Lake Macquarie students Jacob Armit and Sarah Bernasconi started and finished their Wednesday with HSC exams.
After completing their second English Advanced paper, the students of St Mary's Catholic College Gateshead were "looking forward" to the aural music exam that afternoon.
"So there's four excerpts of music and we just have to answer questions on those," Jacob told the Newcastle Herald.
Eager for this less content-heavy exam, Jacob said he was "disappointed" with having the practical element of the course cancelled.
"Examiners were meant to come from Sydney and we would perform for them," he said.
"Because of COVID that didn't end up happening so our classroom teachers just mark a video of our performance instead."
Sarah said the cancellation made the end of her course "a bit underwhelming".
"A lot of people would be just sitting at home for their final performance," she said.
"Such a huge achievement just kind of felt like another day."
Sarah, who wants to study Primary Teaching and Jacob, Chemical Engineering, both plan to attend the University of Newcastle next year.
Ranking first in five of his subjects this year, Jacob received a scholarship called the Vice Chancellor's Award for Academic Excellence.
"I got dux so that came with a $2000 scholarship to study at Newcastle."
He said it felt good to get the English papers done early.
"It's been nice to get the English exams out of the way because now I can switch my brain onto maths and science."
For the English paper, Jacob and Sarah had poetry by John Keats' as one of their prescribed texts. Sarah said students weren't prepared for the exam's first module which focused on a specific poem rather than "overall themes".
"Some people may have studied four or five of the six poems intensely and then in the exam had to focus on a different one. Luckily they gave us the poem to draw from," she said.
Having dealt with this curveball, Sarah said she had no major issues with the rest of the paper, appreciating the structure of the final extended response question.
"Especially because it had a reflection as well as the actual response so you could draw on two different skillsets."
Sarah also said that while the physical return to school last month was "helpful", going into lockdown did provide some respite for students.
"Before lockdown hit a lot of us were very burnt out, what we were doing was very unrealistic," she said.
"So it was a good reminder to just take a bit of a break and ease back into it."
Jacob said the motto for the year has been "just go with it" but also said he "feels sorry" for the COVID disrupted class of 2022.
"You build on all the skills and content from year eleven. So for them missing that will be tricky."
