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Sid Iruvanti was dux of his school and finished VCE with an ATAR of 99.55, from a public school in Melbourne’s east. In this episode of Contour’s High Achievers series, he talks about the failures that lit the fire, the systems that kept him on track, and the lie he told his parents that nearly cost him a subject.
Before VCE even started, I had three major exam failures on my record. I failed the John Monash test twice. I didn’t get into Melbourne High or any selective school. That’s three big “no”s before I even rocked up to Year 11. On top of that, I’d been playing soccer competitively, hoping to take it as far as I could, and that wasn’t working out either.
For a while I genuinely didn’t think of myself as an academic kid. I just felt like someone who failed a lot. Year 12 became the place I channelled all of that into. I wanted to prove myself wrong. That underlying motivation, the need to show I could actually succeed at something I put my mind to, drove me through the entire year.
The plan that ran my week
The single most useful thing I did all year was sit down every Sunday night and plan out the whole week, period by period, in a notes app with tick boxes. Period two, tick this off. Period three, tick this off. Get home, 4 to 6:30, chemistry practice exam. Done.
Life-changing stuff. Genuinely. The plan removes daily decision-making. You stop wasting energy figuring out what to do and just start doing it.
Aim for three hours, consistently
I did about 3 to 4 hours a day on weekdays. Some days I was too tired and only did two, or none at all. When that happened, I just moved those hours into the next day rather than spiralling about it.
Three hours every day beats eight hours once a week. Sustainability is the whole game.
Stop hunting for the perfect study spot
I studied at home, mostly in my room or at the dining table. I know people who’ll drive 30 minutes to a library or hunt for “the perfect aesthetic café” to study at. That’s procrastination dressed up as productivity. You’re not really trying to study, you’re trying to feel like someone who studies.
Your environment just needs to be good enough to get real work done. Mine wasn’t perfect. I studied on my bed a lot of the time. Mum hated it (“you’ll hurt your back”), and look, my back is fine. More importantly it was relaxing. It took the stress out of studying and let me actually engage with the work.
When a SAC goes badly
You do dozens of SACs across the year. Some of them are going to go wrong. When they do, positive self-talk isn’t enough on its own. Sometimes you’re too overwhelmed to even use it.
You need a reset activity. Something physical, close to home, easy to start. For me, it was going down to the garage and kicking a soccer ball against the wall with music in the background. Twenty minutes of that and I could come back to it. Find your version of that before you need it, not after.
The lie I told my parents
The hardest lesson of my year was around English. I kept telling my parents it was going to be my best subject. It wasn’t. English destroyed me when I got into Year 12, and I didn’t admit I needed help until almost Term 3. I got a tutor then, and it really worked out, but I’d cost myself two terms by being too proud to say something earlier.
Be open with your parents about what you actually need. The earlier you ask, the more time the help has to compound.
Tutoring isn’t a verdict on you
A lot of families treat tutoring like an admission of weakness. It’s not. It’s not a reflection of how smart you are or aren’t. It’s a reflection of the fact that you need help on this specific thing, right now. Get the help. Get to the next level.
Be okay with feeling things
When I decided to quit soccer, I don’t think I’ve ever cried that hard about anything. My family was incredible. They kept telling me “it’s all going to work out” so often it became my own internal mantra.
To any Year 12 student, it’s okay to be open and feel emotions. Year 12 is huge. Sitting on it doesn’t make you stronger, it makes you tighter.
Speaking of tight, I had real trouble breathing properly before exams. I was that tense. Mum sat me down on the floor cross-legged and made me meditate. I burst out laughing every couple of minutes because the whole thing felt outrageous, but it genuinely helped. Don’t write things off before you’ve actually tried them.
My non-negotiables
Friday nights, fully off. Family or friends, every week. Some things matter more than school, and Year 12 is your last year of high school. Don’t sacrifice the friendships.
No music while studying. I needed to think and work things through, and I couldn’t do that with something playing in the background.
Error log book. This was my single biggest study tool for VCE Chem. Every question I got wrong all year, screenshot, into a Goodnotes document. It ended up around 140 pages. Every mark I’d lost throughout the year lived in that document, and it was where I clawed them back. Doesn’t matter what app or format you use, just build one.
Public school isn’t a ceiling
I had offers from a few private schools after interviews. I chose to stay at Highvale because of my friends and because we trusted I could do it from where I was. The stigma that public school kids can’t compete with private school kids is rubbish. The trick at a public school is to focus on your rank, which means treating your SACs like they’re sacred. Get the rank right and your final mark will follow.
My favourite study tool
Not my laptop. Not my iPad. My printer. Hundreds and hundreds of practice exams went through that thing. If you want to do well, you have to do the questions. Lots of them. On paper. Under realistic conditions.
If you take two things from this
Plan your week, every week. And stay confident in yourself, even when you’re coming off three failed exams and a soccer career that didn’t go the distance. Those two things together are what got me from “not really an academic kid” to dux of my school.