Jane Cafarella

VCE and me

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted a blog for the past 10 months, there is one simple word of explanation: VCE.
While I didn’t do VCE, (my daughter did), like most parents, I felt like I did it.
Those of you who have been through it will understand this.
For the uninitiated, let me warn you: VCE is like childbirth. After a while, you don’t care about the outcome – you just want the pain to stop.
The fact that so much is resting on the result means that, unlike other school years, every assignment and test matters.
To succeed you need to be organised, consistent, persistent, mature, calm, fit and extremely well supported, financially, physically and emotionally. As most people only manage this at around age 35, it is no wonder that VCE imposes huge stress on Year 12 students and their families.
For those who got what they wanted or needed, congratulations – the pain is over. For those who didn’t, the pain will continue, but only for a short time, as you will soon realise that what your teachers have been telling you all year is true: there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Take my friend’s daughter, who was recently offered honours at Monash and was a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, a US based non-profit organisation founded in 1977 to recognise academic achievement amongst college students across all disciplines.
Jessica (not her real name) did her VCE about seven years ago now. At the time she felt too ashamed to disclose her ENTER to family and friends. This result was not through want of trying. Nobody could have worked harder. But Jessica suffered from dyslexia and was the victim of that cruel and subtle bullying that girls specialise in and which lowers self-esteem and paralyses the brain.
So instead of first-round offers, there were bitter tears. She squeezed into a hospitality course, where hard work resulted in success academically and on the job. But Jessica wanted to do teaching, so despite being offered hospitality work overseas, she bit the bullet and went back to study. At uni, Jessica worked hard and thrived. She rarely received less than an HD for her assignments and was offered honours on the completion of her degree.
She has now landed a great job and the miserable morning of years ago when she was too ashamed to tell friends and family of her VCE result, is remembered not as the end of the road, as she first thought, but merely a fork in the road.
She is not the only one. Take another friend’s son. Ben (not his real name) wanted to be a vet but did not get the marks to get into vet science. It was disappointing, but he picked himself up and instead, did science at Melbourne and then transferred across. Last year, his smiling face popped out at me in the Melbourne University course guide, advising future students about the value of the vet science course. He is now a qualified vet.
My own children chose music, for which the ATAR is less important. However, choosing music has its own pressures, as between 500 and 600 students compete for between 100-160 places at each of the various music conservatoriums across Australia.
Still, music students all need plan B, just in case, so the VCE score is important to ensure second preferences. This means music students must wait for two results: auditions and the VCE score.
Today my son is an award-winning composer (I’m allowed to boast here), who wonders why he listened to his teachers and did VCE chemistry to give him “options”. It turned out to be stressful and irrelevant, but how were we to know?
My daughter is now following a similar path as a singer. She was delighted with her VCE results, but in the end they were only taken into account by one university, as entry for music is mostly based on audition.
So remember, finding the right job or career is a bit like toilet training or learning to read – we all get there eventually in our own time and in our own way.
As for me, I’m relieved and grateful that we made it through the year. There were times there when I thought we wouldn’t because, for my daughter, there was simply too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
That’s why for me, VCE stands for Victory, Courage and Effort – for every student and their families, whatever the result.

Read my top tips for VCE students on my next post.