VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: vce crafting text on the future and…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: Entry 1: 29/04/2125 I can't remember the last time I was outside. The last time I felt the rain on my bare…
Entry 1: 29/04/2125
I can't remember the last time I was outside. The last time I felt the rain on my bare skin, the last time I felt the breeze through my hair.
I remember the day they announced it. That the government planned on building "silo" style societies underground, where all would live. Sustainable housing districts. What a lie. But I was only a kid then. I couldn't understand.
They told us that it would heal the earth, especially after man's dependence on AI lead to accelerated climate change, to the point where whole countries were uninhabitable. Cities were swallowed by heat. There weren't even any crops left.
I remember everyone I knew celebrating. There was finally a solution to the madness created. June 10th was the day the first district moved in, we all heard about how clean they were, how futuristic, how safe it all was. The broadcasts showed happiness, joy and optimism.
It was all so believable.
Entry 2: 13/05/2125
Recently, I've been reminiscing about moving day. I try to remember the good parts. The excitement in the air, the shouting of other kids, so excited to see their new homes for the first time. Not the fear in the air. The solemn expressions on our parents' faces. The coughing and wheezing of the sick.
I remember when I first stepped foot into the silos. The robots gave us our new id bands, and assigned us to our new living spaces. Our new homes. Floor 144, Room 19. They additionally handed out work rotations, food schedules, school hours. It felt as if everything had already been determined for us. We couldn’t choose anything. And if we broke the rules, our id bands would immediately be deactivated. The cameras were always on.
That first night was terrifying. I recall hearing a constant buzz through the walls, the vents blowing air across my face, as if the silo was alive.
Entry 3: 27/05/2125
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: people often shrink them selfs to fit in
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: The hedges in our street were always cut into obedient shapes. Squares. Circles. Clean edges. Every Sunday…
The hedges in our street were always cut into obedient shapes.
Squares. Circles. Clean edges.
Every Sunday morning, men stood outside with silver shears, shaving away the stray branches that reached too far into the light. Grass clippings gathered at their feet like something dead. By Monday, the street looked artificial again — trimmed into something respectable.
My mother hated it.
“Plants are supposed to grow wild,” she used to mutter while watering the jasmine climbing our fence. “People only cut things when they’re afraid of what they become.”
I never understood what she meant until high school.
That was when I learnt beauty had rules.
Not the obvious kind printed across billboards or glowing from phone screens, but quieter rules. More dangerous ones. The kind hidden inside the way people looked at you for half a second too long after hearing your name.
Ali.
Too ethnic.
Too western suburbs.
Too loud.
By Year Eight, I had already begun reducing myself into something easier to consume.
Teachers shortened my name without asking. Friends flattened my accent into cleaner syllables. I stopped bringing leftover curry to school after somebody asked why my food “smelled like the train station.” I learnt to laugh immediately after making certain jokes, just so people knew I understood I was different before they could point it out themselves.
That became my talent.
Shrinking before others had the chance to shrink me first.
At school, beauty existed in strange forms.
It existed in effortless confidence. In boys who loosened their ties perfectly and girls whose messy buns somehow looked intentional. In expensive shoes untouched by rainwater and skin that looked permanently sunlit. Even their imperfections felt rehearsed.
During lunch, groups scattered themselves across the courtyard like carefully arranged advertisements. The attractive people occupied the centre tables near the basketball courts where sunlight reached first. Everyone else existed around the edges.
And somehow, people always knew where they belonged.
I learnt that too.
In English class, students laughed when I mispronounced the word “epitome.” I laughed with them even though my face burned hot enough to feel it behind my ears.
“Nah, say it again,” one boy grinned.
The teacher smiled politely, waiting for the moment to pass.
So I repeated the word wrong on purpose the second time because it felt less humiliating if the mistake looked intentional.
That afternoon, I went home and searched up pronunciation videos alone in my room with headphones on.
After that, I spoke less in class.
On the train to school every morning, the city transformed station by station. The further east we travelled, the cleaner everything became. Graffiti disappeared. Cafés replaced corner stores with metal shutters. Girls stepped onto platforms wearing shoes so white they looked untouched by weather.
Even the silence sounded expensive.
I used to watch my reflection in the train window as we crossed the river.
Somewhere between stations, I always started editing myself.
My posture straightened.
My voice softened.
My vocabulary changed shape.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Write a creative piece with the theme…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: I've been underwater for seventy-four days. Not the drowning kind, not lungs-filling, thrashing panic, but…
I've been underwater for seventy-four days.
Not the drowning kind, not lungs-filling, thrashing panic, but something quieter. Like gravity's been turned up, and the world drags just a little harder on my limbs. Sounds come muffled. Colours dulled. As though I'm watching my life through a thick pane of glass.
They say grief is a tide, a rhythmic thing that eventually retreats to give you room to breathe. But sometimes, it stays. Stagnates. Thick and cold and constant, the water soaking into your clothes, your chest, your thoughts. Becomes a weight pressing at your spine, folding itself into the gaps of your day. It fills you up until there's no room for anything else.
We used to come to the reservoir in the summers. On those scorching, breathless afternoons where the sky was a bruised indigo and the earth parched into a thousand cracks. He'd always be the first in, flinging himself forward without hesitation. Just limbs and laughter and a splash that echoed off the rocks. I used to hang back. Pretend I wasn't afraid of how deep it was.
He said he liked how things sounded beneath the water, how the world got quiet, like it was whispering something just for us. He said it made him feel suspended. Weightless. So why, now that I'm stuck here, does it feel so crushing?
The last time we came here together, he stayed in the water longer than anyone should have. I sat on this same ledge, watching him float on his back with his eyes closed, arms wide, like he was trying to take up as much sky as possible. You're going to drown, I told him. Not today, he said. He was always so certain of that.
I come alone now.
I don't swim.
I just sit on the edge, shoes off, heels pressed against the rough concrete, toes skimming the water. I don't speak. There's no one left to listen. And the silence isn't soft anymore. It claws at the inside of my head. It howls.
A woman walked past with a dog once, while I was sitting here. She smiled at me the way people smile at someone who looks like they need it. "Beautiful spot," she said. I nodded. She moved on. She had no idea I was underwater.
I still reach for my phone, sometimes, without thinking. My thumb ghosts over his name before I remember. His contact's still pinned. The last message he sent still unopened. I haven't brought myself to read it.
Sometimes I think it says something ordinary. Something like on my way or pick up milk. Something so small it would make the whole thing unbearable. Other times I think it says something I needed to hear. Something I still need. I keep it closed because once I read it, I have to know which one it is. It feels like a trap door. Like the minute I open it, something will fall out that I can't hold. His profile picture is a cruel artifact: a crooked smile, sunlight caught in his hair, a boy the universe never taught to be afraid, or maybe one who had learned to wear fearlessness so well that even I believed it. I wonder now if there were things he didn't tell me either. Whether beneath his particular kind of loud, he was also sometimes quietly underwater.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The title is becoming and the stimulus…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive…
For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive essay exploring “becoming”, and the stimulus being “you are shaped by every choice you refuse to surrender”. The title and stimulus helped establish my contention that becoming isn’t a result of one’s own belief but of their choices, habits and decisions which they have refused to surrender to challenges.
Exploring the complex web of the formation of "becoming" someone, I drew particularly on Helen Keller, who had experienced great struggles throughout her life. Yet through her daily habit of learning from her teacher, she became a prominent figure in women's rights and became the first deaf-blind person to receive a bachelor's degree. Displaying how an atomic habit of persistence can accumulate and help anyone achieve anything, regardless of the hardships they have endured.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Please mark this VCE Narrative based…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 70%: The bright screen of my apple laptop had started to cause a dull ache behind my temple, and i was only three…
The bright screen of my apple laptop had started to cause a dull ache behind my temple, and i was only three hourse into my study session. If you can even call it that. Because for most of it, i was rethinking my life decisions and searrching up witch college courses did not require a prerequiste of advanced maths. Lets just say, it made me internally cry harder.
The loud sound of the second-hand, run-down TV being used, distracted me the whole time. What should have been background noise quickly turned into the sound of an annoying fly that would’nt stop pestering you, after my dad came into the room to watch his favourite chinese drama. Max volume at that.
“ would you please put the volume down, Baba?” i say , the agitation laced within my words were hard to ignore.
“Ayy, why are you always like this? “ Baba tormented back, “Always studying, but never spending time with me or your mother!” Upon hearing this, the dull ache taking root had become a full on migraine , on which had it’s claws wrapped around my whole head. Hard and unrelenting. The sound of my mother entering the lounge room stopped me from the remark i was about to throw my dad’s way. her presence- which in most cases brang me peace and comfort- made the small, old vicotrian closed-plan area even more smaller. The loud chime of the old grandfather clock mimicked every step my mother took closer to me unitl finally she slid the plate of sliced apples she had with her towards me, her eyebrows knitted with concern and a hint of annoyance.
“ your father is right, Ava, you need to stop studying for once. There are far more important things in life. I mean, me and your father are not going to live forever, no?”
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: every stage of life is important
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: Life is Long Some memories do not fade; they settle into the objects that outlast us. When I lift the…
Life is Long
Some memories do not fade; they settle into the objects that outlast us.
When I lift the jewellery box from the shelf, dust loosens beneath my fingers. The brass hinge resists before giving way with a tired sigh. Its corners are worn, its lacquer split by fine cracks, and the gold that once flashed has dulled with age.
My mother gave it to me in the spring of 1968, on the morning I left home.
At eighteen, I noticed only that it was beautiful.
“Mum, I’m ready!”
I called from the doorway with the impatience of someone certain life began elsewhere.
Our town felt stale and unmoving. Rainwater sat permanently in the pothole outside the post office. The bakery’s OPEN sign still flickered though the shop had closed years before. The clock outside the chemist had been stuck at 11:47 for so long no one trusted it anymore.
Two hours away, the city burned in my imagination. Glass towers. Electric streets. Women with sharp heels and sharper purpose. I pictured myself among them, brisk and important, carrying a life that gleamed.
My mother stood by the kitchen table, holding a polished wooden box with a gold diamond set into the lid. Her eyes were wet, though she smiled.
“Ann,” she said, pressing it into my hands, “this little box cannot hold all your dreams, but it can hold a reminder of me.”
Her palms lingered over mine.
“Don’t ever let it be the only beautiful thing you own.”
I laughed softly, kissed her cheek, and tucked the box into my suitcase.
I heard affection in her words.
It would take me years to hear the warning.
I dented the box seventeen years later.
By then I was thirty-five and living high above the city in an apartment whose windows never truly darkened. Office buildings glowed all night, rows of empty desks lit like aquariums. Men in polished shoes queued for taxis each morning with faces already tired before sunrise.
The city had movement, but no motion.
I had become a doctor exactly as I planned. My name sat neatly on a brass plaque. Patients thanked me. My colleagues respected me. My apartment was expensive, immaculate, and used mostly for sleeping.
That night the hospital rang before dawn.
Emergency surgery. Come now.
I dressed in the dark, reached for my keys, and caught the jewellery box with my elbow. It struck the floor with a hollow crack.
I stepped over it and left.
When I returned the next afternoon, the box still lay beside the dresser, its lid crooked.
I picked it up.
The dent was small, hardly visible, yet my thumb kept finding it.
I had spent years building a life that looked complete from the outside: the title, the degree, the skyline. Yet in my hands was the object meant to hold what mattered, and it felt almost weightless.
I lifted the lid.
The cedar scent of the wood rose at once, followed by the faint trace of my mother’s perfume.
Inside was almost nothing.
A photograph of me at eight, grinning through missing teeth. A train ticket from university. And emptiness.
My mother’s words returned with sudden clarity.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Seeds of Change
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Dear Mrs U. Grey, This letter acknowledges the passing of your late husband. We extend our formal condolences.…
Dear Mrs U. Grey,
This letter acknowledges the passing of your late husband. We extend our formal condolences. Unfortunately, he understood his actions would lead to his demise, and retaliation from our officers was necessary.
Central Authority of the Dominion
Dear Mrs U. Grey,
We received your responsive letter and appreciate your confusion. Your husband’s participation in on‑foot rally through the heart of the Capital, contesting the possible re-introduction of conscription to the military. His actions interfered with the ongoings of the CBD and threatened the safety of citizens and officers alike. Conscription is becoming a necessity in our increasingly dire state, with the country’s valuable resources at stake, and in turn, our precious economy.
He should have accepted this fact.
Central Authority of the Dominion
To Mrs U. Grey,
We ask you do not return any more letters to our address. Your escalating anger is noted but cannot be permitted to interfere with the Dominions’ operations. The safety of the entire country is in our best interest, including you, regardless of your emotional state. Your accusation that we are both a “soulless, dictating assembly of butchers,” is not only inaccurate but inflammatory. We are the ones who sustain the quiet, effortless life you take for granted, the stabilising force that prevents disorder from reaching your door. We warn you now: if you should in any form step out of line, like your husband, we will not refrain from correcting you in order to maintain peace and unity within the Dominion.
Central Authority of the Dominion
This letter is directed to Mrs Una Grey.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Demonstrate effective writing skills…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Assigned Difficulty -> Final Piece. Press Start. The screen flashes to life, lighting up the pitch black…
Assigned Difficulty -> Final Piece.
Press Start.
The screen flashes to life, lighting up the pitch black room, asking you to choose your difficulty level.
You don't remember selecting one, but somehow, it's already chosen for you. Some players begin with full health, bonus currency, and loads of popularity points. Others are less fortunate, spawning in the dark. Initially, you are on average starting conditions, full health, average intelligence, average amounts of currency, probably less than average popularity among contestants. But enough about that. You have entered level 1: Introduction.
Level 1: Introduction
* Ready players! Begin...
You open your eyes. Blinding light pouring into the room. You have now made it level 1. 5 million don't make it past this stage due to unforseen circumstances. This level is relatively easy, just cry, eat, play, sleep, repeat. No one expects much from you. You are just one player out of many. Others, however, require much more. Some figure out they can cry for attention, some cry out of necessity, and some don't get a chance too.
Based on your difficulty level, your chances vary. Easy level, probably born in the land of the free, plenty of food, full health, but some are not as lucky. Medium level, equal chance of being born anywhere cool, maybe Western Europe. Nice adventure spots. Hard level, Sometimes there's no food or drink, and for some, it's the inescapable horror of sickness. But your only task right now is too sleep and eventually, you will progress to level 2: Development.
Level 2: Development
"Congratulations! You have proceeded to the next level!"
Here, another 5 million continue. The odds were now in their favor. Clearly, He adds more in your favor this time. This level is all about exploration and hitting those milestones. All difficulty levels must experience this phenomenon. You begin to take steps! Your "one small step for man is one giant leap for mankind!" You begin to say words! Some players are boring, only saying 'mama' or 'dada', but you say 'again'. Interesting.
At this stage, players begin to imagine a world different to this one. For some, its dragons and princesses. Others pretend to become an astronaut. Your ideas become limitless. A small minority perhaps do not imagine at all. But within your imagination, ideas are still set. Being for a child like you, but probably important.
Based on your difficulty level, your experience moving forward changes. Easy level. Most things are handed to you. Wealth, popularity points given freely. Medium level, average but given hope. Hard level. Most start with 50% fewer resources. But you, you're doing just fine.
Actually, you're not just fine, your lucky! Developing well. However, you are getting older. You now have to progress to level 3: Expansion.
Level 3: Expansion.
"Your journey is just beginning! keep going"
Another 6 million must progress. You, as well as the majority of players must upgrade your intelligence. Very important. Achievements can now be unlocked. Based on your stats, your choices differ. Those on easy have better chances. Rules are more important, affecting your character.
Some players now gain bonus points disguised as luck. They unlock achievements faster because of their chances. One such achievement includes. Not everyone can unlock this, only those with high popularity. This will greatly affect character.
Achievements can now be converted to points. some players become the bullies, while some are. If you don't have the required achievements you losing points. this group of girls don't like you. They make fun of your hair and shoes. losing popularity points. Your begining to fall behind. But that's ok, it's expected at this stage. You might catch up eventually.
Your intelligence now influences which perks you can unlock. The higher intelligence, the more recognition, and the better the perks. Here, some players cannot imagine anymore. They have good perks!
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Questioning the World Around…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: The summer sun in Melbourne didn’t bake the earth like it did back home; instead, it felt sharp, casting long…
The summer sun in Melbourne didn’t bake the earth like it did back home; instead, it felt sharp, casting long shadows across the asphalt of the school courtyard. At thirteen, everything about my new life in Australia felt slightly out of focus. I spent my recesses sitting on the edge of the concrete oval, clutching a lunch container of fried rice that grew cold before I could muster the courage to open it. The smell of ginger and sesame oil felt like a loud confession in a yard that smelled entirely of meat pies and sunscreen.
Moving from Guangzhou to Victoria just six months earlier had turned me into a ghost in my own skin. Back home, my identity was water—effortless, invisible, and shared by everyone around me. Here, it was a heavy stone I carried in my pocket, weighing down every step. I spoke English with a careful, calculated precision, flattening out my vowels to mimic the casual drawl of my classmates, terrified of the sharp edges of my native accent cutting through.
The defining moment of my transition occurred on a Thursday during a humanities class. The room was stuffy, humming with the drone of the overhead fans and the scratching of cheap plastic pens. We were drawing maps, charting trade routes across the Pacific Ocean with blue and red markers.
"Hey," a voice cut through my concentration. It was Chloe, a girl with sun-bleached hair and a pattern of freckles across her nose that seemed to grant her automatic queen bee status. She leaned over my desk, her chair scraping loudly against the wooden floor. "Where are you from?"
"Glen Waverley," I replied automatically, naming the suburb where my parents had rented a small, brick unit with a lemon tree in the backyard. I had rehearsed this answer. I wanted it to be the end of the conversation.
Chloe laughed, a short, non-malicious sound that nevertheless made the hairs on my arms stand up. "No, but where are you really from?"
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Framework of Ideas: Conflict Creative…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: The smell of diesel fumes fills the thick air while the bus roars through the evening. The bus is packed with…
The smell of diesel fumes fills the thick air while the bus roars through the evening. The bus is packed with people; chatter and casual conversation fill the air. The brakes hiss and we come to a stop. A tall white man in a suit looks around the ‘Whites only’ section of the bus to find none available, then looks at me.
“Give me that seat, lady,” he cries out in a slightly demanding tone, but it sounds as though he asks this on a regular basis.
“No, I won’t give it up,” I answer sternly. Anyway, why should I give my seat to a capable white man just because of the colour of my skin? The fabric feels rough. I am in a space that tries to make me invisible.
At that moment, it is almost as though the bus has stopped even though it is going full speed down a main road. The air fills with suspense. The casual chatter pauses. People look in my direction.
“You will be hearing from the police, lady. Give it up!” He repeats, now more harshly. I know that deep inside he is trembling. He’s desperate to prove his superiority, when this belief carries no substance and is only enforced by repression.
This time I just look blankly at him. There are so many words trapped inside of me, but none of them come out. The bus driver, noticing this, decides to stop the bus.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Becoming Me
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Becoming me In a small coastal town in New South Wales, the ocean stretched endlessly, and gossip travelled…
Becoming me
In a small coastal town in New South Wales, the ocean stretched endlessly, and gossip travelled faster than the tide, everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew about her.
They knew who she dated.
They knew when they broke up.
They knew she’d stopped showing up to university.
And they knew her grades were slipping.
Something no one knew though was how quiet her world had become after the breakup. It wasn’t just the relationship she lost it was the version of herself that she built around it. Study sessions had turned into scrolling through old photos and Instagram posts, assignments were left unfinished, and her productivity was left at an all-time low.
In a town so small, heartbreak didn’t stay private, it echoed. It echoed through the bread section at the local grocery store where she heard Mrs Smith and Mrs Jones talking about it, it echoed in her university lectures when the 3 girls behind her were gossiping and it echoed through every corner she turned with people stopping, whispering and pointing.
One night, sitting on the sand with the cool, salty breeze blowing her hair she realised that if she stayed in this small town, she would shrink. She would have become the girl who couldn’t move on, the girl who lost her spark.
So, she did something that she never thought she would do.
She left.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The future we inherit
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: The future we inherit I walked in the dim morning fog. It was colder than I expected. The kind of cold that…
The future we inherit
I walked in the dim morning fog. It was colder than I expected. The kind of cold that seeps into your skin and doesn't leave. I stood there in the half-light, my cardboard sign pressed against my shivering chest. In a messy “There is no planet B” was sprawled across the page. Some people gathered in small groups filling out the street, some talking, some quiet, all waiting. With shivering hands, I clutched my sign as if the message itself held weight. Of my future, of my life, of the world. I had never been to a protest before, but today it almost didn't feel like it was a choice.
Climate change is often talked about in statistics and data. I could say and tell you that the Earth has already warmed by over one degree. The sea levels are rising. That extreme weather is becoming more common. But we’ve heard it before, haven’t we? Over and over again. Same words. Same warnings.
Movements inspired by activists such as Greta Thunberg, had made something that felt so distant into something urgent. It wasn't just about the environment but our future. We weren't scientists or politicians. We were teenagers, students, people who had been told that if they just worked hard enough, they could build a life. But as time moved on, our futures felt fragile, like glass under pressure.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Place is where you are, not who…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: My favorite story as a chailf was about the Ugly Duckling. I remember curling up in bed at night, with my dad,…
My favorite story as a chailf was about the Ugly Duckling. I remember curling up in bed at night, with my dad, as he would tell me a story before I went to sleep. His soft voice would tell me the tale once again if I asked him to.
He would tell me about the duckling, hatching from an egg a little too large for a duck. The egg took longer to hatch than the others, sitting in the nest while all the others had already cracked. He told me about the egg hatching one day, revealing a black bird instead of the yellow ducklings in the nest.
I never understood why I liked the story so much. I liked the way the Ugly Duckling always ended up at the end, spreading its large, elegant wings and emerging as a beautiful black swan.
The first time I had my Ugly Duckling moment was during pre-school. I was too young to remember much of it, but I can remember the loneliness.
Lunches sitting alone on a small chair, cradling my green lunchbox in my arms as other girls around me sat together on the big circle tables.
I remember when the teachers played songs through the speakers in our colorful classroom, the classroom that felt like it was closing in on me the more I tried to talk to others. I would join in on the small dances, but instead of playing in step with another pair of shoes, I spun around clumsily on my own.
I remember looking at my report cards from back then and seeing words that made no sense to me.
“She’s really quiet, she should speak more”.
Which didn’t make any sense because I was always talking to others.
That was my first Ugly Duckling moment — being singled out from all the other pre-schoolers when I tried, with all my four-year-old courage, to be one of the others.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Creating Text about country using the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 82.5%: Before language, before cities, there was water. I stand on the hot grainy sand, it crunches with every…
Before language, before cities, there was water. I stand on the hot grainy sand, it crunches with every little movement under my shoes. Air rushes against my face, flinging my hair back. The waves pound against the shore, creating a thunderous applause. The tide rises and falls like a thrumming pulse, beating the rhythm of a steady heart against the shore. Sunlight dances on the waves like a thousand glittering diamonds.
It all arrives like a friend. Steady. Familiar. Reassuring.
It has been years though. Years since I have seen this friend. Years since I was forced away from its salty embrace. Years of living in a crowded concrete jungle have dulled my senses. I have grown used to the grey hum of the city, where the air is thick with the scent of exhaust rather than salt. The city feels like a cage compared to the vast coast. But the ocean recognises me before I can recognise myself.
I look over at a tall leaning tree. It too leans towards the sea, as if it does not want to leave. I used to climb the tree as a kid and stare out at the thrashing waves. I would sit under the tree with my pop and talk for hours. He used to calmly tell me, "my heart is permanently anchored here, even when my body goes." I never understood what he said back then.
Suddenly I feel small again. I am running across the water’s edge with the sand moulding to my small footprint, splashing with every step. I search for the glistening of seashells. The tiniest of shines fills me with so much happiness. Every seashell I find adds to the rhythmic clatter in my plastic bucket. I search for more smooth seashells or tiny hiding crabs, leaving a trail of footprints that the ocean quickly washes away.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Moving forward’ Stimulus: ‘Most…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: The SAC started at 9:00 am. By 9:05 am, I had only written my name, the date and my student declaration.…
The SAC started at 9:00 am.
By 9:05 am, I had only written my name, the date and my student declaration. That’s it nothing else. The prompt glares right back at me like a challenge I was not trained for. Even after preparing countless flashcards, notes, everything colour coded perfectly. I was ‘ready’. But it seemed like when the time came it felt impossible to face winter. I tried to comfort myself, I just needed to write something, anything. All this rehearsal, so much backstage rehearsing. I told everyone I was ready. I had almost convinced myself too. I had put on a mask for myself and now I had to perform.
My pen finally touched the paper, but what came out was the worst sentence I had ever produced. I crossed it out immediately.
The rest of the room was in dead silence; the only noise seemed to be from other people. Their pens scratching, pages flipping and the occasional hand shaking form a writing cramp. Everyone seemed to be writing. Everyone else seemed to know something that I didn’t. I can’t fail, not another SAC at least.
The clock read 9:14 am.
I pressed my fingers against my temples and tried to locate the knowledge I knew was somewhere inside of me. It felt like searching a dark room for a light switch, I knew it was there, I just couldn't find the wall. One part of me insisted it was fine. The other part was louder.
I could not keep thinking about what came after this, the consequences. The marks. The report. My parents’ face after they asked how the SAC was. I told them I was ready. I thought about university preferences, about the gap between who I am trying to become and who I really am. I had put on a mask. That mask was never really for me. I knew that. But the audience had grown it wasn’t just me, it was my parents, my friends who will ask how the SAC was, my teachers.
Frozen. Pen in hand. At a desk that suddenly felt very small. Most people aren’t ready to deal with consequences, I’d heard my teacher say once. I spent so much energy avoiding the outcome that I forget to change the behaviour that leads to it. I was frozen, unable to move forward, stuck the way you are when someone says something awkward and the only option left is to pretend you never heard it.
The clock read 9:21am.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: picking up the pieces
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: The front door closed behind me with its usual long creak, and I stopped in the hallway for a moment, letting…
The front door closed behind me with its usual long creak, and I stopped in the hallway for a moment, letting the weight of my backpack drag against my shoulders. The straps had rubbed the skin near my neck raw during the walk home. My spine ached. My shirt clung damply to my back beneath the blazer.
The house smelled the same gut-wrenching smell it's always been.
Stale beer. Damp plaster. Boiled cabbage left too long in a pot somewhere. The air sat heavily in the hallway without moving, thick enough to taste. Wallpaper peeled away from the walls in curling strips, exposing cracks underneath that stretched toward the ceiling like spreading veins. Near the skirting boards, the plaster had swollen from water damage and crumbled into soft grey dust.
I nudged the front door shut properly with my heel.
From the living room came the low murmur of voices.
Not loud yet.
I slipped off my shoes beside the staircase and moved carefully through the hallway. Old newspapers leaned in unstable towers against the wall. Empty bottles crowded the side table near the kitchen door. Somewhere upstairs a tap dripped steadily into a sink.
The kitchen light buzzed faintly overhead.
The sink was full again.
Cloudy water sat beneath a slick layer of grease. Soggy cereal floated near the drain beside scraps of onion skin and pale ribbons of fat. A plate balanced precariously against the faucet. Another cup sat overturned in the water like something drowned.
I rolled my sleeves up.
The water was lukewarm when I pushed my hands into it. Grease slid across my wrists. I scrubbed silently, listening to the voices in the next room through the wall.
I heard my father's voice first. Low. Tight. Each word clipped short.
Mum answered faster, her sentences running into each other as though she was trying to get everything out before he cut her off again.
A cupboard door slammed but I kept washing.
The plates clinked softly against each other in the sink. Water dripped from my elbows onto the floorboards. Behind me, the fridge motor rattled unevenly, coughing every few seconds like it was struggling to stay alive.
The voices sharpened.
“You always do this—”
“Oh, and you don’t?”
“You think I don’t notice?”
A chair scraped violently across the floor.
I dried one plate. Then reached for another.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: “Becoming” Stimulus: “You are…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive…
For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive essay exploring “becoming”, and the stimulus being “you are shaped by every choice you refuse to surrender”. The title and stimulus helped establish my contention that becoming isn’t a result of one’s own belief but of their choices, habits and decisions which they refused to surrender.
Exploring the complex web of the formation of "becoming" someone, I drew particularly on Helen Keller, who had experienced great struggles throughout her life. Yet through her daily habit of learning from her teacher, she became a prominent figure in women's rights and became the first deaf-blind person to receive a bachelor's degree.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Transformation
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: Every Friday night, we end up at Tillie’s house. It used to feel unbreakable. Like nothing about it could…
Every Friday night, we end up at Tillie’s house.
It used to feel unbreakable. Like nothing about it could shift. Her mum’s pasta is always on the stove, the smell of it wrapping through the house. The couch is always too full, bodies pressed together without thinking twice about it. Laughter always spilling over itself. It wasn’t something we questioned. It just existed.
Now I walk there like I’m stepping into something I’ve already started to lose.
The door is open when I arrive. Music and laughter leak out into the night air before I even step inside.
“Hey,” I say, trying to sound like I still belong in the same rhythm.
There’s a pause. Small. Easy to miss. Hard to ignore.
“Hey, Jaz,” Tillie says without really looking up.
I sit anyway. Same place. Same instinct. Like staying still enough might hold things in place.
The TV flicks on. Scream 2.
My stomach tightens before anything even happens. They know I hate horror movies. They’ve always known. It used to be the kind of thing that meant something.
Ava looks back with a grin already formed. “Jaz is gonna lose it, watch.”
Laughter comes fast.
I laugh too. Because it’s easier than being the only one not matching the room.
But I start shrinking without noticing. I get talked over and don’t repeat myself. I stop adjusting my body when space closes in. My voice starts arriving late, like it’s no longer sure it’s wanted.
It doesn’t happen loudly. Just quietly, until I barely recognise the shape I’m taking up.
Later, I go into Tillie’s room for my charger.
Her phone is face down on the bed. The screen lights up anyway.
A group chat.
All of them.
My name isn’t there.
It doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels precise. Like something that was always true just finally surfaced.
I stand still for too long.
No one comes in. No one calls for me.
When I walk out, nothing shifts.
“Where are you going?” Ava asks, casual.
“Home,” I say.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: "The eternity of the pause" Shattered…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 72.5%: Final Piece The Eternity of the Pause Monday, 6:23pm The red string from Chinese New Year two weeks ago still…
Final Piece
The Eternity of the Pause
Monday, 6:23pm
The red string from Chinese New Year two weeks ago still hung from the doorknob. The ‘lucky’ red threads began to untwine, as incense permeated the air, settling beneath my skin.
As I walked into the corridor, I noticed the bathroom door was slightly open. Through it, I saw a mirror.
In front of the buddha statue, my mother’s hands were raised in front of her head, knees on the ground—praying.
In the same mirror, my father slouched on our second-hand couch, sinking, drowning into that endless abyss of “I’m tired, but I can’t sleep”. His eyes screamed “I’m done with this shit”, anytime that same red appeared before him.
And yet, in between them in the mirror, she stood. Red string tied around her wrists, the face of my parents’ marriage—me.
Tuesday, 10:45pm
The block letters “VOTE FOR LILA” were plastered across the school. Every corner, every pivot, it appeared.
It was weird being Lila Chan.
She stood on stage. Her hands commanded the atmosphere with great enthusiasm, heads lifting where she pointed, fashioning a perfect, pearly white smile to really “lock in” the votes. The class loved her—-the golden retriever, the “yes you can count on me!” friend.
But who was she?
The wind gently brushed the red string tied around the doorknob as she walked in. No greetings, no halfway smiles—nothing. Her mother walked by with a basket of laundry, her gaze drifting towards the “School Vice-Captain” application in her hand. At that moment, something danced through the air. It wasn’t awkwardness, nor annoyance—just disapproval that echoed through the stillness of her pupils. Her father, on the other hand, saw her on the way to the bathroom. No congratulations, but just a small, “Keep it up” sort of nod. That was it. She walked towards the bathroom mirror, looking at that shiny badge plated on her chest.
6:54PM the clock read.
Curiously, there was a silver crack on the bottom side of the mirror. The glossy surface was suddenly interrupted by a singular split, slowly gliding up the mirror. There was something so casually odd about it. She stood there, eyes locked onto this line, as if it were crevassing the mirror into two. The boundary between the reflection and bathroom slowly smudged, blended, and eventually blurred into one.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: "beauty is found in places people…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: Where You May not find it It's the start of a brand new day, Clarissa moves the bedsheet and gets up from bed,…
Where You May not find it
It's the start of a brand new day, Clarissa moves the bedsheet and gets up from bed, opening the window, making way for the rays of light to hit every corner of the room. Sam, her husband who's in deep sleep, wakes up from hearing the angelic, soft voice of his wife. "It's time to get up babe".
Sam and Clarissa have been married for a year living happily together, even though their financial status which right now is not great but they do not give up and fight it together and that's the beauty of it. Sam has always been the adventurous type of guy, living in a small cottage house in a village outside the city, where they can explore nature deeply.
They decide on going out exploring today. Clarissa packs food and essential items and Sam goes looking for a map to plan their trip. He swings stuff of the desk, searching every inch of the room for the map, he accidently bumps into the leg of desk, with random piles of paper just spawning out of, but he doesn't notice. Picking up the paper angrily, he finds a map, but not the usual map he takes it was different in a beautiful way, like it was calling for him to take it. So he took it.
"Babe, I found the map let's head out now."
"Coming Sam!"
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: The power of ambition
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 62.5%: I used to say ambition was the only currency I had until I hit it big in the market. My world was my parents'…
I used to say ambition was the only currency I had until I hit it big in the market. My world was my parents' basement and an old macbook. Today, looking at the city from my Penthouse. I remember when I was walking on those streets wondering whether my ambition was a blessing, curse, or something in between.
I remember the nights when I would stay awake on a couple cans of Red Bull and a sliver of hope, studying whitepapers and keeping track of the market and its variability. At first, I was chasing possibility. Some day I believed in me and I needed to find a way to prove them wrong with success. Expecting my will to achieve success. One successful trade led to ten, and ten led to a fortune. And the fortune turned me into something I never would be able to become.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a reflective commentary on the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive…
For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive essay exploring “this is me”, and the stimulus being “life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”. The title and stimulus helped me to argue on my contention of my speech on how identity is not something constructed from our innate minds, but is instead forged through our choices, consistent habits and experiences that shape us.
Exploring the complex web of the formation of identity, I drew particularly on Helen Keller, who had experienced great struggles throughout her life. Yet through her daily habit of learning from her teacher, she became a prominent figure in women's rights and became the first deaf-blind person to receive a bachelor's degree.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: This is a reflective commentary on the…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive…
For my personal creative response within the Framework of Personal Journeys, I chose to write a persuasive essay exploring “this is me”, and the stimulus being “life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself”. The title and stimulus helped me to argue on my purpose of this speech on how identity is not something we believe in our minds. But is instead formed by the choices we make, the habits we form and the experiences that shape us over time.
Exploring the complex web of the formation of identity, I drew particularly on Helen Keller, who had experienced great struggles throughout her life. Yet through her daily habit of learning from her teacher, she became a prominent figure in women's rights and became the first deaf-blind person to receive a bachelor's degree.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: #7 — "The Help functions as 'feel-good…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 95%: Systemic racism endures not only through overt hostility but through the stories a culture tells itself about…
Systemic racism endures not only through overt hostility but through the stories a culture tells itself about its own moral progress. Tate Taylor's The Help (2011), set in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, presents racial injustice as a problem solved by individual courage and personal goodwill, framing white guilt as the catalyst for Black liberation. It is a contention more comforting than it is true. While the film gestures toward the lived terror of Jim Crow through its Black maids' testimonies, it consistently positions white discomfort and white redemption at the centre of its moral universe, rendering them as supporting players in their own story. Furthermore, its tonal reliance on humour and warmth around moments of serious racial violence defuses the very outrage it briefly provokes, producing satisfaction rather than reckoning. Yet to dismiss The Help entirely is to ignore the moments where performance and honesty crack its comfortable surface and expose something more truthful underneath. Ultimately, The Help earns its "feel-good" label far more than it earns the moral authority it reaches for, because it privileges the emotional comfort of its assumed white audience over the complexity and danger of the Black women's experience it claims to centre.
When a narrative of oppression is told primarily through the perspective of the privileged, the oppressed are inevitably reduced to instruments of another's growth. The Help constructs its moral architecture almost entirely around Skeeter Phelan, a young white woman whose ambition to become a writer provides both the film's inciting action and its resolution: the published book is her achievement, her manuscript, her escape route to New York. Skeeter's growth from naive Southern belle to crusading journalist is tracked with the full apparatus of classical character development, including close-ups of her doubt, wide shots of her courage, and a swelling score at her vindication. Aibileen Clark, by contrast, is introduced cleaning a toilet, her face unseen for the first several seconds of her appearance, her interior life accessible only through voiceover, a formal choice that grants the appearance of interiority while confining her voice to narration rather than action. When Aibileen tells Mae Mobley "you is kind, you is smart, you is important," the film frames this as a gift to a white child rather than as evidence of Aibileen's own thwarted intelligence and dignity, moving the audience toward tenderness rather than outrage at the system that makes the scene necessary. Minny Jackson is similarly subordinated, her narrative function reduced to comic relief and the delivery of the "Terrible Awful," a revenge fantasy that generates laughter rather than gravity. Taylor's framing of Minny's confrontations with Hilly pitches toward audience satisfaction rather than toward the structural reality that Hilly's cruelty was not exceptional but entirely normal, legally protected, and socially celebrated. The film, in centring Skeeter's gaze, tells us that racism is something a sufficiently enlightened white person can fix, which is precisely the kind of story that soothes rather than challenges.