This year has been one of the most stressful and emotional years of my life and the lives of many other year 12 students throughout the state.

This year has involved a lot of self doubt about my ability as a student. I have spent hours thinking that I could not compete with those “smarter” than me and wondering how I would achieve my goals if I messed these exams up.

A lot of the stress we are feeling as students is self induced. We want to please our teachers, friends and family who have supported us over the past 13 years of our education.

This is how I felt throughout much of the year. I was trying to deal with it alone, but things only got worse as time went on. As humans we somehow believe we have the power to fix all our problems by ourselves. But, as I have now realised, that is not the case. God is the only one who can take away the stress and help us to be strong, but we have to be willing to let him do it.

For me the key to surviving the HSC is remembering God is still the most important thing to remember. Through going to church, regular prayer and reading the bible the HSC has become much more bearable. God does not care how high our UAI is or how good our marks are in the end, but he does want us to follow him, be obedient to him and try our best with whatever we do.

Please continue to pray for the HSC students over the next few weeks as they work hard at studying and honouring God.

Cie-anne McKellar