Bacon, eggs and Bowie: how year 12 English students tackled ‘human strength and vulnerability’ in HSC paper

“How does the composer of your prescribed text offer you opportunities to examine assumptions about human strength and vulnerability?”

This was the bamboozling English question tens of thousands of year 12 students sat down to answer on the first day of their final school exams.

Kayden Tran, 18, had a “really great breakfast” of rice, bacon and eggs – but was it enough to get through an essay exploring tenacity and sensitivity in the writings of Tim Winton, George Orwell or Malala Yousafza?

“This morning, I felt extremely stressed and I kind of gave up hope,” the student of Canley Vale high school in Sydney’s west told the Guardian.

“But after doing the exam, I feel perfectly fine, I feel content, like I did the best I possibly could,” he said after the HSC English 1 paper on Tuesday.

Mary Alnimry listened to the song Heroes by the late David Bowie to prepare.

“I discovered that song through an assessment for year 10 and, every time, before every English exam, I listen to that song and it just reminds me of English,” she said.

The pair was among about 200 Canley Vale students to sit the test, just one cohort in the roughly 75,000 students across New South Wales working to wrap up their high school careers.

“You just have to go in and believe that you know the content,” Alnimry, 17, said. “That’s how I felt in the morning. And then after the exam, obviously it’s really rewarding. I completed everything, but there’s always that curiosity lingering.

“I think that it was pretty fair, there was nothing out of the ordinary.”

On Reddit, other year 12 students weren’t as confident.

“Honestly I think that’ll kick most people in the ass, the fact the question had so much to unpack I personally found it hard to address it all, I focused on vulnerability and strength and sprinkled a bit of assumptions,” one student with the handle bberson wrote on Tuesday afternoon.

Another, djungleskog41, was concerned they skipped over parts of the question: “I did Orwell too and tbh I didn’t address the question at all. I only focused on how like human vulnerability and weakness forces us to submit into the regime and rebelling is a sign of human strength blah blah blah but i barely mentioned my assumption so im rlly upset about that lol.”

Alana Miller, an English teacher at Canley Vale high school, has shepherded 17 years of year 12 students through the exams. She said the nerves don’t stop with students, and she too woke up this morning with the year 12s on her mind.

“We care so much about the students, we spend so much time,” she said. “We want them to do well, we want them to feel particularly that these exams are something they could achieve in.”

Fantasy books have been a growing hit at Canley Vale high alongside Japanese manga. Miller said she’s spent the past year trying to meet students where they are to help engage the next generation of readers.

“I think the best way is to … talk to them about books, shows, films that they might see,” Miller said. “I think choosing engaging texts in the classroom can be a huge stepping stone for resistant readers. … I just try and tell them they haven’t met the book yet that will get them to love reading.”

For Zenith Diep, self-belief was key.

“I’m feeling not too bad, because I did finish everything,” the 17-year-old said. “I don’t know if I answered the questions fully as I should’ve. You just have to trust yourself with how much work you put in and that you actually remember it. I trust in myself.”

Effie Niarchos, the principal of Canley Vale high, said the HSC represented a rite of passage for year 12s, marking the past six years of high school and the next chapter in their lives.

“All of the teaching, all the learning is building towards this moment,” she said. “We want them to be ready for the world, and we look at it as we’ve achieved something to be able to successfully prepare them for this moment”.

She said students have been experiencing a bit more anxiety in recent years, possibly from community expectations, possibly from the world shifting underneath kids’ feet.

But as she saw off the last of those who sat for the exam on Tuesday, she looked back with a smile and a sense of pride.