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Eastside's Corner Ep4: A (rather) rough guide for BHS Year 9 on what electives to (or not to) chose for next year.

Howdy it's Eastside the murderous medic here (Yes I kill people with needles).
Year 10 is a great year not to waste since you sorry lots are going into VCE (like I am right now)but still set back and enjoy the year. During this year you will get to choose electives for next year so here's a rough guide of what to do and what not to do. You also don't have to do LOTE anymore so it will be a god send for most of you.

Ok let's start with English:
maximum 3 units of English for the year. (minimum 2 units = Core + whatever)
As Core English is compulsory I am not going to talk about it here. (Be prepared to get bored by Shakespeare though)

There's three choices you lots can go for second semester:
Comedy and Satire:
The best of all if you hate English. You get to write three essays for the semester (Term 3*1+ Term4*2, including Exams). Other than that you just sit there and watch comedy shows and act something out once, a rather relaxing one.
Possible teachers: Ms. Edmonds or Ms. Davies

Literature:
Can't say much about it because I didn't do it last year but otherwise if you don't mind reading novels and writing essays about them go for it.
Possible teachers: Ms. P or Ms. Korelius (spelling wrong but meh :P)


Enhanced Literature:
For you all English Freaks, this one's for you. similar to Lit (hence the word Enhanced) but more to do. Can't say much about it again because I didn't do it
Possible teachers: Ms. P or Ms. J

Here we go: Maths
compulsory for both semester and maximum 1 elective per semester.

Maths Methods:
The normal maths as we called it last year and most of you should do it unless you fail really really hard at maths(which you really shouldn't, see below). This year you will need you factorising skills you had during year 9 up to scratch because you will get introduced into Quadratic functrions which are quite painful to work with if you don't have your factorising skills ready.

Also you will get introduced into a form of solutions called excat solutions (not going in length here) instead of rounding to n decimal places.

You also get to do trigonometry which is relatively easy if you remember all the sine, cosine and tangent functions and know when to use them.

If you work hard enough to be the top 25 of the year level at mid-year exam you get to do the VCE general maths which I will explain later.

Second semester will be full of statistics which will be the last year you get to do them if you choose to do Maths Methods during Year 11/12 and/or Specialist during year 12.

Possible teachers: Ms. Hsu, Mr. Bates, Ms. Wadwa, Mr. Joesph, Mr. Fuge.

General Maths:
If you really really fail hard at maths as discussed you should do this one but really you should try Methods. General ain't much easier IMO.

VCE General Maths(Second semester only):
If you get a high enough score at the mid-year exam to be the top 25 of the year level (cut-off to be expected at mid-70 to low-80) you get to do this one and it's a very worthy one. (Counts as a general maths Unit 2)

This electives gives you a preview of what Maths in VCE is going to be and what will the teachers and assessors expect from you. A very handy subject to do because you will be more ready for VCE maths methods during Year 11 than anyone else.

You get to expand your knowledge of trigonometry into a new area of finding lengths of non-right angle triangle which will come very handy if you choose to do Physics B(discussed later)  

You get introduced to a new area, calculus which involves Circular functions, Matrices and Exponential functions (aka log x to the base of n = whatever)

You also get to learn how to use the Casio Classpad further to save time and do complex calculations. Most SAC are divided into two parts, one with calculators and one without any calculators so you need to really get efficient at doing things with both calculators and without calculators  

Possible teachers: Ms. Hsu

Next up, Science.
Minimum 1 elective and maximum 3 (thanks Bates but I wanted to do 4)
Science is entirely different in year 10 when compared to Year 9 because you do a lot more and some of you will find it hard to cope with but since I am a Science Freak I would emphasise more on Science.

Biology A:
I didn't do it but from I what heard from quite a few friends it's epic awesomeness. You get to learn about DNA and things which will make Biology B a joke.

Biology B:
IT'S A JOKE. Seriously don't do it if you don't want to get murdered by Ms.Collins boring theory of neutralisation. You do nothing, yes NOTHING. Clear? Don't even bother thinking about this one.

Chemistry A:
This one is a total epic win on the fact that it's Mr. Bourke teaching and you get to do a lot of fun stuffs. Chemistry A focus on the Analytical/Physical Chemistry which involves both Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis (Go google if you are not clear) . You deal with moles, balancing equation and titration sort of stuffs. You get to do experiments which involves a lot of Unit 2/3 stuffs. Good maths skills will help a lot because you have to understand lots of formulas to use.  

This is a hard elective owing to the fact that both tests and Exams are hard (I got 95% for both test and 92% for the Exam). But if you can get a 6.25 scale at the end of elective Exam you are ready for VCE.

Chemistry B:
Although you get less pracs to do (because of the volitale nature of Organic Compounds) if you do this but this is another epic win from Mr. Bourke. The main part of this elective is Organic Chemistry which most of you haven't even heard of. You get to deal with models of molecules and understands the properties of organic compounds (compounds which are made of of Carbon and other non-metalic elements) and Polymers Chemistry (e.g Polyethylene and PVC which stands for polyvinyl chloride) Another worthy one to do.

Aviation:

You good at doing the famous checkerboard turn? This is for the Aviation simulation freaks. You do nothing but flying on Flight simulator. You still get an Exam though :P

Teacher: Mr. Bourke

Next up, Humanities.

History:
It's a bad waste of time to be honest. Australian history is not interesting enough to study after all.
Better off doing Unit 1/2 History.

Teacher: Mr. Bear or Ms. White

Economics:

Welcome to economics 101. I didn't do it but I can certainly say it's a lot better than Year 10 history.
Talks about a lot on different models of Demand and Supply and some other stuffs.

Teacher: Mr. Bear ?

Geography:
There's a lot to do in Geography. Most times you look to stay on the computer looking at different environmental models. (I didn't do this either)

Teacher: Ms. Richards

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Remember, this is only a very rough guide. It's also written from my own point of view so it's heavily biased.


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