Year 12 English Mock Exam - Writing
One of the questions from my English Mock exam writing question was ‘Respond to the idea that it’s hard to know what your context is, when things are changing all the time.’
Context applies to everything, the way we act in situations, how we respond to things; they are all determined by our context. But how can we know our context when things are changing all the time? How can we know how to act and how to respond when that dictating force keeps changing?
Our context is defined and shaped by what we have experienced, by what lays in our past. But as a teenager you don’t have much past. Each thing that occurs, each event, each love, each gain, each loss, each and every one of those things had a huge impact on our context. It’s a small sample space, each new data point causing a large change in the result. As the sample size grows the effect each new point has diminishes until a state of relative equilibrium occurs. But as a teenager every thing you experience pulls that point of equilibrium in a completely different direction. Your context changes from one situation to the next; building on the last thing preparing for the next, which will, inevitably, throw you off to head in a different direction. There is nothing you can do about it; you are completely at the mercy of the situations you encounter, and by extension at the mercy of those around you.
The people that surround you, they have more control over your context than you yourself. The things they do affect the things you do. Their actions create the situations to which you must respond. They are the playwright and you a performer that hasn’t been given the script. The only problem is, the people that surround you, they’re teenagers too. Their context is changing too. Paradoxically their context is affected by the way you act which is dictated by their context which is affected by the way you act. Context is like a kaleidoscope looking in to another kaleidoscope, this is looking at the first kaleidoscope. Changing one causes the other to change which changes the first which changes the second and well then it ends up like Schrödinger’s cat
But what if you knew, or if someone else knew; knew exactly what their context was, exactly who they were; their identity. What happenes then? Does your context become a jumble of their context? Does your context change? Or is it foxed too? Is your kaleidoscope still changing, still affected by others while theirs is a singe unbroken image?
Their actions still affect your actions but they’ve found their state of relative equilibrium. If they’re not changing all the time does that make it easier for you to define your context? But their actions still effect your actions which changes your context so it’s not quite that simple.
I wish that we got back our WACE exam papers, I’d love to include my written section from there too, it sort of follows as a not-quite sequel from here. Unfortunately we don’t get them back and I was depressed enough after writing it the first time so I don’t really feel like trying to remember and recreate it all again. The question for that was “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ use these words as the foundation for a piece of writing in a form of your choice” I responded in the same style, which I guess is a reflective essay, on the past 15 months. It was much harder than I initially thought, emotionally not in difficulty, and yeah I had a pretty shit time after that.
And yes that is a cut, my first in fact. Thanks to jaydenrioblue for her help with that