She pulled out a random sheet. It was a practice essay question: “Evaluate the effectiveness of your time management during the HSC.”
Below that was . A whole other beast. Here, the notes weren’t frantic; they were surgical. Neat, color-coded diagrams of projectile motion. Integration by substitution steps so detailed they looked like a computer program. She remembered the absolute joy of finally understanding volumes of solids of revolution. The way a shape would just… click into being as she spun a curve around the x-axis. That joy felt like a foreign language now. hsc all notes
The rest she let fall—the volumes of revolution, the Hamlet essays, the PIP. They tumbled into the bin with a satisfying thump . She pulled out a random sheet
She’d aced the HSC. Not a perfect score, but good enough to get into her law degree. And now, two years later, she couldn't remember a single formula from MX1. She couldn’t recall the eight characteristics of a global citizen from Society & Culture. She had never once, in her life, needed to calculate the pH of a buffer solution. Here, the notes weren’t frantic; they were surgical
Her actual answer, written in pencil, was brutally honest: “Day 1: Made a 10-week study plan. Day 3: Watched an entire season of ‘The Office.’ Day 14: Cried because I forgot the formula for standard deviation. Effectiveness rating: 3/10. But I’m still here.”
The smell hit first—old paper, dried whiteboard marker, and the faint, desperate tang of instant coffee. On top was her binder. She flipped it open. Hamlet. The margins were a warzone of annotations. "To be or not to be: existential crisis OR procrastination on killing Claudius?" She’d written that at 2:17 AM, her handwriting deteriorating into a frantic scrawl. Next to it was a sticky note from her best friend, Liam: “Claudius = your ex-boyfriend. Hamlet = you. Revenge = an A-range essay. You got this.”