Complaining about how cooked your HSC exam was is a sacred and hard-earned right of passage for every Year 12 student in NSW, and the students who just finished their maths exams are certainly on one.
The cranky kids took to social media on Monday to complain about the test for Mathematics being the hardest ever, much like the exam the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that… In fact, I even heard these exact complaints from the bereaved Mathematics cohort in my own graduating class (I myself was obviously a General Maths girlie).
“Maths advanced people, let’s have a chat because what was that?” one scandalised student said in a video on TikTok.
“I genuinely thought I walked into the Extension 1 test… NESA (NSW Education Standards Authority), what were you on when you wrote that?”
Similar sentiments were shared in the comments, with the poor students saying that nothing could have prepared them for how hard the exam was.
Another student uploaded a TikTok that said “absolute jail for whoever made that Maths Advanced exam”. And some just simply shared videos of people screaming.
So, was the exam actually heaps harder than usual?
According to maths tutor Jason Woo who spoke to Guardian Australia… not really. RIP.
Woo said there were a couple of questions that students might “not have been comfortable with” as they were only covered briefly during the year.
“That could have thrown some off,” he said.
“But the actual level of difficulty of the questions I think is very comparable to previous years.
“I think 2020 was the hardest paper, that was the first paper of the new syllabus. Then I think the others … have all been relatively similar, and they’re a bit easier.”
Imagine experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic and online-learning in 2020, only to be given a brand new syllabus with the hardest HSC questions for the next three years… rough.
Though I suppose at least only their final year of schooling was disrupted — post-pandemic students haven’t had a normal year of schooling in three years. I feel for you, kids.
Last week, Year 12 students were also fuming over the HSC English Exam, which they also found super hard.
Something tells me this isn’t the last time we’ll hear of these complaints.
In the meantime, good luck HSC kids! You can do it, and when you get to my crusty old age of 25, you won’t be able to believe you were even stressed about it! ❤️
