Guide: How to Bounce Back From a Bad Assessment Mark

If you’re here reading this, it’s probably because:

You just bombed your recent assessment tasks and need some advice
You haven’t, but want to know what to do if this happened
You stumbled on this article by accident

Regardless of why you’re here, one thing is for sure. Everybody fails. Even Walt Disney was fired from one of his first animation gigs for not being creative enough, which sounds absurd considering the incredible legacy he left. The truth is, hitting rock bottom is just part of life. Trust me when I say that you can always bounce back, as long as you put in the work.

I’m Michelle and I completed the HSC in 2020. And I was really struggling back then - I left my Biology trial exam in literal tears, and I almost dropped Maths because I was doing so poorly. Funnily enough, I graduated as an All Rounder with a 99.05 ATAR and high Band 6s in Advanced and Extension 1 Maths. Now I get to teach Maths to lovely students every week, while studying Psychology and Marketing at The University of Sydney.

My goal throughout this article is to de-stigmatise the “f-word” (failure, to be clear), share tips to help you bounce back from bad marks, and motivate you to kick a** for the rest of your HSC!

Here are the 3 main things I’ll be discussing:

Embrace failure and regain perspective
Do self-reflection to figure out why you failed
Make habitual changes to prevent failure next time

1. Embrace failure and regain perspective on the situation

Being upset about a bad mark is very normal - it means you cared! There’s also plenty of research, including a study by Harvard, suggesting the negative consequences of suppressing your emotions.

Also, our brains have a tendency to make problems seem worse than they are. Let’s put things into perspective - by the time you finish all your internal school exams, you would’ve only completed 50% of your HSC. The other whopping 50% is attributed to the external exams which take place in October through to November. I personally found this realisation to be extremely comforting and motivating. However badly I had messed up, there was still a HUGE opportunity to turn it all around. Not to mention, it would be such an epic comeback story if I managed to pull it off.

So, give yourself permission to feel frustrated, disappointed and angry, but remind yourself it’s still salvageable. Then move on.

2. Critically reflect on why you failed

Admittedly, picking at your own mistakes is not fun, but it’s a crucial step to move forward. The purpose is to figure out what you did well, but more importantly, identify the root cause(s) of failure. Regardless of whether it was a take-home assessment task or an in-class exam, you must be objective when analysing your performance. It would also be helpful to note down any feedback from your teachers.

Some possible questions to ask yourself include:

What topics/syllabus dot points did I feel confident about?
Which questions were answered well?
Did I give myself enough time to prepare?
Was I extremely stressed?
Was there a concept that I fundamentally didn’t understand?
Did I forget to revise a topic?
Did I phrase my answer cohesively?
Did I do enough practice questions?
Did I spend too long on one question in the exam and run out of time?
Did I misread the question (or not read it at all)?

Did something well? Keep doing it. Did something poorly? Come up with a solution. For example, if you realise you had forgotten to revise a topic, the solution would be to cross-reference your notes with the NESA syllabus next time, and so on.

PS: we explain how to leverage the NESA syllabus when structuring HSC study notes in this article. That way, you’ll never miss a topic again!

At this stage, you should’ve identified what you did wrong, and be ready to move onto the last step.

3. Change your habits to prevent repeating your previous mistakes

Taking your learnings from the previous step, make intentional adjustments to your behaviour to minimise the chances of repeating those mistakes. After all, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. (Apparently this quote is often misattributed to Einstein, so kudos to whoever actually said it). Here are some of my suggestions.

3.1. Fine-tune your study habits - learn how to learn

The topic of study habits is a big and confusing one, and there’s no “one-size-fits-all” method. However, there are thousands of resources online, so I strongly encourage investing time into exploring new habits. This is time well spent, because you never really stop learning. You’ll find these techniques useful in after high school, such as in university and in the workforce.

One of my major downfalls was that I didn’t know how to revise (I was just rewriting my notes). Whilst that worked for others, my terrible exam performance suggested I needed to try other methods. I also struggled to finish exams within the time limit.

Here I’ll share some of the learning/revision techniques I personally found useful and how to do it:

Teaching others - one of my favourite applications of active recall. Explain a concept to someone else. Ask them to continually challenge you with “why” or “how”, to test your fundamental understanding. If you struggle, you’ve just identified a weak area to revise.
Recording audio of myself reading notes/essays - a fun application of passive recall. If you listen to something enough times, you’d be able to recite it in your sleep. (I listened to my English essays on the bus, and still remember the opening sentence of my 1984 essay - it’s been 4 years).
Doing timed practice - based on the mark allocation, calculate how much time you should be spending on a question. If you don’t finish it within the time limit, tough luck - figure out why you struggled and fix it.
- I found Project Academy’s Library app very useful. It contained 1000+ past exam papers across various subjects, and even had an in-built timer! was perfect for doing timed practice.
- For example, Extension 1 Maths papers contain 70 possible marks and are 120 minutes long. Each mark is worth ~1.7 minutes. Therefore, a 3 mark question should take AT MOST 5.1 minutes, including checking time.

If you’re interested in learning about other study habits, check out this article here.

3.2. Develop good organisational habits - study efficiently

As a Year 12 student, I always used to wonder “how many hours should I be studying per day?” Everyone would tell me different things, but I eventually learnt a harsh truth - it doesn’t matter. Instead of focusing on the quantity of hours, what’s more important is that you used that time efficiently and effectively. This way, you still have time for other equally important things in life (e.g. family time!).

The best way to ensure your study sessions are high quality, is to plan! Here are two organisational techniques I found useful:

Using the Eisenhower matrix to prioritise tasks - write down all your to-do’s for the day, and allocate them into one of four buckets. Not everything needs to be done at once.
Intentionally block out time to do each task - write down exactly what you need to do and how long it will take, then stick to it. E.g., revise Module 5 of Biology for 1 hour.

If you’re interested in learning more great study tricks, check out this article.

3.3. Repeat, repeat, repeat - start past papers as early as possible

Practice makes perfect. Everyone says this, so there’s probably some ounce of truth to it, right?

Not to be dramatic, but I can honestly say that doing past papers closed-book accelerated my academic comeback (like those golden mushrooms in Mario Kart). In case you weren’t already aware, here are the benefits of past papers:

It forces you to use active recall and strengthens your memory of the content
You get an idea of the type/style of questions you’ll see in the real HSC
You can identify gaps in your understanding quickly
You can simulate a real exam environment through implementing time limits, no distractions etc.

If you’re like me and lack the discipline to do past papers regularly, I highly recommend enrolling in mock exam programs. One of the best decisions I made throughout Year 12 was to enrol in the LEAP exam program by Project Academy. As a LEAP student, you sit a mock HSC exam every week for 12 weeks, while receiving heaps of other perks, including detailed feedback from their markers and access to their unlimited tutorial system, where you can study and ask questions under the supervision of a tutor. More details about their program can be found here. Fun fact, but I actually saw my Extension 1 Maths mark increase from 60% to 80% between my Term 2 assessment task and my Trials.

Conclusion

Setbacks are an inevitable part of life. What distinguishes a successful person from an unsuccessful one, is simply how they respond to these setbacks. If you want to make an academic comeback, remember that it’s NEVER too late. Hopefully these tips gave you some inspiration. Stay tuned for more content like this!