VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Time well spent Stimulus: Play…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: Eyes on the conductor, lips pressed on the mouthpiece. He raises his arms, ready to unleash an avalanche of…
Eyes on the conductor, lips pressed on the mouthpiece. He raises his arms, ready to unleash an avalanche of noise. Up. The moment, although it must only be a couple of seconds, seems to stretch indefinitely. Down. With that, the ensemble begins, time now warps to 128 bpm, the speed of the piece. I count the bars, focused on that grotesque, terrifying, nightmarish number… 28. My solo. My terror has no impact on the music as we continue barreling toward that dreaded numeral. It’s inescapable, and unforgiving.
I rise, breathe in, and begin my solo. Staccato. I fly up and down the scales at speed. Each note shorter. Rising higher. More air. Quick Fingers. Louder. Then at the peak, the tension is released with a decrescendo, and the piece then slows to a smoother, more connected and flowing legato. Each long note expands throughout the ornate theatre, filling the space and bathing the audience in the trumpet’s rich and resonant sound. Although slow, this portion is meticulous, one wrong valve and it's all thrown out of tune. I trudge through each drawn out phrase, each rest a respite for me to regain my breath only to lose it within the ne- WATCH OUT!!!
I stroll into the small rehearsal room, years of practice has taught me to prepare early, especially when a solo is involved. I grab my pencil from my ear and I read the music, ready to annotate. The piece formulates in my head as I read as I get my bearings. My solo begins quickly, continues slowly and… yikes. I circle and mark bar 42, it was an octave leap, and I know after countless performances it is the exact thing that would slip me up. The echoes of every embarrassing memory I’ve had whilst performing are imparted on that simple marking.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: personal journeys title finding my place
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: Kindergarten- The Sowing In the hazy nostalgia of kindergarten, I remember a time before the labels. I remember…
Kindergarten- The Sowing
In the hazy nostalgia of kindergarten, I remember a time before the labels. I remember the classroom as a seamless collective of sticky fingers and shared crayons; we were a group of four-year-olds who saw the world as a collaborative playground. There were no ranks and no "better thans." We were just a circle of friends, holding hands during carpet time, our identities blurred into one happy, unmeasured mass. To us, every child in that room was an equal companion. In those days, finding my place was as simple as finding a gap in the circle or a warm hand to hold.
I remember the day the stickers were introduced. My teacher smiled warmly as she pressed tiny shimmering icons onto our shirts, gold for some, silver for others, while some remained bare. At the time, I didn't feel an intoxicating rush, and I didn't feel superior. I didn't recognize it then, but my teacher was quietly initiating a social order that would eventually consume our identities. She was planting the seeds of a competition that we wouldn't learn to escape for decades. It was our first lesson in learning that our worth was no longer something we possessed within ourselves, but something we calculated by measuring the distance between our success and our peers.
In that brightly coloured room, filled with blu-sticks and crayon drawings, we were still the same, still equal. We were still just children, sharing crayons and laughing at the same jokes, oblivious to the fact that these sticker weren't decorations, but ranks.
Primary school- Taking Root
By primary school, the system was no longer hidden; it was deliberate, structured.
In those early years, my curiosity was an open door. I was a child who lived in the "why," seeing the world as a vast, shimmering horizon of possibility. I loved the way a new fact felt like a secret I had just uncovered, and I would spend hours lost in the library, chasing my own wonder through the pages of books. To me, finding my place didn’t mean finding my rank; it meant standing at the edge of the horizon and realizing that the world is an open landscape with so much to learn. I felt whole simply because I was curious. I didn't feel the need to be better than anyone else; I was content to stand fully in who I was, a small girl with a library card and an infinite appetite for knowledge. My roots were touching the earth, and I was growing toward my own light.
But as the years went on, that horizon began to shrink. I didn't realize it then, but I was becoming a loose thread in someone else’s design, being pulled away from my own wonder and woven into a pattern of measurement I never asked for.
I still remember the day we were sorted into our reading groups. My heart pounded as my teacher called out our names. One by one, each of us was assigned a colour that everyone understood, but no one said aloud.
“Yellow group,” she said.
At the time, I didn't fully grasp why these random colours mattered to everyone else, and yet I felt my intrinsic curiosity, the pure, innocent hunger to just know, began to wither. I felt an invisible wall grow, brick by invisible brick. I felt a subtle drop in my chest, realizing my friends were in green: the 'smart' group. Suddenly, I was no longer their equal, but someone below them, defined by a label I didn't choose that dictated the help I received and how I was seen by my teachers, my friends, and eventually, myself. For the first time, I felt that being curious was no longer enough, I had to be perfect to be seen. My joy was traded for a feverish need for validation, and I stopped learning to satisfy my mind and started learning to satisfy the scale.
That quiet jealousy wasn't just about wanting to be in another group. It was the beginning of comparison becoming something I internalised. Something I grew to obsess over.
And it wasn't just confined to school.
“You should be more like your cousin; she always listens to her mother.”
“Your friend is so much more studious than you.”
At first, these comments were confusing, but over time, the message became a permanent fixture in my mind: who I was alone wasn’t the standard. I was no longer a curious child exploring a world of wonder; I was a data point being measured against a pattern of perfection that I could never quite reach. I was always being placed somewhere on an invisible scale, and I realized that in this "design," my only way to be "enough" was to be "more" than the person next to me. I was no longer the girl standing on a hilltop; I was a shadow searching for light, not the light of discovery, but the flickering light of comparative superiority. I was no longer finding my place through discovery; I was fighting for my place on a leaderboard.
High School- The Overgrowth
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Country speaks If we listened to the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Memoir #2 Country Speaks by Aisha Harris If we listened to the land, what would it say? 2 years ago I woke up…
Memoir #2 Country Speaks
by Aisha Harris
If we listened to the land, what would it say?
2 years ago I woke up to the worst news of my life. News I never imagined of hearing. The words that changed the way our small town functions.
"It was Lauchlon," my Dad blubbers. Simple words, some that without any context may leave a person puzzled.
The night before, while watching the news at the dinner table, a headline popped up that caught the family’s interest. "Desperate search for teenage boy swept off rocks at Bridgewater blowholes," Bridgewater was 10 minutes away from our house. I had just finished a 3 hour shift straight after school and, while the headline caught my attention I focused more heavily on the potatoes on my plate.
My dad, an ex-fisherman, spoke about the poor boy who had been caught by the high tide in the rockiest part of the coast. It was a week before Christmas and for some reason some of the coldest, wildest weather we had had in months.
"Poor boy," we all agreed. I finished my food and unknowingly enjoyed my last night of comfort. That quickly ended the next morning when I heard the blubbering words of my father.
That "poor boy" was just 15 years old. He had turned 15 four days before he became an irretrievable part of our country.
Needless to say Lauchlon was never found. The boy who I grew up calling my brother was now nothing more than fragments encaptured by our local waters.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Overcoming Challenge
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The year: 2008. The global economy eviscerated. In China, the fissures of financial collapse created chasms in…
The year: 2008.
The global economy eviscerated. In China, the fissures of financial collapse created chasms in cities already strained by inequality and overpopulation. Survival turned to arithmetic: what could be afforded – and what could not.
I could not be afforded.
Adopted young – placed into careful Australian hands by a system that valued stability over continuity, that measured a child’s future in resources rather than roots. My parents: older, white, well-meaning, benign. Their love was not in question. It arrived consistently, in packed lunches and school pickups and the quiet hum of a house that always had enough. But love, however generous, cannot restore what was severed before memory begins. They gave what they knew how to give. What they could not give was the thread that connected me to the inheritance my face continued to advertise
That absence had no name, for a long time. It simply sat beside me, loyal and uninvited.
*
It was the start of the Lunar New Year.
Usually, in Asian culture, children gratefully receive red pockets. Red pockets are like the white equivalent of receiving money in a birthday card – thin envelopes that carry the faint scent of paper and promise. Except, instead of wilfully ignoring the money that slips from a birthday card (to avoid appearing greedy), red pockets are offered with ceremony. Elegantly folded. Deliberately placed into waiting hands. You are expected to acknowledge what is gifted.
They are saturated with meaning – wealth, prosperity, fortune – the opulence of choice. Five dollars became footy cards, a party bag of chips or even an entire Happy Meal. Five dollars back then was endless possibility.
Except, mine never came.
I rode my bolstered blue bike to school that morning, tyres humming against the pavement, unaware that the day would calcify into something I would spend years trying to interpret. On the astroturf, all the Asian kids had clustered into tight constellations. In their hands, I saw red. I didn't know what it was. What it meant. What ritual I was witnessing. But they were smiling — so wide. So white. So, blinding.
Slowly, one by one, they opened those crimson envelopes, extracting slips of colour: green, yellow, red. It took some time to realise what it was.
Money.
Stacks of it.
Hundreds of dollars – in cold cash.
My jaw dropped.
I stood there, suspended, the noise of the schoolyard dissolving into a distant hum, wondering how something so small could carry so much vibrance.
Someone turned and asked, almost casually: "Where is your red pocket?"
My hands mirrored my silence.
That is when it embraced me: Slowly and coldly.
Disassociation.
I had been adopted out of one world and into another, and in the translation, something had been lost without ceremony. Assimilated into Western tradition before I had any say in the matter, I had been diluted. ‘Whitewashed’, as they would come to call it. My lunches were plain sandwiches, bread so white it dissolved into the paper towel beneath it. The final irony: My surname – ‘Jackson’ - about as pale as it gets in Australia (discounting the Jackson Five). The confusion of teachers the first time they called my name, bewildered when an Asian face (instead of a freckled boy) answered "here" in an unmistakably Aussie accent - that confusion, forever inscribed into my memory.
That inscription only deepened as I struggled at school. Friends coined me "fasian" - failed Asian - laughing as if humour softened the blow. I laughed with them, masking my sorrow behind a persona of affected insouciance. Correcting them felt laborious. Explaining myself felt like pleading for legitimacy.
And no one wants to plead.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Play to win
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: The clock’s ticking blares like a siren in my head. I sit hovering over the board, fingers wavering above the…
The clock’s ticking blares like a siren in my head. I sit hovering over the board, fingers wavering above the knight, my hand trembling as if one wrong move may break something far more fragile than just the game. Across from me, my opponent sits still, giving nothing away, as though the clock bends in his favour. I remind myself I’m here to win, that’s the rule, that’s the whole point. Isn’t it?
From the moment I was shown how to move a piece, from the moment my old man would hover over our game board telling me to “think ahead, Eli. Always think ahead,” everything has been about winning. Win pieces. Win the position. Win the game. Win the respect. Win. Win. Win.
Now I’m here in the final game for the title that everyone has told me will define my future. My fingers inch closer to the knight. I pull them back. I’m winning, and I know I am. I’ve played this position hundreds of times, drilled into me by my coach with a single mantra: ‘Control the centre, calculate deeper than your opponent, build pressure’. I can already see it; the knight takes the pawn, the bishop forced back, the queen slides across, check, check, then checkmate. Clean. Precise. Inevitable. So why am I freezing up now?
I glance at my opponent, his grin reminiscent of my father’s smile when we used to play. I was young, sitting at the kitchen table across from Dad. The board was raggedy, a missing pawn replaced by a coin, and the rook was chipped. He smiled, glaring at me. “You’re thinking too hard”. But I want to win; I need to win. “Is that why you play? To win?” Back then, the question didn’t make sense. Of course, that’s why I played; everyone wants to win. But is that the goal?
The clock continues hammering its rhythm into my head. My opponent shifts slightly, still saying nothing. I force myself to calculate again, dive deeper, apply more pressure. The variations branch out in my mind, each one leading somewhere sharper, more decisive. Somewhere final.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a section B personal journey's…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: There is a prevailing misconception that a belief or intention in one’s own self defines their identity;…
There is a prevailing misconception that a belief or intention in one’s own self defines their identity; however, in reality, it is only a steppingstone to the consistent habits which form a stable sense of self. In a world most commonly associated with self-actualization, it is easy to claim values and aspirations without inserting them into daily life; however, identity is not shaped by what we want to do but what we repeatedly do on a daily basis in our lives. Each action, no matter how small, even if atomic, leads to a gradual accumulation of behaviors that solidify into character, reinforcing how an identity is proactively crafted through a progression of habits, rather than being passively discovered. One example is through the American author and activist
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Writing about play
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: We are all born onto different playing fields. Different pieces, different advantages. Some enter a field…
We are all born onto different playing fields. Different pieces, different advantages. Some enter a field painted emerald green, referees already on a payroll, every power-up handed over before they are even aware they are playing. A world of colour and open moves, where the obstacles have already been cleared by someone else's hands. Others are relegated to a field where the grass is already dying, scored deep with the losses of those who came before, inheriting a board already tilted against them. No power-ups. Pieces cracked before the first move is made. But strip away the circumstances and everyone is still playing the same game, tethered by the same rules. A game that takes more than it gives. A game nobody wins.
We just don't know that yet.
So we play the side-quests instead. The career ladders, the property portfolios, the curated families, the reputation carefully constructed over decades. We convince ourselves that if we collect enough trophies we can override the system, that the scoreboard is the point, that winning the smaller games adds up to something real. We treat accumulation like armour. We mistake motion for progress. We are not wrong that the game has rules. We are wrong about which game we are playing.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: frame work: personal journey
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The mirror always made me hesitate. Every morning in our Melbourne house, I stood before it with a handful of…
The mirror always made me hesitate.
Every morning in our Melbourne house, I stood before it with a handful of silver pins between my lips, folding black fabric over my hair while the heater coughed tired breaths into the room. Outside, the street was still wet from overnight rain. The neighbour’s magpies called from the powerlines. Somewhere down the hall, Mum was already in the kitchen, the scent of cardamom tea creeping beneath my bedroom door.
I knew this room better than any place in the world—the chipped white desk, the VCE notes taped to the wall, the faint crack in the ceiling shaped like a river. Yet some mornings I still felt like a guest in my own life.
I tucked one side of my hijab beneath my chin and pinned it into place. Too loose, and it slipped. Too tight, and it felt like armour.
At school, people asked questions they thought were harmless.
Do you wear that at home too?
Do your parents make you?
Aren’t you hot in summer?
Sometimes they asked kindly. Sometimes they asked with the same curiosity people use at zoos. I learnt to answer with a smile polished smooth from repetition. I became a walking explanation, a footnote attached to myself.
Too Afghan outside my front door.
Too different in a place that called itself multicultural while still staring a second too long.
I leaned closer to the mirror, checking the symmetry of my pins, as if a perfectly wrapped scarf could somehow protect me from the cold Melbourne stares. I was looking for a version of myself that finally made sense.
I thought I would find her six thousand miles away.
Pakistan waited in my imagination like a missing puzzle piece. Though my family was Afghan, years of displacement had threaded Pakistan through our history. It was where my parents had spent years before Australia, where cousins still lived, where Dari, Urdu and laughter tangled across phone calls. In my mind, it has become more than a country. It was an answer.
That afternoon, I slid my passport into my backpack and touched its stiff navy cover.
Australia, embossed in gold.
A promise, I thought.
Somewhere on the other side of the ocean, there was a version of me that fit.
Now, thirty thousand feet above the clouds, that same passport sat heavy in my lap.
The cabin lights were dimmed. Most passengers slept with mouths open, necks bent at impossible angles. A baby cried somewhere near the back before surrendering to exhaustion. Through the scratched airplane window, the sky was black and endless, the stars looking close enough to reach.
I traced the gold crest with my thumb—the kangaroo and emu—and wondered how strange it was that this little book was the only thing proving I belonged to the soil I had just left.
In the window reflection, I could see two versions of myself layered together: my face in the dark glass, and beyond it, nothing but sky.
Australian passport.
Afghan daughter.
Hijab pinned neatly under my chin.
I was suspended in the and of my identity.
Not there. Not here.
The engines hummed with a steadiness I envied. They knew exactly where they were going.
I imagined arrival like a movie scene: stepping into heat and noise and familiarity, into a place where no one would ask where I was really from. A place where my scarf would disappear into the crowd instead of announcing itself. A place where I would stop translating myself.
Mum stirred beside me and adjusted the blanket over her knees.
“Try to sleep,” she whispered.
I nodded, though sleep was impossible. Hope rarely rests.
The bazaar was louder than any memory could prepare me for.
Vendors called over one another in a dozen accents. Motorbikes threaded through impossible gaps. Fabric stalls spilled sequins and silk into the laneways. The air smelled of frying oil, dust, coriander, diesel and sun-warmed concrete. Somewhere, a radio played an old love song warped by static.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Writing about protest
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: How to be a force of change Published by Forbes April 29, 2026 Charlotte Dane, an instagram influencer and…
How to be a force of change
Published by Forbes
April 29, 2026
Charlotte Dane, an instagram influencer and activist provides an insight into her encounter with a stranger in need and how she used her power to not only help the stranger, but to also change the conditions for millions more.
“I was an activist, yes. But more than that I was an influencer, the activist part was more a front, a way to get followers. People could believe in me, believe that I could help the world and stand up for what was right, and so they would follow me. I was sent packages and given brand deals simply for agreeing. I went along with it for the longest time, but it was only when someone truly needed my help did I finally believe it too, believe I could make a change.
I started out my influencer career in early 2020. Initially I posted whatever was trending at the time, and my followers loved it. I really needed the money and at that point I truly was willing to do anything to get it…and social media, well that was the easiest way. I needed to save up to afford my own place. My platform grew fast, as the years passed my following count doubled, as more and more brands reached out. They all said the same thing.
”I had a certain look, like I could make change.”
Maybe it was because I looked like Greta Thunberg, or maybe they were just trying to make me rebrand myself to fit their brand identities better. Either way, it worked. I rebranded as a social media activist, I started online protests for various issues, only supported ethical businesses and started boycotting other brands…sort of.
I think it was around late 2023 when I received a package from a brand that had reached out. I had heard they weren’t the most ethical or environmentally friendly, but they had offered to send me free clothes. So obviously I made an exception. Typically I’d film an ‘unboxing video’ or ‘try on video’ to show the clothes to my followers. This time the brand requested a live video as they gained more traction from followers.
Soon the package arrived. I set up my camera and began filming. I ripped open the bag and begun showing the clothes. I pulled out a shirt from the bag and showed it to the camera as normal. I went to throw it beside me, then there it was. A sharp corner within the fabric. Searching through the it, I couldn’t find anything abnormal. Then there it was, one small white corner amidst the deep blue fabric. I tried to pull it out from beneath the seam. Failed. I was determined to get it out, grabbing my scissors, I started to cut each thread. All the while still broadcasting to my fans. I reached into the lining, only to pull out a large piece of paper, rolled up. A modern day message in a bottle.
The letter read:
“Dear Customer,
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: 'Time well spent' Stimulus 1…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: Time well spent I want to play with you. I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I…
Time well spent
I want to play with you.
I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I want to drag you to every arcade that still has flickering neon signs and sticky floors, pouring coins into machines until our pockets are empty and our laughter turns hoarse. Just bring the next game, the next ridiculous challenge — no, don’t tell us the rules; let us figure it out as we go, inventing them badly and breaking them better.
Let’s climb the big old oak tree in the park at dusk even though we’re both too old for it, bark scraping our palms, leaves tangled in our hair, daring each other to go one branch higher. We invent ridiculous rules for tag that change every thirty seconds. Hide and seek in the city at midnight — you disappear into the bright chaos of the laneways and I’ll still find you because I can hear your laugh from three blocks away.
Play the game as well as you can and that's what you're judged
I want to build blanket forts with you in the living room when it’s raining outside. Proper ones — fairy lights strung across, too many pillows, a playlist that makes no sense. We’ll declare it our kingdom and make up laws that only last until someone needs the bathroom. Then we’ll tear it all down at 2 a.m. and start again because the first version wasn’t quite right.
Let’s get lost in a second-hand bookstore and play the game where we only speak in titles we pull off the shelves. Let’s play tourists in our own city — terrible photos, exaggerated accents, asking strangers for directions we don’t need. Let’s play poker with matchsticks and imaginary millions. Let’s crank the music so loud the neighbours bang on the wall and we just turn it up and dance like idiots until we can’t breathe.
Hey — do you still play like a kid when no one’s watching? Guess we’ll find out.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Dare to be different
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” - Donald Miller I have…
“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” - Donald Miller
I have that tattooed on my wrist. I look blankly at it, rubbing it, with my thumb feeling the veins and folds of the skin. I got it a week after the diagnosis. Mummy and I had gone to a tattoo parlour on the side of town. Getting it together in the dead of night, impromptu. Late. Quiet. The memories come flooding back, as snippets of joy play out like hand drawn cell animation with a background score of constant giggling; her holding my hand as I panted and gasped embarrassingly like an overfatigued orangutan, me holding her hand as she sat upright and poised, visible happiness radiating on her skin. Mummy had stared at our wrists once it was completed -
“They’re perfect,” she affirmed with her words soaked in ecstasy.
The quote is from “A million miles in a thousand years.” a memoir by Donald Miller, we had read it together the summer before the diagnosis, mummy had finished the book with tears streaming down her face, her small face scrunched like she was trying her best to keep herself together.
“That was the best book I’ve ever read, Aari!” She declared, suddenly recovered from the emotion.
I flick through the pages mindlessly, I hadn't found the book as impactful as she did, it was humorous at some points and somewhat insightful at others, but entirely too long, too dragged out, and too unrelatable. I look up at her, her eyes wide and a slight smile on her face waiting - anticipating.
“I loved it as well” I blurted out rapidly, not sure if I fully believed it.
This is the effect she had on me: she makes me want to be liked, not just loved by her. I want to be someone she could have a special connection with, laugh with, share niche little book interests with, even if that wasn't authentically me. I want to be perfect for her.
I grin at the irony smacking me in the face, as I stare at the words engraved on my flesh “...stop expecting people to be perfect,” I wonder if I even believe it, or if this tattoo like many things in my life is purely for the satisfaction of others.
Thud! From the edge of the periphery, I catch glimpses of a small handheld mirror meeting the wall.
“Help! Help!” I hear a screechy blood curdling scream, coming from the living room and suddenly I have my answer - I have to be perfect… for her.
Still whiplashed, I darted towards the living room. My procedural memory guides my body while my mind follows wordlessly.
My eyes scan the room, already noting what I’ll need to clean up later. Cut fruit sits on the table, carved into irregular shapes, like someone had been attempting breakfast. I make a quick mental note to find a better hiding place for the knives.
A strong, earthy smell wafts through the air, like mud-caked boots on a rainy day. A shattered mirror glistens beneath a wall that seems to tell on everything, a discoloured crack splitting through it. That will need fixing.
But then my lip quivers as I spot a small figure bunched up on the floor - knees tucked into her chest, facing the wall. A shield of long white hair engulfs her like an oversized blanket. I step closer, observing as she slowly grows and shrinks with each passing breath. Then I hear it. A small voice. quiet, scared. I inch closer and the tiny voice singing “My girl” by The Temptations accompanied by hushed sobs becomes more distinct.
“What happened? Are you okay?” I questioned, immediately envisioning every possible scenario.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: 'What if We Tried Something…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: What if We Tried Something New? I want to play with you. I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant…
What if We Tried Something New?
I want to play with you.
I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I want to drag you to every arcade that still has flickering neon signs and sticky floors, pouring coins into machines until our pockets are empty and our laughter turns hoarse. Just bring the next game, the next ridiculous challenge — no, don’t tell us the rules; let us figure it out as we go, inventing them badly and breaking them better.
Let’s climb the big old oak tree in the park at dusk even though we’re both too old for it, bark scraping our palms, leaves tangled in our hair, daring each other to go one branch higher. We invent ridiculous rules for tag that change every thirty seconds. Hide and seek in the city at midnight — you disappear into the bright chaos of the laneways and I’ll still find you because I can hear your laugh from three blocks away.
When we play, we make the rules.
I want to build blanket forts with you in the living room when it’s raining outside. Proper ones — fairy lights strung across, too many pillows, a playlist that makes no sense. We’ll declare it our kingdom and make up laws that only last until someone needs the bathroom. Then we’ll tear it all down at 2 a.m. and start again because the first version wasn’t quite right.
Let’s get lost in a second-hand bookstore and play the game where we only speak in titles we pull off the shelves. Let’s play tourists in our own city — terrible photos, exaggerated accents, asking strangers for directions we don’t need. Let’s play poker with matchsticks and imaginary millions. Let’s crank the music so loud the neighbours bang on the wall and we just turn it up and dance like idiots until we can’t breathe.
Hey — do you still play like a kid when no one’s watching? Guess we’ll find out.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: 'What if We Tried Something…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: What if We Tried Something New? I want to play with you. I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant…
What if We Tried Something New?
I want to play with you.
I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I want to drag you to every arcade that still has flickering neon signs and sticky floors, pouring coins into machines until our pockets are empty and our laughter turns hoarse. Just bring the next game, the next ridiculous challenge — no, don’t tell us the rules; let us figure it out as we go, inventing them badly and breaking them better.
Let’s climb the big old oak tree in the park at dusk even though we’re both too old for it, bark scraping our palms, leaves tangled in our hair, daring each other to go one branch higher. We invent ridiculous rules for tag that change every thirty seconds. Hide and seek in the city at midnight — you disappear into the bright chaos of the laneways and I’ll still find you because I can hear your laugh from three blocks away.
When we play, we make the rules.
I want to build blanket forts with you in the living room when it’s raining outside. Proper ones — fairy lights strung across, too many pillows, a playlist that makes no sense. We’ll declare it our kingdom and make up laws that only last until someone needs the bathroom. Then we’ll tear it all down at 2 a.m. and start again because the first version wasn’t quite right.
Let’s get lost in a second-hand bookstore and play the game where we only speak in titles we pull off the shelves. Let’s play tourists in our own city — terrible photos, exaggerated accents, asking strangers for directions we don’t need. Let’s play poker with matchsticks and imaginary millions. Let’s crank the music so loud the neighbours bang on the wall and we just turn it up and dance like idiots until we can’t breathe.
Hey — do you still play like a kid when no one’s watching? Guess we’ll find out.
When we play, we make the rules.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: 'What if We Tried Something…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: What if We Tried Something New? I want to play with you. I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way…
What if We Tried Something New?
I want to play with you.
I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I want to drag you to every arcade that still has flickering neon signs and sticky floors, pouring coins into machines until our pockets are empty and our laughter turns hoarse. Just bring the next game, the next ridiculous challenge — no, don’t tell us the rules; let us figure it out as we go, inventing them badly and breaking them better.
Let’s climb the big old oak tree in the park at dusk even though we’re both too old for it, bark scraping our palms, leaves tangled in our hair, daring each other to go one branch higher. Let’s invent ridiculous rules for tag that change every thirty seconds. Let’s play hide and seek in the city at midnight — you hide in the bright chaos of the laneways and I’ll still find you because I can hear your laugh from three blocks away.
When we play, we make the rules.
I want to build blanket forts with you in the living room when it’s raining outside. Proper ones — fairy lights strung across, too many pillows, a playlist that makes no sense. We’ll declare it our kingdom and make up laws that only last until someone needs the bathroom. Then we’ll tear it all down at 2 a.m. and start again because the first version wasn’t quite right.
Let’s get lost in a second-hand bookstore and play the game where we only speak in titles we pull off the shelves. Let’s play tourists in our own city — terrible photos, exaggerated accents, asking strangers for directions we don’t need. Let’s play poker with matchsticks and imaginary millions. Let’s crank the music so loud the neighbours bang on the wall and we just turn it up and dance like idiots until we can’t breathe.
Hey — do you still play like a kid when no one’s watching? Guess we’ll find out.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: 'What if We Tried Something…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: What if We Tried Something New? I want to play with you. I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way…
What if We Tried Something New?
I want to play with you.
I want to play with you in every stupid, brilliant way possible. I want to drag you to every arcade that still has flickering neon signs and sticky floors, pouring coins into machines until our pockets are empty and our laughter turns hoarse. Just bring the next game, the next ridiculous challenge — no, don’t tell us the rules; let us figure it out as we go, inventing them badly and breaking them better.
Let’s climb the big old oak tree in the park at dusk even though we’re both too old for it, bark scraping our palms, leaves tangled in our hair, daring each other to go one branch higher. Let’s invent ridiculous rules for tag that change every thirty seconds. Let’s play hide and seek in the city at midnight — you hide in the bright chaos of the laneways and I’ll still find you because I can hear your laugh from three blocks away.
When we play, we make the rules.
I want to build blanket forts with you in the living room when it’s raining outside. Proper ones, with fairy lights and too many pillows and a playlist that makes no sense. We’ll declare it our kingdom and make up laws that only last until someone needs the bathroom. Then we’ll tear it all down at 2 a.m. and start again because the first version wasn’t quite right.
Let’s get lost in a second-hand bookstore and play the game where we only speak in titles we pull off the shelves. Let’s play tourists in our own city — take terrible photos, speak in exaggerated accents, ask strangers for directions we don’t need. Let’s play poker with matchsticks and imaginary millions. Let’s play music so loud the neighbours bang on the wall and we just turn it up and dance like idiots until we can’t breathe.
Hey — do you still play like a kid when no one’s watching? Guess we’ll find out.
When we play, we make the rules.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: personal journey
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: Clay clung to her ankles, sticky and cold, red dust curling into the fine cracks of her heels, pressed deep…
Clay clung to her ankles, sticky and cold, red dust curling into the fine cracks of her heels, pressed deep into the soles of her feet like the soil of her village itself, coarse and unyielding, a remnant of fields tilled long before she had words for labor or desire. Flooded rice paddies stretched in endless, mirror-gray planes beneath a sky low and flat, holding dawn in a silence that measured every step she took. The air smelled of wet earth, copper, and river silt; clay rims pressed into her wrists, biting, reminding her of the weight she was meant to bear, and the rhythm of the work entered her body before it had a name: lift, step, lower, balance. Her mother crouched near the charcoal fire, fingers blackened, eyes unwavering.
“Faster. Be useful.”
Water slid down her knuckles as she lifted another jar, clay soft beneath her feet while the paddies held the sky without rippling, clouds breaking only when her steps disturbed the surface, dust curling along ankles, into fingers, into the small creases of her skin, carrying the quiet insistence of everything she had been taught to carry, everything she had been measured against before she knew the shape of her own desire.
Decades later, the kitchen smelled of garlic, simmering water, and the faint metallic tang of polished tiles beneath her fingers. Fluorescent light hummed overhead, flattening the edges of bowls and counters with impartial certainty. Rice grains slipped through her fingers, glinting like tiny rubies, knives struck cutting boards with steady arcs, plastic bags folded themselves into neat triangles, tucked away with meticulous care. Wash, chop, stack, fold, repeat — the rhythm pressed into her spine, her limbs, her awareness.
A morning came when frost dusted the windowpanes, barely visible, like a whisper of what might be possible beyond the walls. The children pressed their hands to the glass, noses steaming, delighted by the delicate crystals, and she traced the faint outlines beside theirs with her fingers, feeling the cold seep through her gloves, quick and sharp, a sensation she had rarely allowed herself to notice.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: And yet things stay the same…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: May 6th 2026 Hey Dad, it's me, Eli. Your youngest child. At the time I am writing this, I am 19 years old and…
May 6th 2026
Hey Dad, it's me, Eli. Your youngest child. At the time I am writing this, I am 19 years old and I’ve moved to Melbourne with Mum and Rose since your conviction. Rose is doing well now, she’s studying biomedicine at Melbourne. Robbie is in England, he needed to be away from you. And Theo, well, he still hasn’t quite recovered since everything that happened. You know, since the crowbar incident.
It’s been thirty days since they told us you were gone. Thirty days since that shank in a prison cafeteria did what years of our prayers couldn’t do - it stopped you.
I’m 19 now. But reading this paper, I feel 4 years old again. Hiding under Rose’s bed with Theo and Robbie, holding our breath till we turned purple, so that you couldn’t find us after those terrifyingly enormous bottles of Rum evaporated.
I’m 10 years old. Watching Rose in her final year of school focusing more on our own safety than her career. Watching her act as a human shield for us. So that we were safe from you.
I was 14, watching my mother having her dignity stripped from her, for solely staying married to you, because you’d never let her divorce you. And if the thought even popped into her head, you would sure as hell let her know about it.
For 14 years you were my weather. I woke up every morning checking the sky of your face to see if it was safe to speak, safe to eat, safe to exist. Dad, you didn’t just give us pain. You gave us a lifetime of flinching at loud noises. You gave us the insufferable agony of loving someone we were all terrified of.
They say you were jailed for domestic violence and possession of drugs. They say that you paid off your debt. But 5 years in a cell doesn’t pay for the 14 years of my stolen childhood.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'Through the storm'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: It has been 5 long years. This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths…
It has been 5 long years.
This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths get a regular pet; a dog, a cat? Nope, they kidnap me from Romania, abduct me and take me away from my family and friends.
I don’t understand these creatures. Materialistic lifestyle, confined habitats. I need to get out of here, get through the storm.
I sit in my confined cell, late at night, reminiscing about home; The Carpathian peaks, rolling endlessly into the horizon, draped in native flora and pine so dark it almost appeared black in contrast to burning orange of the autumn sky. A calm breeze, seeping past the extreme wildflowers and bright, overgrown grass moving as if it was breathing, rippling in slow motion. Vast meadows so wide it made the sky feel disproportional. The smell of nature; rain and cold stone, the bright sunlight gleaming onto my fur. Where a storm was physical, not unwanted adversity which needs to be handled.
My eyes slowly widened as I awoke, to meet my gaze was the same four walls. The same rectangle of grey light from the window which never got closed. Air conditioner pumping artificial weather into my cage, not calm, but thick, always carrying the unwanted faint stench of old carpet and dust. Get me out of this hell hole.
‘MARIUS!’, I flinched hard. Gloria. She was the worst, always waking up at the crack of dawn. She never stopped talking and always persisted that I should eat less. She jabbed me with her fingers, rocked me around in my crate, then opened the glass door to the apartment balcony. She truly believes I like her.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'Through the storm'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: It has been 5 long years. This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths…
It has been 5 long years.
This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths get a regular pet; a dog, a cat? Nope, they kidnap me from Romania, abduct me and take me away from my family and friends.
I don’t understand these creatures. Materialistic lifestyle, confined habitats. I need to get out of here, get through the storm.
I sat in my confined cell, late at night and reminiscing about home; The Carpathian peaks, rolling endlessly into the horizon, draped in native flora and pine so dark it almost appeared black in contrast to burning orange of the autumn sky. A calm breeze, seeping past the extreme wildflowers and bright, overgrown grass moving as if it was breathing, rippling in slow motion. Vast meadows so wide it made the sky feel disproportional. The smell of nature; rain and cold stone, the bright sunlight gleaming onto my fur. Where a storm was physical, not unwanted adversity which needs to be handled.
My eyes slowly widened as I awoke, to meet my gaze was the same four walls. The same rectangle of grey light from the window which never got closed. Air conditioner pumping artificial weather into my cage, not calm, but thick, always carrying the unwanted faint stench of old carpet and dust. Get me out of this hell hole.
‘MARIUS!’, I flinched hard. Gloria. She was the worst, always waking up at the crack of dawn. She never stopped talking and always persisted that I should eat less. She jabbed me with her fingers, rocked me around in my crate, then opened the glass door to the apartment balcony. She truly believes I like her.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'Through the storm'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: It has been 5 long years. This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths…
It has been 5 long years.
This prison humans call an apartment is not for us marmots. Why couldn’t the Smiths get a regular pet; a dog, a cat? Nope, they kidnap me from Romania, abduct me and take me away from my family and friends.
I don’t understand these creatures. Materialistic lifestyle, confined habitats. I need to get out of here, get through the storm.
I sat in my confined cell, late at night and reminiscing about home; The Carpathian peaks, rolling endlessly into the horizon, draped in native flora and pine so dark it almost appeared black in contrast to burning orange of the autumn sky. A calm breeze, seeping past the extreme wildflowers and bright, overgrown grass moving as if it was breathing, rippling in slow motion. Vast meadows so wide it made the sky feel disproportional. The smell of nature; rain and cold stone, the bright sunlight gleaming onto my fur. Where a storm was physical, not unwanted adversity which needs to be handled.
My eyes slowly widened as I awoke, to meet my gaze was the same four walls. The same rectangle of grey light from the window which never got closed. Air conditioner pumping artificial weather into my cage, not calm, but thick, always carrying the unwanted faint stench of old carpet and dust. Get me out of this hell hole.
‘MARIUS!’, I flinched hard. Gloria. She was the worst, always waking up at the crack of dawn. She never stopped talking and always persisted that I should eat less. She jabbed me with her fingers, rocked me around in my crate, then opened the glass door to the apartment balcony. She truly believes I like her.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'When we play, we make the rules.'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: What if We Tried Something New? Let’s call it something new. No, not because we understand it yet. Because…
What if We Tried Something New?
Let’s call it something new. No, not because we understand it yet. Because sometimes you have to play with a thing before you know what it means.
Let’s start small. Let’s put a blanket over two chairs and call it a house. Actually, no , not a house. Too ordinary. Let’s call it a kingdom. A proper one. Pegs on the roof, cushions for walls, a torch for the moon, and a handwritten sign at the front that says Knock First, because even imaginary places deserve respect.
Let’s make rules. Serious rules. Everyone gets a turn. No one gets laughed at unless they are laughing too. If someone says stop, we stop. If someone is scared, we believe them. If someone is outside the circle, we move the circle.
That one matters.
Let’s pretend the carpet is ocean. Let’s pretend the couch is a mountain. Let’s pretend the hallway is a tunnel and the dark at the end is not frightening, just waiting to be named. Let’s pack snacks for the journey , dry cereal, stolen biscuits, one bruised apple, very heroic , and let’s go.
Actually, wait.
Let’s bring our minds with us, the minds that create rules just to get an edge on our friends.
Maybe it is a door. Maybe it is a bird. Maybe it is a cracked window, a red balloon, a photograph, a chair turned backwards, a sentence someone said once and then pretended not to mean. Maybe it looks simple from the outside. Most important things do. A toy. A stage. A game. A child with chalk on their fingers drawing a world big enough to stand inside.
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Play looks small until you enter it.
Then suddenly, the ordinary world loosens. The floor becomes lava. The stick becomes a sword. The sheet becomes a sail. The cardboard box becomes a rocket, a boat, a coffin, a castle, a time machine, a place to hide when the real house gets too loud. Doors closing. Kettles boiling. Someone saying, “I’m fine,” in that voice that means nobody is fine.
So we play louder.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: 'When we play, we make the rules.'
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: What if We Tried Something New? Let’s call it something new. No, not because we understand it yet. Because…
What if We Tried Something New?
Let’s call it something new. No, not because we understand it yet. Because sometimes you have to play with a thing before you know what it means.
Let’s start small. Let’s put a blanket over two chairs and call it a house. Actually, no , not a house. Too ordinary. Let’s call it a kingdom. A proper one. Pegs on the roof, cushions for walls, a torch for the moon, and a handwritten sign at the front that says Knock First, because even imaginary places deserve respect.
Let’s make rules. Serious rules. Everyone gets a turn. No one gets laughed at unless they are laughing too. If someone says stop, we stop. If someone is scared, we believe them. If someone is outside the circle, we move the circle.
That one matters.
Let’s pretend the carpet is ocean. Let’s pretend the couch is a mountain. Let’s pretend the hallway is a tunnel and the dark at the end is not frightening, just waiting to be named. Let’s pack snacks for the journey , dry cereal, stolen biscuits, one bruised apple, very heroic , and let’s go.
Actually, wait.
Let’s bring our minds with us, the minds that create rules just to get an edge on our friends.
Maybe it is a door. Maybe it is a bird. Maybe it is a cracked window, a red balloon, a photograph, a chair turned backwards, a sentence someone said once and then pretended not to mean. Maybe it looks simple from the outside. Most important things do. A toy. A stage. A game. A child with chalk on their fingers drawing a world big enough to stand inside.
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Play looks small until you enter it.
Then suddenly, the ordinary world loosens. The floor becomes lava. The stick becomes a sword. The sheet becomes a sail. The cardboard box becomes a rocket, a boat, a coffin, a castle, a time machine, a place to hide when the real house gets too loud. Doors closing. Kettles boiling. Someone saying, “I’m fine,” in that voice that means nobody is fine.
So we play louder.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Play to win
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: The clock’s ticking blares like a siren in my head. I sit hovering over the board, fingers wavering above the…
The clock’s ticking blares like a siren in my head. I sit hovering over the board, fingers wavering above the knight, my hand trembling as if one wrong move may break something far more fragile than just the game. Across from me, my opponent sits still, giving nothing away, as though the clock bends in his favour. I remind myself I’m here to win, that’s the rule, that’s the whole point. Isn’t it?
From the moment I was shown how to move a piece, from the moment my old man would hover over our game board telling me to “think ahead, Eli. Always think ahead,” everything has been about winning. Win pieces. Win the position. Win the game. Win the respect. Win. Win. Win.
Now I’m here in the final game for the title that everyone has told me will define my future. My fingers inch closer to the knight. I pull them back. I’m winning, and I know I am. I’ve played this position hundreds of times, drilled into me by my coach with a single mantra: ‘Control the centre, calculate deeper than your opponent, build pressure’. I can already see it; the knight takes the pawn, the bishop forced back, the queen slides across, check, check, then checkmate. Clean. Precise. Inevitable. So why am I freezing up now?
I glance at my opponent, his grin reminiscent of my father’s smile. I was young, sitting at the kitchen table across from Dad. The board was raggedy, a missing pawn replaced by a coin, and the rook was chipped. He smiled, glaring at me. “You’re thinking too hard”. But I want to win; I need to win. “Is that why you play? To win?” Back then, the question didn’t make sense. Of course, that’s why I played; everyone wants to win. But is that the goal?
The clock continues hammering its rhythm into my head. My opponent shifts slightly, still saying nothing. I force myself to calculate again, dive deeper, apply more pressure. The variations branch out in my mind, each one leading somewhere sharper, more decisive. Somewhere final.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a section B personal journeys…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: As we stand on the very edge of everything that we have worked towards, it's rather tempting to ask ourselves…
As we stand on the very edge of everything that we have worked towards, it's rather tempting to ask ourselves the question, "From what angle do we view life, and how does it help us develop?" We've been sold a myth of a linear journey, a straightforward path from ambition to achievement; society encourages us to view obstacles as nuisances to be bypassed. However, this artificial version of progress is a stagnation in disguise. True development does not come from one comfortable stretch of life, but rather in reality, when faced with challenges, which force us to halt, pivot and view our trajectory from a radically different angle. Only then can we reach for our potential.
We are, by nature, drawn to the fantasy of a comfortable life through one simple angle in which we can reach for our personal development. There is rampant demand for pathways in careers with high rewards but with low or no obstacles, highlighting the want of little effort and high returns in our current culture. We are poised by the current proliferation of social media content, where sensationalised highlights often lead individuals into an "echo chamber" of sorts, building on the desire to live out their dream of a comfortable journey. Perhaps from viewing the lives of influencers in social media's comfortable lives with little visible effort, triggers a primal instinct within human nature, to discover shortcuts with minimal effort, in which we view life through one narrow angle. With that in mind, this could be precisely the reason why J.K. Rowling's fantastical stories of Harry Potter continue to enrapture modern audiences. Within the discussion, it is crucial to note how viewing life from an uncomfortable angle is. As quoted from Marcus Aurelius, former emperor of the Roman Empire, "Comfort is the worst addiction". angles develop us as they force us to come up with solutions on the spot, challenging our intellect and thus developing our thinking, character and identity. Nonetheless, whether it be sensationalised social media highlights or wizards living in an escapist fantasy, it is clear that we live in a society obsessed with comfort by simply bypassing obstacles.