With trials just about finished up for everyone, we wanted to discuss a very common obstacle that students tend to face around this time of year: the post-trials slump. Yes it’s a real thing! After (hopefully) working very hard in the lead-up to trials, and an intensive exam period, it’s very natural for students to want to take a small break from study and we completely understand the need for a week off. However, particularly later in the term, distractions are imminent and tend to take up space and time for students. If the week-long break turns into a second or third week, students will look back and realise that they’ve lost nearly an entire-term’s worth of study time before their HSC.

So – what do we need to ensure that we’re staying on track? As per usual, we can harness the HSC CoWorks Key Behaviours, and in particular – Grit.

Around this time, students tend to rely on motivation to get them through this critical period. But self-control and the ability to self-motivate yourself post-trials is significantly depleted. So, instead of turning to motivation, we need to turn to grit.

So – what is Grit? Grit refers to our level of resolve, resilience, and determination. Grit is sitting down, and just getting through the work – no matter what’s going on externally. This is of vital importance during this period, because unless someone scored 100% for every trial exam, there’s going to be something they need to work on. Grit is harnessing your passion, reminding yourself of your vision, and taking the necessary steps, no matter how difficult, to get there.

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What does Grit look like? Tasks that we align with Grit at HSC CoWorks are:

• Going through a past exam or test, isolating the topics you underperformed in.
• Working through exam marker feedback to re-write and improve your responses. Remember you will be re-visiting these texts and topics in the HSC.
• Starting from the back of an HSC paper (hardest to easiest)
• Revisiting topics from the start of the HSC year
• Teaching a friend around a topic you find challenging. As Albert Einstein put it “If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough”

With 50% of overall HSC marks still available, it’s imperative that we kick the post-trials slump out the door. Great assessment marks can still be brought down by poor exam results, and poor assessment marks can definitely be recovered by great exam results. What is required to put yourself in the best stead for the remaining 50%, is Grit. So, let’s get working!

For anyone interested, Angela Duckworth has delivered a fantastic ted-talk on Grit. You can find her talk here or below.