The Higher School Certificate looms menacingly over the horizon, with the first exams due to start on October 17.
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Students have mere weeks left to put the finishing touches to their major projects and cram as much calculus into their brains as they can handle.
It's a stressful time for Year 12 students, but Wade High School graduate Joel Smith wants to reassure current HSC students that it's not the end of the world.
Mr Smith did the HSC in 2018 and lived to tell the tale, and he wants current Year 12 students to know that life does indeed exist after the HSC.
"You can always get to where you want to be. As long as you set your mind to it, there's always other ways to get to where you want to go," Mr Smith said.
"That doesn't mean not to try - of course you've got to try hard - but we live in a good country and there's plenty of opportunities out there."
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After graduating high school he went on a gap year to raise money to support himself through university.
It's been almost a year since he did the HSC, but he still remembers walking into that exam hall as though it was yesterday.
"It was stressful - it was such a big examination and the conditions are so intense," he said.
"But in the end, it all worked out."
Mr Smith did well in the HSC and he was accepted into two of his university courses of choice: paramedicine at Victoria University and cybersecurity at La Trobe University.
Mr Smith's advice to current HSC students is to strike a good life balance and not let the stress of exams get to your head.
Setting aside the time just to chill and be with friends is important too, Mr Smith says, and for him that's the best part about being a high schooler.
"I wanted to be friends with everyone, and I felt like I was. We're quite a small city so everyone know each other and everyone looks out for each other," Mr Smith said.
He bid farewell to high school with mixed feelings: relief that it was finished, but also a strange sense of loss that it was all over.
"Enjoy it while you can, is what I'd say," he said.
"It's a big world out there."
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