‘Am I f***ked?’ Students’ brutal response to first HSC English exam

The long wait is over. Year 12 students have broken the ice on their final exams, emerging with cramped wrists from the first HSC English paper of 2024. Here’s how it all went down.

Year 12 students across the state are breathing a sigh of relief after breaking the ice of their final exams, emerging with cramped wrists from the first HSC English exam of 2024.

Students at SCEGGS said the Advanced English paper was a marathon, with six stimuli included in the short answer section and several of those being long, written extracts.

Bella Stern said the exam was “very predictable but wordy” while Teagan Barrack was surprised to find the flow of the paper to be substantially different to past exams and other papers she had practised with.

Year 12 students sat for their HSC English exam today. Picture: David Swift

“Some of the themes were a little bit random, like smell and measurement, which I found a bit harder to engage directly with the broader theme of the human experience,” she said.

For classmate Ariane Moisidis the length of the extracts and organisation of questions rocked the exam strategy she had sat down with.

“Usually if there’s a long comparison at the end, worth six or eight marks ... I would get to the first part of the reading task and then spend whatever time I have left on the comparison,” she said.

“It being in the middle of the reading task ... threw me a little bit.”

Online, HSC students vented about being unable to finish the exam in its entirety, with some leaving part of the short answer section incomplete while others were cut off while still writing their essay.

“My conclusion was shocking,” one student grumbled.

“I didn’t even write a conclusion,” another replied.

“I only wrote an intro for the essay. Am I f***ked?” another said.

Experts say time management is key when answering several questions in an exam. Picture: David Swift

SCEGGS Head of English Jenny Bean said time management could prove a stumbling block for test-takers, despite the “accessibility” of the texts themselves.

“I think that we’ve certainly seen, over the last few years, an increase in the amount of reading,” she said.

“The challenge for students is that often you might need to read a text two or three times to really pick things up, and some of these texts are lengthy.”

English examinations will continue tomorrow as the almost 60,000 students in the standard and advanced courses return to the exam hall for paper two.

The second exam is even more rigorous than the first, requiring students to pen three separate extended responses - two essays and one creative work - within two hours.

Originally published as ‘Am I f***ked?’ Students’ brutal response to first HSC English exam