People say it is the hardest year of them all, they say that you will have no social life and be confined to the library and your office. Year 12, the year above all years, the one year your entire life has been leading up to. The year students hope that motivation will come and A grades will be plenty. Some students aim to just pass, so that the daily ritual of school, uniforms and classes will be over. For others the end of this 30 week teaching course, signifies not the end of an era, but the start of something great, something that will open more doors than it closes. The start of a 5 week exam revision period, for some, comes at the perfect time, one can relax, take break and de-stress, for others, myself included, the 5 weeks will be a time of study, sleep and extreme stress, leading up to the night before my exams. I guess I am being a bit dramatic, but I can honestly list a number of my peers in the same headspace and situation as me. Year 12 exams separate the losers from the winners, the kidders from the study nerds, and those who have put in effort all year as opposed to avoiders of work.
Planning out the next two months, I can see comparisons to a political election campaign. The hard work students like myself have put in all year, is the same as the period between elections, when a government, governs and the opposition tries to healthily scrutinse what they are doing. The extra hard work put in from the time an election is called up until the day of the election, is like the long hours of study that year 12 students around the country SHOULD be doing in the immediate future. Repeating the same political messages, is the same as revising subject material, both parties are trying to achieve a goal of success. The comes the day(s) of all days, and the pure hope and belief that you have done enough to gain/retain office or pass your exams to get that magical ATAR* score. If you do, then life is good and you now have 3 or 4 years of hard uni work to complete, just like 3 years of government, and if you fail, you must sit and watch others do what you failed to achieve.
There are support groups to help you achieve your goals, teachers, mentors and families do all they can to help stressed and freaked out year 12's, in much the same way that political parties help candidates campaign. They offer guidance and reassuring comments to help with motivation, and through good times and bad support us (in theory anyway) to become better. They say if you do not care about something, then it is not worth having
and I believe that is true, if people did not want to go in politics then they would not care if they were in opposition. Likewise if we did not care about our year 12 grades we would not be studying like mad people, but we do, and politicians care about being government, and so the world continues to turn. And just a bit of handy advice, the nest two months, be careful in Adelaide (and places inhabited by year 12's) because you might come across some highly scary and freaked out students willing to rip heads off at any moment, so Beware!
*ATAR stands for: Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, and is the primary way that school leavers in South Australia and the Northern Territory gain admission to university.
