Although I am grateful that I had taken Additional maths externally so I can help myself prepare a little for HL maths, nothing could have prepared me for the past year. At the start, while learning the basic concepts the knowledge from Add maths did help, but then I realised how quick we were going. It is a very rushed course and the concepts aren’t the easiest to understand. For me it took some time to wrap my head around some concepts and sometimes I just had to go with a few things without fully understanding them. I think being a new student also played a big role in the way that I learned because I had to study while trying to fit in at the same time. I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t hard for me at times, to balance everything, which is one of the reasons why my confidence level as seen in the graph never went very high. At the start of the year I thought that I could handle this, I am good in maths and I am able to solve questions and I never felt that the mini quizzes insanely hard. After the first long test however, I realised that the course is much harder than I thought it would be. The test caught me off guard and the I realised why I’ve heard the haunting stories and whispers of HL Math being the worst decision ever. from there I realised that I had to work harder and I started working more and doing more practice and then I upped my confidence again.
I really learnt the value of practising and revising because I have seen the result of not practising for myself and experienced the downfall of not working hard enough. I find the unpredictable nature of the questions the hardest to cope with and I think that more practice is the only way of battling this. I know if I’ve done good or bad in a test based on my scoring, and I like to go over my tests to see where I did well and where I can improve. Having a growth mindset is crucial because I couldn’t have made through the year if I kept getting hung up with the past tests and how I messed up. Instead, I like to focus on what I can do now to do better.