let’s survive the ib together!

Everyone has different ways to stay organised. For that, I would say, stick with the system you have currently. As long as the organisation makes sense to you, you’re good.

I’ve had a few different methods of taking notes over the last year and a half. First of all, I have the notes taken in class, in a notebook. Usually these notes are messy and don’t look nice at all. But, they are really good for absorbing information better. If you write something down by hand, you remember it better, it’s proven by science. Secondly, on top of class notes, for a while I would go home and I would take notes on what I did in class that day in a fresh notebook, while looking in a textbook. This makes the notes neater and I can use them for studying. However, I don’t do this any more, because it’s more time consuming and I woukd rather learn right out of a textbook. I also take some notes on digital documents. This I only do for geography, because my teacher has a system where we do our own research.

For resources, I have some really useful “textbooks” I want to recommend! They’re not really textbooks, rather they are study guides, and only contain the most important information from the syllabus. It’s the oxford IB study guides if you’re interested. I seriously love these books. They have SAVED me!!! I almost exclusively use them to study. I have the chemistry and biology study guides, but they have them for almost every subject (or maybe just for group 3 and 4 subjects?). This is what they look like btw. You can just buy them on amazon! There’s a few different versions it seems like, so make sure you get one for the year that you’re doing it (the IB changes the syllabus of every subject once every 7 years)

In terms of getting prepared, I really don’t think there’s much that you have to do. Seriously, I assume you start August/September? You have so many months still please don’t worry too much. Enjoy your free time! Because over those next two years, you will always have something that needs to be done. I don’t want to scare you though ahah. Focus on what you’re learning in class now, do your best, and that’s the best preparation (and most realistic preparation) you can do.

when you’re in hl chem and an 11th grader thinks they’re superior to you just because of the courses they take and imply that you’re stupid and you just can’t take it anymore

this is all just from my personal experiences! everyone will find something else more difficult but i just wanted to share my opinion so maybe some of you guys have a better idea of what to expect. 1 is most difficult.

1. geography ia. although this is widely considered one of the easiest subjects, the data collection and processing required is wild and harder than may be expected. harder than i expected for sure.

2. extended essay. depends on the subject of course, and whether or not you enjoy your topic. ee just takes a very long time to write and takes a lot of effort.

3. math ia. the ideas can be difficult to come up with initially, and personally in my school i never had to write a paper for math before the ib, so the lack of practice also made it more difficult.

4. chemistry ia. controversial opinion probably!! honestly, guys, don’t pick a difficult topic for this... just steal an ib required experiement and change the compounds used or something. once you’ve done the experiment, the rest is quite simple and straightforward imo. especially because i got so much practice in writing lab reports before the ib.

on tuesday, i handed in my geo ia. with no feedback on a first draft. just bam. in. and i wanna talk about how much i developed as a person over that past week...

grade 11 me was stupid and decided not to work on or hand in a geo ia draft. grade 11 me was the QUEEN of procrastinating. she snapped!

fast forward to about a week and a half ago now, it was the beginning of a one week holiday, and the tuesday after, the geo ia was due. i had NOTHING. just the data that i had collected, and a research question. i really underestimated how much work this ia would be.

i aimed to work for about three hours every day during the holidays and assumed that would be all i needed. but BOY do diagrams and annotations and drawings and maps take fucking FOREVER to make!! literally one gis map takes a whole hour fun!

three hours a day wasnt enough. two days before the ia was due, i still didnt have a methods of collection section, a conclusion or evaluation, and my data analysis was incomplete (and hella shitty) so. i had to power through. i need a good grade on this ia because im gonna get a 7 predicted and i wanna live up to that. at least try to.

i worked for at least 14 hours total for those last two days, 7 hours of complete and utter focus on geo each day. i didn’t even know i could do something like that. it wasnt that hard to stay focused because the urgency pushed me forward. sometimes two hours of working would go by before i even looked at the clock again. and it payed off, because i can honestly say im proud of what i handed in. nervous, but proud... i think lol!!!1!

actually, today i was talking with my friend in tenth grade, and she said that she worked for about an hour and a half the other day, and was proud of that. and i realised like... that was also my limit when i was her age. heck that was my limit like two weeks ago even. ive changed so much as a person WHICH IS SUCH A DEEP THING TO SAY BUT ITS TRUE!! ive developed. ive learned that i can work when i need to.

after that, even though i didnt get to properly rest during the holidays (im sad about that but whatever) im more motivated to work now. even though chemistry ia isnt due for another two weeks, ive been working on it a lot recently.