As if the transition from a junior in Year 10 to wading the foreign waters of Year 11 as a fresh senior wasn’t already daunting enough, that first stroke into the rip we call ‘HSC’ was nothing less than unsettling, anxiety-inducing, and every other synonym in between. BUT, just like every other mentor or elder peer you’ve probably spoken to, we made it! From countless swimming lessons with teachers and tutors, to the constant reassurance of those inflatable tubes - our peers - we learnt not just how to stay afloat during the 365 days of Year 12, but also how to swim with confidence and combat our exams as a team.
As someone who has just swum these waters and made it to shore in one piece, my name’s Nandini and I graduated from North Sydney Girls with the class of 2025, achieving a state rank 12th for English Advanced in my HSC. I’ve just started a Bachelor of Laws and Commerce at UNSW, the beginning of a 5 year dive through yet again, in a stream of unfamiliar waters. However, having recently learnt that swimming through such territory is far from undoable, I’m actually looking forward to this new journey and meeting everyone else embarking in the same boat as me.
Whether you’ve just begun Year 12 or are soon to reach that terrifying point in your life - that final year of early morning rushing to make first period on time - I assure you that these waves aren’t as unforgiving as they first appear. Yes, there were moments where the tides felt stronger than me and I thought I was going to submerge, especially when currents of expectations, assessments, and self-doubt pulled at my ankles. But, if there’s one key takeaway from my HSC voyage, it’s that resilience is only built stroke by stroke. All those instances you tell yourself, “I can’t do this,” I promise you, you can.
Lean on your crew. Trust your training. And when the water feels rough, remember how all these seniors before you have stood at the same point you’re at - hesitant at the shoreline, unsure of which way or how to swim - and still found themselves standing proudly by the sand at the end of it all.
The HSC isn’t about being the strongest swimmer and getting the highest ATAR amongst your mates. It’s a learning process. Learning how capable each and every one of you are of staying afloat, and surprising yourself of how much you can achieve in the span of a year. And then soon enough, just like myself, you’ll look back at these times not with fear, but with eternal pride.
So, to hopefully make you more comfortable with your own plunge, I’d love to share 4 of my most valuable lessons that helped immensely in navigating these waters.
WORK AS A TEAM!!
One of the biggest misconceptions around Year 12 and the HSC is this nasty thing we call ‘rank protection.’ All that pressure to stay ahead and be ranked above your peers, as well as gatekeeping all your work throughout the year. I won’t lie - that was me as well, especially during the first term of Year 12. There’s this underlying fear that helping others somehow lowers your own chance of success. But after similar guidance from elder mentors and graduates, our cohort realised that without making sure everyone else was staying afloat too, none of us would be able to swim as far, both mentally and physically. From sharing and workshopping ideas to just comparing feedback with each other, or even venting after an assessment is finally over, working collaboratively in the year doesn’t lower anyone’s chances of success, but actually strengthens it. In fact, some of my most notable improvements stemmed from conversations with friends who had noticed things that me, or sometimes even my teachers, didn’t, or from explaining a concept to someone else and realising I now understood it more deeply myself.
And the perhaps most unknown yet most powerful key to success in HSC is making sure the mark distribution in your cohort - between the top performing students and the lower ranked students- is as minimally spread as possible. In the HSC system, your internal ranking is tied to the performance of YOUR COHORT in the final exam. For example, if you are ranked 5th internally in Legal Studies, your external mark will correspond to the mark achieved by the student in your cohort who places 5th amongst you guys in the HSC exam- so essentially, you want to ensure all of you are comfortable with the content and exam in general!
So helping the people around you succeed, well, is generous, but also just strategic. When your entire cohort improves, everyone rises together. At the end of the day, the HSC isn’t meant to be a solo swim across the ocean. It’s far more manageable when you navigate the waters with your crew.
Create and Maintain a Study Schedule
Given the grievous workload throughout the year with your 5, 6, maybe even 7 subjects, not having a well-planned out study timetable is almost guaranteed to pull you underwater as you wonder what it is, keeping you from continuing to swim forward. The most efficient and easiest way to stay on top of your work is to create a to-do list, even if it’s just on the reminders app on your phone, or updating your calendar every time you receive a new due date. After learning from my mistake of trying to “just remember” everything, I quickly realised that the mental load of keeping track of every assessment, homework task, or even leisurely plans to take study breaks, only adds unnecessary stress. Once I started writing everything down and mapping out my week, it felt like I had finally put on a pair of goggles, as the water suddenly became much clearer.
That doesn’t mean everyday has to be perfectly structured, or that you need to follow your schedule with military precision. Life goes, assessments pile up, and sometimes you just need to float. The key is having a framework that keeps you slowly, but surely, drifting towards your goals. Even setting aside an hour or two between activities to revise a concept or start an assignment early can make a notable difference when exam periods arrive.
Maximise Feedback
Whether you’re pleased with a draft response, or feel as if your 2am brain cells barely scraped the word limit, getting your work reviewed will undoubtedly be your life jacket in a rip. Seeking a third party’s opinion on your work can reveal things you may never notice yourself given we’re all wired to notice and hence nitpick different things. For example, after staring at that same Mod B paragraph for hours, it becomes almost impossible to spot gaps in your analysis. But, that fresh set of eyes, whether it’s a teacher’s, tutor’s, or a peer’s, can often point you in the exact direction you need to swim next.
One of the most valuable habits I developed during HSC was actively asking for feedback rather than waiting for it. If I had a draft essay or even just a practice paragraph, I would try to run it past someone, and whether it was just a suggestion to strengthen a piece of evidence or that one argument is weaker than others, it still changes the way you approach the question for the better. Each comment became another stroke that helped me move forward.
Equally important, though, is what you do after receiving that feedback. It’s easy to read through comments, nod your head, then move on to the next task. But the real improvement comes from actually applying those suggestions. Rewrite the paragraph. Adjust your structure. Attempt the question again with the feedback in mind. Treat every comment as an opportunity to refine your technique, just like adjusting your stroke after a swimming coach points something out, ensuring you get the furthest distance in the shortest time.
Over time, you’ll begin to recognise patterns in feedback you receive, wherein, maybe you consistently need to analyse quotes more deeply, structure arguments more clearly, or manage your time better in exams. From here, you can target these weak points directly, turning these crevices into strengths. So, don’t be afraid to put your work out there, even when it feels unfinished or imperfect. In the long run, every piece of feedback is simply another personalised tool helping you stay afloat, and eventually swim stronger.
Study Under Timed Conditions
One of the biggest shocks I, and honestly everyone around me, faced during Year 12 wasn’t necessarily the difficulty of the questions, but the time pressure. You may know the content thoroughly, have memorised quotes, and understand concepts like the back of your hand, but when the clock is ticking and your pen is racing across the page, everything suddenly feels a lot more overwhelming and difficult.
How to fix this? One of the most useful things you can do during the year is practise under timed conditions, whether that’s an entire 3 hour trial paper, or just an hour of short answers. Treating practice responses like real exam situations trains not just your mind, but also your stamina. Just like swimming, it’s one thing to practise your strokes slowly at the edge of the pool, but it’s another to sustain them when you’re speeding across the water.
At first, timed practice can feel uncomfortable. You might struggle to finish essays, find that your ideas take longer to express than expected, or realise that without your notes on standby, your knowledge of the content isn’t as thorough as you might’ve thought it was. But that’s exactly the point. The more you train working within time limits, the more natural it becomes. Over time, it becomes muscle memory. You’ll develop a better sense of how long to spend planning, writing, and reviewing your responses.
Timed practice also helps you build confidence. Walking into the exam room becomes far less intimidating when you’ve already simulated that environment multiple times before. Instead of panicking when you see the clock, you’ll know exactly how to pace yourself and keep moving forward. Think of it as training for the final stretch of your swim. When the waves pick up and the shore still feels far away, the preparation you’ve put in beforehand is what keeps you moving. And, by the time your HSC exam is one sleep away, you won’t just be hoping you can finish in time. You’ll know that you can, achieving the best marks possible.
Conclusion
And before you know it, the exams that once felt like towering waves will begin to settle. You’ll hear “pens down” for the last time, walk out of the exam hall, and realise that the journey that once felt so overwhelming is now something you’ve just conquered.
Because, the HSC isn’t just a test of what you know. It’s a test of perseverance, discipline, and of learning how to keep moving forward even when the water feels rough. It’s about trusting your training, leaning on the people around you, and discovering you’re always more capable than you first believed. So, when the tide feels strong, remember you’re not facing it alone. Your teachers, your friends, your cohort; they’re all part of that same swimming team. Stroke by stroke, assessment by assessment, you’re always a step closer to shore.
And while the HSC may have once been the ocean we feared, it gradually became the water that taught us how to swim.
Together.
