerned about her creative writing piece.
“I’ve written the same story since year 11 but this time it just didn’t work out. I wrote a terrible story,” she said.
Nick Abraham had a similar problem.
“My creative writing went off in three different tangents,” he said.
Nick wrote 46 pages of notes in the last three days, in preparation for the exam.
He is looking forward to getting paper two over and done with on Wednesday.
Nick Allan took it all in his stride.
“It was great,” he said.
The students agreed they felt less anxious about the rest of the HSC now they had the first one finished, however, they are all nursing very sore hands.
The paper consisted of three questions and the students had 40 minutes for each question.