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CSSA Trial (1 Viewer)

dandel26

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My God what an incredible hard exam. Easily the hardest i've ever seen. ANyone else find it hard.

Section 1 - Pompeii Herculaneum - was suprisingly easy except for the last question
Section 2 - Sparta - One word: Alcman. WTF!!!! who the hell is he. I guessed he was a poet. Such a hard paper for Sparta
Section 3 - Caesar - wasn't too bad but got a bit stuck on talking about his legacy
Section 4 - Fall of Roman republic - Made up shit about Cicero, was also incredibly hard why couldn't they have something easy like the First triumvirate

How'd everyone else find it?
 

bassqueen16

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yeah i found it hard as well, hence why i did it in a spastic order, i.e Section 2, Section 4, Section 3 and then Section 1--- i knew pompeii would be easier than the rest so saved it till last and STILL managed to finish 30 minutes early :)
 

nallask8r

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hm, wasnt too bad, lol screwed up Pompeii and Herculaneum section lucky that sections only worth 5% all up in our school. talked bout fiorelli, dont know whether ill get nailed or not....Rest of paper was common knowledge eh? Yes alcman was a spartan poet who loved horses lol
 

nallask8r

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dandel26 said:
made up shit about Cicero, was also incredibly hard why couldn't they have something easy like the First triumvirate

How'd everyone else find it?
man why didnt you do senates role??? you could incorporate like everything into it
 

sideshowtim

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I didn't do so great. :( I am really upset because I think I did well in all my other exams except this one. I also had no idea who the hell Alcman was and I found all sections tricky, especially the bloody last question in which we were given alternate questions to the ones that were on the paper.

Pompeii and Herc - Did alright I think...that picture was a bakery right? Last question was a bit tricky though, spoke a bit about Fiorelli and also about how they want to preserve it for better technology in the future

Sparta - Did pretty good here, except forgot the bloody festivals and what alcman was. Went alright in the other sections

Hatshepsut - One of the questions (we had outside questions) was really strange, it was about queens in NKE, I wasn't sure whether it meant queens in general or just Hatshepsut.

NKE - Appauling. Had no idea. Could either write about Ahmose or the Hyksos which I didn't study on.

I hate ancient. :(
 

sideshowtim

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Ancient is such a hard subject because you have to have in depth knowledge about every single little aspect of each culture etc. because you never know what they are going to ask you...and to try and remember so many in depth things for 4 topics...Grrr soo anoying.
 

jodipodi

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my ancient teacher wrote the exam. not surprised there were random things. last year we had to write a 10 mark essay on what was delphi. shed mentioned it once in class i only knew it cause im a history lover and did elective history in year 9. :p
 
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i hate the fact that there is so much to learn and in the end they only ask u a few questions, u feel like uve wasted all ur time learning things u didnt even have to know and i also hate the fact hat u have 2 kniw evidence and i hate that i suk at this subject
 

sideshowtim

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SuNrIsE_oVa_sEa said:
i hate the fact that there is so much to learn and in the end they only ask u a few questions, u feel like uve wasted all ur time learning things u didnt even have to know and i also hate the fact hat u have 2 kniw evidence and i hate that i suk at this subject
Yes, it's hard enough to learn all the content let alone remember ALOT of historians and sources to get your responses into the top bands. I also hate how they never focus on the actual eruption on Pompeii and rather ask about houses and stuff. I'm great with the eruption/evidence of peoples lives but I'm horrible with houses and buildings and stuff. Damn ancient.
 

bassqueen16

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yeah my teacher was the convenor, but hmm didnt help us much... :eek: there tends to be less learning and more storytelling in my ancient history class unfortunately :(
 

Triangulum

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Pompeii and Herculaneum wasn't great, for the first question I had no idea what the photo was so I just guessed a fullery. Last question I just talked about the Villa of the Papyri and about red tape in the approvals process. Hopefully partial marks for that.

Sparta - not that bad, actually. I thankfully remembered the festivals. Not that crash hot on the kings, but happily I'd read about Greek writers' views on Sparta in the morning.

Caesar - 10-mark (role in the Triumvirate) was very easy, 15-mark (legacy) harder but I got a fair bit for it eventually.

Fall of the Roman Republic - did the Senate one, didn't actually have much for it but I just talked about the way consuls ignored the Senate and went to the assembly.

All in all, an OK exam if you don't count the Pompeii bit. Hopefully ~80-85%.
 

ediisjoz

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section 1 - pompeii - wasnt too bad... i didnt think the last question was THAT hard.. i thought it was to do with maiuri's hastiness etc. and mussolini and fascists in italy at the time doin stuff..
section 2 - minoans.. wasnt too bad either.. except i made alot of stuff up for the last question
section 3 - xerxes - pretty gay. his foregin policy. i bullshitted my way through THAT and the first question
section 4 - greek workd 500-440bc. that was shit house. i couldnt remember anything from salamis so it was all from plataea.. whoops.
 

bemma

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Ahhh Pompeii...there was a reason that volcano erupted I tell you...ie they were so fricking boring they had to all DIE.

Anyway...I didn't think Pompeii/Herculaneum was that bad, though I guessed the picture was a storage area for wine/olive oil?? I dunno :p
Sparta: Alcman was a poet and the one who wrote the songs as Spartans went off to battle...though I didn't find that out til after the paper ><
Cleopatra VII: pretty good, nothing too difficult there
Augustus: Had an alternate question but totally forgot the names of all his powers so was extreeeeeeeemely general in that. Wheeee.

***

Really annoying though cos we have a girl in our class who hasn't been in class for about three months, including holidays, and then right at the beginning began to cry because she didn't know what to do...entire class = no sympathy.
 

sideshowtim

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bemma said:
Really annoying though cos we have a girl in our class who hasn't been in class for about three months, including holidays, and then right at the beginning began to cry because she didn't know what to do...entire class = no sympathy.
Was she legitametly sick? Either way, it was her responsibility to catch up on the work herself. I understand why no one gave her sympathy.
 

Lori.

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I almost passed out going into the exam seeing that it was a CSSA paper; ancient is my worst subject and all of my other trials weren't CSSA papers.
I was so glad that i studied up on conservation at pompeii, but i hardly knew what to write for Caesar and the Fall of the Republic.
Then there was a question which asks to name two queens during new kingdom egypt and i ended up making one up...
 

bemma

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sideshowtim said:
Was she legitametly sick?
That's the funny thing...no one knows. She does Pathways and has 3 subs this year, so it's not as if she has a full schedule so it's even more difficult to catch up...meh. I guess things will come to a head during HSC.

BTW, does anyone know the rules regarding required hours of Pathways?
 

DeathB4Life

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im lucky my teacher told us to write an essay on the senates influence during the julio-claudians, memorised most of the essay points and found that section a breeze.

as for the religious festivals, i knew i should have studied them a little more, couldnt remember the name of any of them.

alcman....never heard of him/her/it

i tried to be controversial saying that the spartan army role was to appear powerful while being few in number and unable to live up to their status...im not sure if i should have wrote that or just gone with "army protect people, army strong, spartans strong and powerful! ug ug!"

everything else i did alright, should have done a bit more writing for the 15 mark question on agrippina and less writing for the 10 mark.

the bakery...somewhere deep in the depths of my brain lay hidden that image of the bakery. the second i saw the pic im like "omg thats the bakery i took a glimpse of somewhere on the net several thousand hours ago"

the question about conserving pompeii + herculaneum, not quite sure if i did it right, the thought of writing about ownership seemed to come to mind but the question didnt seem to leave too much room for it.

think overall i did alright, should have pushed my rank up a few places.
 

Lori.

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bemma said:
That's the funny thing...no one knows. She does Pathways and has 3 subs this year, so it's not as if she has a full schedule so it's even more difficult to catch up...meh. I guess things will come to a head during HSC.

BTW, does anyone know the rules regarding required hours of Pathways?
The required hours for pathways is probably the same as for the HSC, I don't see why it should be any different. Required hours for HSC is something like 80 or 85% of all classes.


In regards to the bakery, I have encountered that supid picture in two assessments before. If its in the HSC, i'll be laughing!
 

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