VCE Post-COVID
Written by Chi Nguyen
A quick overview of how this 2021’s senior VCE students are feeling and thinking of school and their coming year. Interviews, hot tips, suggestions, strategies and more - this year’s awesome VCE students provide an insight into their schooling life, their thoughts on the future and reflection on VCE and senior school under online school during the pandemic. An exciting mix of COVID shenanigans and brutally honest reflections.
Wow, 2020 was sure a year to remember. With lockdowns, a raging global pandemic, and so many other events and issues that arose such as the recognition of racism, police brutality and corruption in America through the Black Lives Matter movement. Although we’ve (barely) made it through alive, we can always look to 2021 to (hopefully) a better year since no year can quite match the level of intensity of last year. For all of us, whether we were year sevens emerging into the confines of the big scary high school environment only to be suddenly thrashed into online school or stressed out senior school students completing their final years of high school through the complex and uninteresting online learning environment, we can certainly agree that school during lockdown was interesting to say the least.
With this year having a growing positive outlook (although some skepticism still is present with some people thinking that 2021 is just going to be a spillover of 2020), our approach to onsite learning at the University High School generally tends to be positive; it can be said that a larger proportion of students now actually look forward to going to school after the online schooling shenanigans. The general idea seems to be that the transition from online learning to being back onsite at school is super exciting for (most) students.
Even so, some of us might be wondering what it’s like for senior school students to have to come back to an entirely different learning environment in comparison to what they faced during 2020 in an online environment. How might the students be feeling about missing out on onsite learning in 2020? Do they think it could affect their performance or learning in 2021? Will they feel that the lockdown and COVID-19 has negatively impacted their potential performance for their ATAR and VCE outcome?
Let's take a quick look at how 2021’s VCE cohort is generally feeling about their final years and the impact of COVID-19 on their learning. Their genuine and candid feelings, thoughts and worries facing their final high school years are explored through various interviews of year 11 and year 12 students. Hope you enjoy reading their views, perspectives and stories!!!
For some students, the return to onsite learning and entrance to VCE studies has been particularly exciting and engaging for them. They’re excited to see their friends, finally be able to actually sit in a class with a tangible teacher showing them the content for class and be able to just not have to stare at a Zoom screen for a minimum 6 hours a day! VCE studies have been interesting for them and much more engaging as they finally get to study only the subjects that they love, enjoy and are good at doing. For some students like Filip Milosovski in year 11, the transition from year 10 to VCE has not much brought much change (apart from the obvious increased workload) and instead has provided a great opportunity to study the subjects that they enjoy and feel are relevant to them and their future studies and careers.
On the other hand, a lot of students are feeling nervous and a little bit anxious about their VCE studies with a range of concerns and worries. Oftentimes from my various interviews for this article, I’ve deciphered that most students are both excited about VCE studies whilst also having concerns, worries and anxious thoughts surrounding their schooling. It seems to be pretty widespread (at least in the population of students who I interviewed), so don’t worry if you find that you’re feeling worried about VCE - there are many students who are in the same boat as you! From my exhaustive research and interviews of students from the University High School, it’s been pretty evident and clear that students have some degree of feelings of uncertainty and nervousness surrounding VCE. These feelings aren’t just restricted to students who studied VCE during COVID-19 - even without any global pandemic, VCE studies seem to worry and stress out like 99.99% of VCE students. Perhaps maybe if you know someone who isn’t feeling nervous about their VCE, they’re a rarity and an anomaly of senior school students. VCE isn’t necessarily just about your ATAR or your academic achievement, it’s also a great opportunity to actually explore yourself and build your identity - knowing what subjects you like (and don’t like!), finding a fun and interesting future course or career plan, spending valuable times with your friends and family as well as so much more. VCE doesn’t just have to be 2 brutal years of stress, lack of sleep, studying and worrying - if you let it be, it can be the most memorable, fun and exciting years of your life.