I took a break from studying for my final VCE exam to write this article. Once I walk out of this exam room next Wednesday, I know VCE will gradually start to fade away. Before long, I won’t remember the Wordsworth quotes, chemical formulas, and sections of the Constitution that I spent two years cramming into my brain.

But for now, VCE still feels like my whole life. Most of my waking hours over the past two years have been spent preparing for these five November exams. And so, these exams end up being imbued with colossal meaning that would be difficult for anyone except a grade 12 student to understand. We’re all trapped in the same weird, pressured bubble; and yes, we are aware that our ATARs are not the be-all and end-all, but we are so emotionally invested and exhausted that it doesn’t seem like that at the moment.

Which is why, when I discovered on Thursday that questions from at least 22 VCE exams had been leaked to some students due to a technical error, I was not only shocked, but rather devastated. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s claims that no student will be disadvantaged seem hollow at best. If compromised questions are not reflected in our results, it is frustrating for everyone who legitimately answered correctly. And any student who has seen certain questions beforehand will have saved time, and therefore an advantage, for the rest of the exam – which is not taken into account.

To most watching this scandal, it is undoubtedly another news story about an embarrassing bureaucratic error. To me and to tens of thousands of teenagers across the state, it means everything; the outcome of two years of work. It seems deeply unfair to have put in so much effort, endured the tears, stress and meltdowns that VCE inevitably involves, and then find out that some people have taken over.

I don’t blame anyone who saw the leaked questions. The cover pages have been published legitimately on the VCAA website so that students can get fair information about the structure of the upcoming exams. Some may have simply copied and pasted without realizing that this allowed them to access real exam questions that were supposed to be hidden.

I’m also not angry at those who knowingly did this after news of the leak came to light. (And word gets around among VCE students about how many of them knew this.) The ATAR is, after all, a grading system; we are pitted against each other and we are constantly reminded that we must do everything we can to get to the top. The very nature of VCE teaches us to be individualistic and opportunistic; It’s no surprise that when an opportunity to gain an advantage presents itself, students take it.

Instead, I feel frustrated with how this was handled. Frankly, it doesn’t make sense that after the questions were leaked, they weren’t completely rewritten and only superficial changes were made. Especially since the error was discovered in October. In one of my subjects, Legal Studies, the only change made to the exam was to the names of the people in the scenarios. In the specialist mathematics exam, the numbers, but not the question itself, were changed. While we students have spent months preparing for these assessments, it does not seem right that a few questions cannot be rewritten to preserve the integrity of the exams.

Not to mention another key aspect of this mismanagement; the nebulous message that surrounded him. Students, but also teachers, heard about the issue not from the VCAA, but from the media. The Minister for Education has announced a review of this mess, but at the moment, in the midst of VCE, we do not know the extent of the problem, nor how we will be affected; everything seems to continue to unfold in a cloud of rumors and misinformation. While we should be focusing on the exams we still have left, confusion puts even more obstacles between us and our goals.