At 12.30pm on Thursday, more than 70,000 pens dropped on tables around NSW.
From Tweed Heads to Merimbula, thousands of students poured out of HSC exam rooms, relieved to have finished the first test in the final stretch of their school lives, and confronted by the fact they would have to do it all again on Friday.
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How was your first HSC exam?
Concord High School students Max Brenner, Sophie Briede, Zahra Noorgat and Jack Tynan completed their first HSC exam in Sydney.
English, the only compulsory exam of the HSC, opened this year's exam period and it surprised almost everyone, including the teachers.
"When we flicked through we thought, 'Oh my god, there is no visual stimulus'," Concord High School English teacher, Julie Taing, said.
HSC student Sophie Briede said it was nothing like they had done in previous years. "I was very surprised by it," she said.
Last year students had to interpret Jacobus Houbraken's 1730 painting of Albertus Seba. The year before they took on the book cover of Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together. But there was not a lick of paint or a cut of graphic design to be seen in this year's comprehension paper.
To the uninitiated this may seem a minor detail, but in the world of the HSC, where the same texts are studied ad nauseam – small changes like this are greeted with great exclaim.
The move reflects a wider shift within the HSC, as the government injects spontaneity while updating a curriculum that has not had a renovation in 17 years.
This cohort will be among the last to sit the current syllabus before it ends in 2018.
In English, the new syllabus will mean a move away from theories like Marxism and Feminism. The much maligned "area of study", where texts are seen through the lens of a theme such as "belonging", will also be ditched.
"We like to change things up, I don't always want to be doing the same things in our teaching practice," English teacher Catherine Picone said.
But there is another reason for the shift: students rote learning past responses.
"Students are using other students' resources all the time," said Ms Picone. "Then it's a question of what is their own."
Ms Picone said the syllabus changes would stop students from going off to their tutor and getting pre-prepared responses.
"And that happens a lot. You are trying to figure out who in this class actually really loves literature," she said.
On Thursday, NSW Board of Studies president Tom Alegounarias acknowledged the problem
"It is not in the interests of students, it is not in the interests of the system," he said after stating that stress levels had increased in the lead up to this year's HSC.
"Our message to students is this is not the be all and end all. If the exam doesn't go the way you would like there are other ways to achieving your objectives."
Rote learnt or not, for the thousands of students who walked out the door on Thursday, many would rather not think about the poetry of Robert Frost ever again, just as those who buried Clueless and Coleridge's Kubla Khan before them.
They are looking forward to a future just weeks down the track.
"I'm excited for the next few weeks of the HSC because I want it to be over," said 17-year-old Zahra Noorgat.
The HSC exams will finish on November 4.