The Adventures of an IB Student

Hey, Chase here!

I think its really cool that IB gives the opportunity to interact with people around the world. I’m currently in a group chat for the college I’m attending next year, and one of the coolest things about that is hearing about what IB is like in other places. I am always a fan of global sharing and IB is a very cool connection that allows us to do that!

I unfortunately don’t have much for Master Harold but here’s the link to my folder! I think it has two short journals that I wrote, some notes from people’s presentations in my class, and maybe a short thought dump on the play. Sorry there’s not more! 

Hi! I did a post here about CAS, ToK, and the EE that has some good CAS info as well as suggestions for projects and stuff like that that might be of some use. What I would generally say when considering CAS is to first assess what you normally do (like extracurriculars and stuff) and try to make it into a CAS project or activity. I used a lot of stuff that I was already involved in like Band and competitive speech for my CAS activities and that took off a bit of strain since I was adding new stuff to my schedule. 

Otherwise if there’s something that you’ve wanted to do for a while like train for a 5K maybe or write a short novel, you can use CAS as an excuse to do it provided you can find an adult supervisor. 

I wish I could help a bit more, but just with the way CAS worked at my school not a lot of people really ventured out for CAS projects and primarily used things that they already did. 

Honestly, that’s what so much feels like haha. It feels so so so good to finish, and even if you feel like you bs’d the entire thing it probably went alright. As long as you convincingly bs, it’s all good! I’m glad that it’s done for you.

I don’t have a ton, but I can give you my stuff from last year! Sorry, this is super late. 

Here’s the link to my folder from senior year: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B372JlqRcw_jZHpXMWV3ZnI5WmM&usp=sharing

It’s a bit messy, and for that I apologize. The most useful stuff would probably be the big “REVIEW” folder which was kind of collaboration between my classmates and I last year, the second semester notes maybe, and then some of the other documents like “A Comparison Between Stalin and Chairman Mao”. I also have my IA and stuff and some of the short papers that I wrote last year for class in there. Sorry it’s so messy, but I hope that it helps!

Hey, I’m in Math HL this year too, and it is certainly a tough class. I’ve found that sites like Khan Academy are really helpful if you find yourself falling behind the teacher, since they walk through the concepts in a series of videos that you can easily watch a bunch of over the weekend. I’d also suggest talking to your teacher about how to stay caught up with the curriculum because a lot of the things taught in Math HL build upon each other. I know that for me personally, going in for help on certain topics has been very helpful. If anyone else knows other ways to tackle Math HL, feel free to chime in!

If you have the will to handle it, you can!

This is something that I end of saying in a lot of asks like these, but I believe it to be true. If you’re motivated to do IB and care about your subject matter and are willing to put in the effort, it is definitely doable! That’s kind of the philosophy that I adopted going into IB. My experience in IB was pretty hectic. To be completely honest, I actually did IB because I’m a petulant and vindictive child and people told me that I couldn’t because I wanted to stay in my extracurriculars and stuff. So of course, I directly did the exact opposite thing and joined.

Not gonna lie, for a while it kind of sucked trying to balance things like band, the school musical, piano lessons, etc. and IB. But with the time I spent in IB, my reasons for staying in it changed. I liked the discussion base, I liked reading different literature, I liked having a smaller group of peers to connect with, I liked the global focus, I liked... well, everything. After finding a better reason for myself that wasn’t “They told me that I couldn’t but I’m going to anyway” it kind of became a lot easier to rationalize why I wanted to do it and therefore I became motivated. And with motivation anything can happen.

(That was literally the cheesiest thing I’ve ever typed, but I digress.)

In any case, what it boils down to is figuring out why you want to do and and then, well... just doing it. If you want to do well, you can put in the work and effort to do so. I think that you can do it, but you know yourself better than anyone else. It’ll be stressful and there might be times where you feel like you can’t handle it, and it’s in those moments where you need to take a step back and chill for a little bit. Your mental health is important, and if you need to take a break you take a break. That’s something that I had to grind into my own skull because I always tried to keep going.

As for your HLs, I guess my answer again is that it kind of depends on you. Do you really like those three subjects? Why do you want to take all of them HL? If you feel like you genuinely want to study all of them, I would say go for it. But if you’re hesitating, I would say that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to drop one of them. I never took any of them in my time in IB, but I know that they can be time consuming and difficult but also very fun (to be honest, this actually goes for most HLs, haha) They’re three tough HLs, and if you don’t really really want to do it, I wouldn’t try and overextend yourself. But if you want to go for it, do it! Just make sure that you have another HL so that you have three total and stuff.

Sorry for the long answer! I know it’s kind of wishy-washy, but that was kind of my experience in the program and stuff. I wish you the best in the upcoming years with IB and everything else!

Hi Kate! The IB community on here is really fun and cool and stuff, glad to have you! :) 

Hey, I thought I would let you guys know that since Palmer graduated and is going off to college soon, I’ll be helping her run the blog!

My name is Chase, I’m in 11th grade this year, so just starting the IB program. I’m currently enrolled in Music SL, Psych SL, Bio HL, English HL, Math HL, and Latin SL. However, I’m working with my counselor to see if there’s a way I can change from Music SL to Physics SL, so that is not set in stone.

Hamlet

True West 

Top Girls

Master Harold and the Boys

Hey thanks! And I’m sorry that it took me so so so long to reply to this - I realized today that I hadn’t and had a “Yikes!” moment. I’m very sorry about that.

A lot of kids have the same problem that you do. It’s easy to hit a rut somewhere in the middle, and I can honestly say that it’s probably going to happen. You just have to do what you’ve been doing and manage. It’s hard and you don’t want to do stuff because the motivation isn’t there, but once you do them it’s done and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. I totally feel you, though. Just keep pushing and you can do it!

It sounds like you’ve got a challenging schedule, though. I mean, every IB schedule is challenging so I guess that was a bit of a redundant statement. Reading is going to be a big part of your classes. Depending on your learning style and your teacher, Bio can be a lot of reading or not much. I didn’t read much in bio, but I know that some teachers require more of it or some people learn better. In my experience though, you can figure out how much you need to read based on your own learning style.

I didn’t take art, but from my understanding it’s less reading and more doing. Some of my friends that took HL Art were always working on their art journals and put a lot of effort into it along with their projects. It is a work intensive class (to the best of my understanding) but if you’re passionate and engaged with the subject you can totally make it work.

I can say that history is a lot of reading. Going into primary sources and texts written by experts is a big part of it. I had a lot of books this year, and I can honestly say that if I had 100% done all of my readings I would have probably scored just a bit better during the year and on my exam. Reading is really crucial to history, but you just have to plan and manage it! It was, however, my most work intensive class this year. It’s definitely one that you’ll have to devote a lot of time to.

SL math is pretty chill! I liked it a lot, and there wasn’t a big focus on reading, at least in my class. Depending on your teacher, it can go from work intensive to, well… really chill. Once again, it depends on your learning style and how you best absorb that kind of information.

As for English and Russian, it kind of depends. I’m not very familiar with what SL Language A looks like as a class. I took HL English (as language A), and for me that was a lot of reading literature and stuff. It wasn’t like a book a week, but we read six books my first year, and two books, three plays, and a bunch of essays and poetry my second year. I would assume that there will be a fair amount of reading in that class.

I took SL French for language B, and there wasn’t a ton of reading in there. I really liked it as a class. The readings that we did were pretty short and we just did comprehension exercises with them and all that. Between the two classes, you should be alright!

Alright, so basically what you’re going to have to do is connect the two parts of your research question. Basically, you’re halfway there. I haven't read “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, but foils are always a good point to work with. Start with the two characters you have. Listing differences is a good way to begin. Basically, you just need to push it a little further and establish them as foils. It’s a small connection, but it lets you proceed to the next part of your analysis.

I looked up a little on the wiki page, but forgive me for not knowing much about the book! I wish I could help you more with that. So you start off by listing the differences. After that, pretty much explicitly state why this makes them foils. So like, “From the beginning of the novel, Mariam and Laila hold opposite places in society. While both are women, Mariam is born without privilege while Laila immediately holds it.” Continue with that kind of thing (with text substantiation of course) and then go to more “Through this, Hosseini clearly establishes them as foils in terms of their opposing social status and generational gap” or something along those lines. Once you’ve established them as foils, that’s the big thing. 

Now that you have that, you have to get to the “why it matters” kind of thing. From your research question, it’s how they emphasize the theme of imprisoned lives of women in Afghanistan. The tack I would try to take with this (from the little I know about the book) is that he uses their nature as foils to establish the point that even though they are essentially opposites and come from different generations and different backgrounds, they are both imprisoned in some form or another. (A marriage within the novel?). 

Essentially, you’ve got the "what”, but you just need to connect to the “why”. If you wanted to explore any other characters, you could try to do that. However, I think you should revise your research question a little bit to narrow the focus of your paper just down to those two characters. It’ll let you dig a little deeper and also hold your focus within the topic.