With what was a "pretty straightforward" PD/H/PE exam out of the way, two Maitland students have their sights on a career in physical health.
Charliese "Charli" Tranter and Sophie Hickling of All Saints College, St Mary's campus both have a particular interest in PD/H/PE and told the Newcastle Herald they want to pursue related careers.
"I feel like when you 're passionate about a subject it's easier to want to learn about it," Charli said.
Shane Whereat, a PD/H/PE teacher at the school, said the subject is "reflective of the world we live in".
"Fitness has become a multi billion dollar industry and everyone is far more health conscious than what they were fifteen years ago," he said.
Mr Whereat said this creates a great deal of interest from students. A trend which has increased over the past two years.
"I think COVID if anything has opened up the need for good health and good, quality healthcare," he said.
"Drawing those real world scenarios to the classroom to link with our syllabus was really pertinent for the kids in the last twelve months particularly."
The students took on twenty multiple choice followed by a range of short answer and extended response questions in Wednesday's exam.
"The multiple choice did have a lot of graphs so you had to take a bit more time to interpret them," Charli said.
The choice of questions for the final section of the exam changed between schools and depended on what areas each class had focused on throughout the year. Charli said for St Mary's this year, the areas were Sports Medicine and Improving Performance.
"We both enjoyed the sports med section because we both want to do physiotherapy at uni."
Along with Sophie, Charli wants to study at the University of Newcastle and both have early entry offers from the university.
"I've got early entry for Occupational Therapy which I can use to transfer over to physio if I need to", Charli said.
Sophie said while this an option for her too, she would prefer to receive the required exam mark for entry into a Bachelor of Physiotherapy.
"I've been accepted into Exercise and Sports Science so I could potentially do the same thing. But ideally it would be good to get straight in," Sophie said.
Part of this career interest for Sophie stems from the HSC content.
"The syllabus and what you learn about is much more interesting than other subjects."
As part of a program in the school where selected students are able to fast track their Mathematics schooling, both Sophie and Charli sat their HSC math papers in 2020.
Both students found the program "helpful" coming into exams this year, along with a school policy allowing students to study from home each Wednesday of their senior years.
"I get more productive study done on a Wednesday than I would have probably done at school," Sophie said.
