#eagle-studies

You are in the last few hundred feet of the marathon. You've lost sleep, forgotten showers, and missed meals at times. Not every night was pretty notes and ordered flashcards. Some were the closing shift at work and a morning bedtime. Not all tests were 100s, even when you studied. But you've given all your strength, all of your fighting spirit, even when some days you gave much more than others. Some days you rejoiced with friends, other days you linked hands with them and hoped for relief. You've gotten your acceptances, your rejections, your waitlists. You've been questioned by family, friends, teachers, peers, and strangers as to why you chose the major, college, technical school, or career path you did. You've struggled over the choices and delighted in the decisions.

But you're in the last few hundred feet of that marathon, so finish strong. Don't stumble across that finish line, surge across it in a last burst of speed. Put pride into your studying. Block your social media for an hour at a time, even half an hour. Turn down social invitations from your friends and arrange study sessions instead. Get a good night's sleep. Eat a good breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Start studying now instead of cramming. Shower, bathe, trim your nails, brush your hair. Indulge in self-care, whether that means your favorite ice cream or music; buying a new lipstick, video game, or notebook; or taking 30 minutes to sit in silence and simply breathe. Replace self-loathing thoughts with reminders of your strengths and successes. Hype yourself up. Take your exams well-rested, prepared, and encouraged. Pass them, whether just barely for your weak subjects or with flying colors for your strong ones. Walk out of that room with your head high. Accept that diploma with pride. Receive those scores with pride.

Not really, it seems that in the past the dictionaries marked it as either feminine or masculine at different points in time, but now both are accepted. Although the masculine form is most common and the feminine is mostly used in literature, both are correct :)

Hi Eagle! It is impossible to get good grades for every single assignment, especially at the IB level. Don’t let it discourage you, instead let it motivate you to study harder and get better grades.

My best example is that I underestimated how difficult my Biology course would be second semester. I didn’t study for a single test or quiz first semester, and I started getting lower grades as we entered the harder chapters. What really broke my heart was when I came back from having the flu for a week, immediately took a test having been unable to catch up, and got a 28. A 28. I have never gotten that low of a score. I did test corrections to bring it up to a 56, which did improve my grade, and then I studied my butt off for the rest of the year. I studied and studied and studied until I got a 91 on the final while everyone else who studied got Bs or Cs because they didn’t do it to the extent that I did.

IB is a very difficult endeavor, and one bad grade shouldn’t discourage someone from surviving or, frankly, I don’t think they’re meant for IB. And I know that anyone who wants to do well like you should be. The way you survive with good grades is you take it as a learning opportunity and a lesson on how much better you need to do the next time. Don’t forget to eat, drink water, and sleep, but definitely try new strategies and spend more time working and studying toward your best effort. Unfortunately, even studying a lot like you said isn’t enough sometimes! IB is all about self-reflection, so you need to realize what you did wrong or what you still don’t understand and learn from that. If you still have trouble, be open and honest with your teachers and they will be happy to help you in most cases.

I’m glad pre-IB isn’t stressful for you, and it shouldn’t be. The two real years of IB will be a whole different beast, so please conquer your worries or weaknesses while you’re still in pre-IB so you’re prepared and eager to go into the worst of it! It really causes you to grow as a person and I think you’re more than capable and eager to grow under pressure. Please check back with me any time you have concerns with this, us IB kids have to stick together xoxo I’m going through senior year myself right now, so I understand completely.

It’s a huge workload, and it usually has a lot of information that all needs to be memorized before the exam because you can pass the class, but you won’t get the credit unless you get at least a 3/5 on the exam. My exam had a multiple choice portion and two essays. Your overall score is calculated into that out of 5 score.

I had 14 slides of notes thrown at me every night for homework in mine. My teacher constantly gave us activities that forced us to critically think, analyze, interpret, and decide the context of pictures, firsthand accounts, and other historical stuff. It really pushes to your limits in both reasoning and memorization.

Because I did everything my teacher gave me, I already did almost perfectly in the class. That halfway prepared me for my exam. The rest was taking practice tests, using the AP World History Book she made me buy, and starting in January when the exam was in May. I studied every day, in my home, in the library, between classes, and of course in the class. I took practice tests online and attended the realistic simulation test that my teacher gave. I had study session with my classmates and basically fell asleep listening to Crash Course.

Nope, I took APWH (World History) because my school didn’t offer APUSH! I got a 4 on the exam.

Oh honey, bless your heart. I hope I don’t come off too cynical in saying this - I’m an IB Senior Ambassador at my school now, it’s my job to convince people to join this, but from my veteran experience I am not gonna give you the “it’s all rainbows and butterflies if you do your work on time” shtick. No, you’ll probably still cry almost as much as I did Junior year. And yet yes, yes, I still love my experience and all that I have grown as a person from it.

 Let me begin this by saying that IB is a wonderful program that exposes you to new ways of thinking and wonderful cultures, but man does it forget that we’re humans capable of stress and possibly possessing disabilities or mental illnesses. Still, despite everything I went through last year, I’d still do it over again. I’ll highlight the major points like this. Keep in mind that you don’t have to worry just yet about the full workload of IB, but you should still be prepared for this by making good habits NOW.

First of all, pre-IB is vastly different, in my experience, than IB itself. Its classes were fun, interesting, and fast-paced, just like my actual IB classes, but they workload was a thousand times easier and I never struggled through it. So, if that reassures you of what’s going to happen immediately, great!

Each school is different, of course, but in my experience pre-IB did nothing to properly prepare me for exactly how much work and how many requirements I would have to meet in one year of actual IB. We did a research paper or two a year in pre-IB and one or two a week or month in IB, and that’s not even counting the IA’s. Build good habits so you’re prepared for the actual challenge of IB, and so you breeze through pre-IB like it’s nothing.

The IA’s, by the way, are the Internal Assessments. Every class except for TOK has one, because TOK plays by its own rules. For my classes, every IA was a research paper except for Biology (which was a lab report of an experiment I need to do), Spanish (which will come next year as a 10-minute discussion in Spanish), and English (which was a 10-minute creative presentation of literary analysis of one of three books). For the love of all that is holy, when it comes to starting your IA’s in your first year of real IB, do not procrastinate.

Now, I watched a friend of mine with terrible procrastination skills make it through IB alright, but his skills suffered and it should be noted he had one extracurricular, and it was in Drama Club with me. I juggled serious responsibilities of eight different clubs and organizations, but because I didn’t procrastinate and I stayed on top of everything even when I wanted to die, I managed to stick with them all and even be elected president by my National Honor Society. My advice is, in pre-IB, to try as many clubs as you can handle that you want to be in or that benefit you, but know which ones to drop when IB rolls around. You don’t want more than 3 or 4. Make sure you have some, though, because colleges wanna see that.

Create a study and homework schedule. I didn’t do this until second semester but I always had a planner on me, and because stress and work make me forget things easily, I took to the habit of writing them in my planner, my computer, AND my calendar. Sometimes my wrist if it was very important. Be aware that pre-IB will be easier this way, but IB will need you to sometimes work during lunch or use every bit of extra class time a teacher gives you without more work.

Remember to eat and hydrate with water. Try to drink tea for caffeine instead of coffee because it’s a smaller dose and won’t get you dependent on it quickly. These seem like very obvious things but trust me, I totally stopped taking care of myself in IB. I stopped exercising, which I’m still struggling to get back into the habit of, and I often skipped meals to make it to school on time or so I could work on the mounting pile or work I have. 

Befriend your teachers. Please, for your own good. IB teachers have seen things. They have put up with a lot. They know how rigorous this is and they know what they’re kept in the dark about. But anything they are allowed to know, they will share with you if they’re worth anything as a teacher. Bond with them because you want the support and resource, not because you just want their favor. Teachers really love to see kids in the IB program that will take the initiative to fix their issues and put extra studying in rather than just whining about the circumstances of IB and their grades. I’ve seen a lot of it, trust me.

Establish a solid bedtime before midnight. I don’t know when your classes start, mine start at 9:15 and I have to be awake by 7:30 or 8. Except for the times that I had to pull all-nighters, I was always in bed by 10:30 or 11, even with all the work I had. Because your body needs sleep, for the love of all that is holy, give it sleep. You will not go very far if you don’t take care of yourself.

Don’t isolate yourself from your family, your friends, or other social things for fun. Boy did I make this mistake. Make sure you’re still alive and show your loved ones that you still care. My parents accepted that I was constantly holed up in my room to do work, but even I had to be taken to the beach or hang out with my friends if I wanted to stay sane. This shouldn’t be as much of an issue in pre-IB, so get as much social time in as you can before you have to start sacrificing it in IB, my dear.

Do not procrastinate on your CAS project in Junior/Senior year. I know you said you’re going into pre-IB so this doesn’t matter yet, but keep ideas in mind for large service projects that you start yourself. It’s part of your graduation requirement and while you can’t start it early, you shouldn’t leave it until the last minute of those two years.

Stay optimistic. I know all of this seems really scary, but IB is just a college-level workload in a high school setting. Unfortunately, that means you have 7+ classes all back-to-back giving you work that is designed to be completed with breaks between classes or days the classes aren’t on, so it’s no wonder that IB students are worked to death. However, the great thing is that IB (at least here) adds an entire point to your GPA because it’s so difficult. So I, through rigorous work and dedication, somehow managed to keep my GPA at a weighted 4.3, so it got rounded up to a maximum 5.0. 

Bless you if you decide to get a job. It’s easy in sophomore year, but I don’t know how my friends with jobs survived IB. You’ll be tired all the time, but if you’re passionate, you’ll get through it.

The good thing is that you’re entering pre-IB, which are basically just like honors courses that warm you up for IB. So my TL;DR advice is that you build good study habits and self-care habits now so that IB is extremely easy for you once it rolls around.

So a TL;DR checklist for pre-IB:

Be on time

Be ready to learn

Keep an open mind

Take care of your sweet self in body and mind

Build a good sleep schedule

Build a good study schedule

Program in breaks to your studying because you’re human

Pay attention to and bond with the teachers

Make friends, but not with people that don’t care about IB and are fine with failing

Enjoy it, because it only gets harder

Don’t get overwhelmed with the future - focus on what you’re going into now and the fact that it’s preparation

Do everything on time

Build ways to stop procrastination

Find what subjects you love

Know your limits - don’t push yourself past what you can handle

Utilize any free study time

Be nice to others and be willing to be wrong

Enjoy pre-IB while you can

I’m sorry this turned into a long, semi-cynical tirade about actual IB instead of pre-IB, but the truth is I didn’t have any trouble in pre-IB. I just suggest that you not take as many clubs on as I did and build very good habits while you can.

Thank you so much for asking me this! I love to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to IB, and I hope I didn’t scare you terribly. It’s a wonderful program and I adore it a lot, but it does test how willing you are to make yourself suffer. Luckily, I always do that if I think there’s a greater reward in it, so I’m conditioned to this by now haha. I wanted the challenge!