Jan 11

It’s official – I’m out of ideas for posts this week. I have nothing to say that needs to be said, nothing that can be said that could be. Sure, I could be using one of the “backup” posts (things I have floating around in case of emergency), but I think it’s time for a break from the usual serious posts, (last week’s post was the exception to the rule), and time for a freshbytes fresh update…

So instead, I’ll just give you a rundown of what’s happening at freshbytes over the next few weeks.

As some of you may already know, I’m heading overseas for the next couple of weeks. During this time, I’ll be handing over the reins to my very capable (when he’s bothered to be) co-founder, Chris Jacques – which means you’ll still get your weekly dose of freshbytes-love.

As an added bonus, you might even see a post or two from me while I’m away, thanks to WordPress’ excellent publishing tools which allow me to publish a pre-written post on a specific date, at a specific time. Depending on how much writing I manage to get done before I fly out on Thursday.

Hopefully, Chris will provide you with some excellent posts in the traditional freshbytes fashion – either just before the stroke of midnight, or hastily written up and posted within 30 minutes. Otherwise, he might even break the trend and have some pre-mediated posts that are completely brilliant – but we’ll see. ;)

In case you missed it, freshbytes now integrates Facebook Connect. This means that you can sign into freshbytes without having to do the usual sign-up rigamarole – instead, just hit the “Login with Facebook” button on the top left hand corner, and BAM – any comments that you post on posts will automagically be published to your Facebook wall. For more info about this feature, hit this link.

Here at freshbytes, it’s been onwards and upwards ever since our launch back in Febuary of 2008. This is largely due to you, the reader, contributor, user, visitor – and we’d love to thank you for your continued support and everything that you’ve done – wether it be reading our posts, pimping freshbytes at other website, or whatever it is that you do that helps get freshbytes out there.
As a massive thank-you, we’re doing something special for our one-year birthday party – but you’ll have to wait to find out what. Fortunately for me, our birthday arrives just after I get back from overseas – so hopefully, everything should go as planned. The stage has already been set, and the balls have been put in motion – all that’s needed now is the green light from me, and we’re good to go.

Speaking of which – I’ll have plenty to talk about when I get back. Mainland Uni’s start sending out first-round offers for places this thursday, and while I won’t be here to recieve mine, it should also arrive by email or similar. I know I didn’t do well enough in the TCE results to warrant a first-round offer, though – so I’ll be hanging out for second round offers which are released a couple of days before I get back. My parents are pushing for me to accept engineering at UTAS (in case I’m not offered anything else) – but really, engineering just isn’t my thing.

As per our Google Analytics results – it’s been a moderate increase in growth this past month, we’re up 26% in terms of visits over last month. We’ll have to wait and see until the yearly results come out, though! Should make for some interesting reading… :D

Until I see you again, it’s comments below as usual… :)

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dec 28

I’m a little disappointed with my TCE results 2008. It’s entirely my fault, because I just managed to do really, really badly on my external exams, the mythical places where careers are made and extinguished…

In my case, the flames were pretty much put out permanently. Okay – so maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was ridiculously worse than I was expecting.

After having a bit of a mull-over for a couple of days/weeks/months (years, even) I’ve come to the realisation that your TER/ENTER/UAI (Tertiary Entrance Rank [SA, TAS, NT], Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank [Vic] Universities Admission Index [NSW]), while important to what courses you want to do at Uni, isn’t a definite sign of who you are, or what you want to be.

As a side note, Queensland also use something else, but it’s called the OP (Overall Position) and it’s really weird compared to the TER/ENTER/UAI. Instead of being a percentage-based score, the OP is a number from 1 to 25, where 1 is “You’re awesome at academics”, and 25 is “You’re not-so-awesome at academics”. Multiple inter- and intra- school scalings are taken into consideration, but in this blogger’s opinion, it Just Doesn’t WorkTM.

The TER isn’t a measure of how intelligent you are (that’s your IQ, folks), or how “street smart” you are. Far from it, it’s more a measure of how well you did compared to your peers. If you take that literally, it’s a measure of how you stack up against your fellow students – which is something that can be influenced by heaps and heaps of different factors like subject choices, aptitudes, and a whole lots of other stuff I won’t bother to name here.

I think my main cause of concern was that I wasn’t in the top 10% of the state. Yeah, that was probably it – NOT! I care not whether I was in the top 10% of the state or not. I’m heaps glad for those select few who are in the top 100, so congrats to Ellen and Elise, but really – that doesn’t matter.

I guess I’m just disappointed about my whole performance overall. I know I completely screwed up my exams, and that just really sucks!

If I tell you the truth (I do always try to), then I guess that arrogance played a part in this. Either I had the arrogance to think that I was going to do spectacularly in the exam (and I had reason to think so, with one B internally and the rest As), or I was just arrogant enough to think that I would do well without adequete study. Neither are particularly pleasant options, but hey, I guess that’s life…

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , ,

Dec 21

Bitter Disappointment should have been the title of this post, but since I used it up last week, I”m going for the more-neutral “TCE Results 2008″.

When the results arrived in the mail, I wasn’t planning on open them. I was far too scared to.

Anyway, I did, and the results were horrible! I was really, really not happy with my results.

With a TER of 88.9, I was 1.1 off what I needed. One point one!

After looking over the report, I realised that I had completely stuffed up my exams. Computer Science, in particular, was fairly horrible – I went from an EA (one B internally) to a maximum CA.

Thankfully, Maths Applied was just as expected. No nasty surprises here, and Physics was also better than expected (max CA).

Chemistry was just horrible as well – I managed to score a max SA. Yay! </sarcasm>

So, where to from here?

Well, my options are:

  • Repeat Year 12 (by doing Year 13). Obviously, this would suck the most. I love Calvin and all, (don’t get me wrong, Calvin is awesome) but really – I don’t want to be there for another year, especially if no-one else I know is there. The fact that none of my friends are there would help keep away distractions, however – but it would still suck immensely.
  • Do something else. This option also sucks. I hate engineering with a passion, and even though UTAS offered me a place, I’ll be dammed if I’m going to take it. No way.
  • Wait and see. Now this option I like. I won’t recieve offers from the mainland uni’s until early 2009 anyway, (round two offers for Adelaide and Victoria are the 5th of Feb 09), so I’ll just have to enjoy what time I have left.
  • Do something funky to get into the course I want. I haven’t fully explored this option yet, but apparently I can do a normal degree (science or something) at my Uni of choice for a year, and then transfer into the course I want in 2010. This would mean that I can essentially “waste” a year, and it would provide me with an oppurtunity to have a pseudo gap year, but really – dentistry is a five year course anyway! I don’t want to be like Dean, who managed to turn a three year course into a nine (?) year one!!

So yeah, at the moment I’m playing the waiting game – stuck in a sort of Facebook Limbo.

That’s enough about me, though. I’d love to hear how you went in TCE results 2008, so if you want the rest of the world to know as well, shout out in comments!

Points don’t matter. TER does, and that’s really all I care about!

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 02

So on the study camp, we got a little brochure about study techniques and everything.

What I took away most was the fact that the little study camp book had a cool little man on the front – saying “Exam is here!”.

For those of you that don’t know, mid year exams != fun, and the same applies here.

Year 12 end of year exams do not equal fun. Exams in general don’t equal fun, but year 12 end of year’s are far more scary.

Unfortunately, this is the time of year when you can make or break your whole career. Sure, if you stuff up your exams really badly, you can always repeat and do year 13, but who in their right mind wants to do that?!

I suppose if I was looking to get a good job I’d need to get a good score – say about 90 or so to get into the degree that I want to do at Uni.

90 isn’t totally unreachable – I know people who are aiming for 100 or above, and someone else who managed to get 113, but it’s still going to prove enough of a challenge as it is.

Let’s see:

Now, according to the Scaling Summary from 2007 (PDF link), (assuming that those values hold true for this year), I’ll need at least an average CA from Physics, which is completely achievable, and therefore inside the realms of possibility.

Indulge me – we’ll just assume for the moment that I’m insane and manage to get a CA in Chemistry – no mean feat, I assure you. In terms of points, that would garner me a respectable 11.9 – not enough.

However, if I were to get a HA in Physics, I would gain 17.4 points – which would be awesome.

Of course, I can’t predict the future, and I’ll just have to hope that everyone else that studies Applied is on the same level as the year 11’s in my Applied class – that being the case, maybe we’ll see something like last years scaling where Media Production was worth an incredible 28.5 points at EA level – just, WTF, especially considering that Maths Specialised, arguably the hardest subject in the whole TCE course list, was only worth 25.2 points at EA level.
The chance of this happening is low, however, as there are some others who are either repeating Applied, or people that have done methods previously and are now doing Applied for the points alone (like I am). If that’s the case, then Applied will be scaled down – and I’ll get less points as a result.

For now, it’s all a numbers game. If the right numbers come up, I’m in the green. If bad numbers come up – I’m in the red, and the likelihood of me repeating is high.

I’m praying for people to lose their minds just before the exams – I need those points.

It’s scary to think that my future depends on how well other people do in exams. I know roughly how my classmates will go, but I’m in the dark as to how other people will go. Of course, for myself to go well points wise I need other people to do badly, which is kind of weird. I don’t usually wish that people sucked at what they did, but really – if you do well at your exams, you’re hindering me!

In all honesty, I think that the scores will balance themselves out – and I’ll get into whatever course I want to at whichever Uni I want to. While my UMAT results weren’t crash hot, (in actual fact, they were below average, oops), I’m sure that people will see through the fact that there’s more to life than standardised testing, like the SAT’s or whatever those yanks have.

Comments below.

written by Benny Ling \\ tags: , , , , ,