It's two down and a handful to go for Gunnedah's HSC students, who have now completed their two English exams.
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The two English papers are always the first cab off the rank in the annual exams, for students at all levels.
There were mixed opinions from Maddie Coombs, Emma Jerrett, and Deagan Marchant, who put pen to paper on Tuesday and Wednesday.
St Mary's College student Emma said she found the exams harder than she expected, but found paper one better than paper two. She completed the Advanced English exams.
"I thought I was going to run out of time because it's a lot of essays in not long but I got something down for everything," she said.
"Some weren't as long as I would've liked but everything had something."
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Fellow St Mary's and Advanced English student Deagan said he found it "obvious that NESA was attempting to make the exams easier due to a plethora of impeding events" during the past year.
But he said in doing so, he believed that the questions for the advanced students were "made overly ambiguous and generalised".
"This in turn made the questions more difficult as the questions were less specific and therefore harder to answer with any certainty," he said.
Regardless, it means one less subject to worry about, and with only four subjects left for Emma and Gunnedah High School student Maddie, they're relieved.
Both the girls have Community and Family Studies (CAFS) on Friday afternoon, and both have maths, as well as a few other subjects to get ready for.
It's exciting that one subject is done, so only four more to go.
- Emma Jerrett
They're both a bit nervous for the rest of the exams, but are looking forward to the end of it all.
"I'm glad English is out of the way but it was one of my favourite subjects so it's kind of sad because the other ones left are my harder ones," Emma told the NVI.
"It's exciting that one subject is done, so only four more to go."
Maddie said she was unsure how she would go now that English was done, as she felt that it was a topic you could "retain" more.
"With other classes ... we discuss our work a lot and go and write it down but I think that's what I'm nervous about ... because we've discussed most of it so I'm worried I won't remember the discussion we had on certain topics," she said.
All three of the students finish their exams on a different day. Maddie will get to relax earlier than the others, with her final exam, PDHPE, on October 30.
Deagan finishes up on November 9 with chemistry, and Emma finishes with food technology on November 10.