“She wouldn’t stop trying to understand something until she got it deeply,” he said. “The depth of knowledge she was seeking was really, really strong. And she kept pursuing that until she got it.”
Stacy said she set out to properly understand the courses in all their nuances, rather than simply memorise facts and formulas.
“I think it is very important because when they throw questions at you that you’ve never seen before, if you don’t understand the concepts, you can’t just apply something you’ve memorised to an unfamiliar situation,” she said.
Once this happened, it was as if a switch flicked in her brain.
“Once I started understanding the concepts and exploring, I was quite curious,” she said.
Stacy enjoyed the health-related content and learning about the human body in biology, and seeing reactions in the lab in chemistry.
“I really loved all of it. It was just really fun,” she said.
Biology is the most popular HSC subject, excluding English and mathematics, attracting more than 20,900 students this year. Chemistry, alongside extension mathematics 2 and physics, is considered one of the hardest. To top both is an incredible and rare feat.
Keirle said the result blew him away.
“The fact that she did the double whammy with chem and bio is a bit unbelievable, to be honest. I am super, super stoked for her and very proud,” he said.
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As for Stacy, the teenager is still in shock, struggling to reconcile the fact the girl who once viewed science as “nerdy” could go on to top not one, but two, of the HSC’s most rigorous subjects.
When Acting Education Minister Courtney Houssos called her to break the news, Stacy was confused.
“I thought it was a scam call or a prank,” she said.
“I didn’t even expect [to top] one [subject], let alone two. When she said bio, I was speechless. And then she said chem afterwards as well. It was so amazing. I started jumping up and down.”
Stacy hasn’t decided what to study yet at university – “probably something health related in the STEM field” – admitting she still needs to complete her unversity preferences.
But she has clear advice for future students: “Don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone. Don’t worry about what people think about you and don’t worry about other people’s judgment.”
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