Regards to my CAS Coordinator

Fresh IB student ready to be suppressed by the programme

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Night yall

I’m feeling extremely stressed and not well right now. I have all sorts of things next week, so after that is over I’ll propably feel much calmer. Also, I can’t help but to worry over my EE. I’d love to do it on physics but I’m sooooo insecure about that and wherter i’ll make it. Sucks

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hey babycakes

Everything is falling apart. Suddenly all teachers have begun to bomb us with new assingments and such. during this spring we need to 

- Start our EE (and figure out the topic first)

- Do like 666 IAs 

- Finnish WA

- Revise, revise, revise

- next exam week

 Yeah. 

I’m terribly in denial about my EE, half of the teachers have never even spoken about IAs, and IN TROUBLE this week when our exam week starts. Next weekend is booked for studies.

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Stuff for spring 2019

Russian final exams!

WA essay

violin 3/3 exam

get yourself a summer job you lazy idiot

IAs

anything the teachers say i guess

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Heyyy

so it’s been a while

The first part of our 3rd period, before the Christmas break was somehow incredibly stressful for me. Schools starts again day after tomorrow, and I feel like I’m behind everything since I’ve spent this holiday just laying down and taking it easy. I reeeeeally try not to over-stress again, and actually doing the work I dread doing. 

I only got half of the point sin our mid-period SL physics exam, because it was like a three hour paper and we only had an hour to do it. That was right before the holiday, and submitting a crappy-ass paper in a test I worked really hard for made me cry then. So the teacher is definitely going to hear about this. But i so grateful to my English teacher who just let me play Bad Ice-Cream for the entire English lesson after that, since there was sort of an aura of depression radiating from me. That was very much needed. 

I was about to write down biology notes, but our bio teacher has a crappy habit of not putting the slides up in edmodo so I guess that will have to wait. 

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howdy ho

I’ve been having a very relaxing autumn break so far. yay. 

but

I can’t help but to worry about the three days of school I’ll be missing. Like I know it won’t kill me but being absent for two physics lessons sounds horrifying. Currently we’re working on thermal physics, which actually is quite fun and games so therefore I’d really like to do well with it. Writing this out really seems to ease my worries lol.

Another one of my worries is a little more serious, and that includes my ah-so-lovely TOK teacher. She’s given us a task to write a “practice TOK essay” (whatever that is) but has given about zero instructions or examples, and the titles she’s given us are so damn confusing. We’re supposed to make some sort of a mind map for Monday, but I’m still so unsure what to even put in it. Maybe I just really misunderstood the confusingness of TOK or the teacher is as messy as we’ve always thought.

PS. 

We’ve found the most freaky picture of the IB history teacher ever. (He’s in hockey gear showing off his middle finger). I’ve been laughing at it for the entire week.

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Autumn break, here we come

I been feeling really off lately, which must be due to some school-related stress and terrible tiredness, but it’ll be okay. The autumn break starts next Friday, and I’ll be going abroad for 1 and half weeks to visit my best friend’s family. I’m a little worried since I have to miss three days of school, but at least in physics we’ve moved on to thermal concepts, which at least for now is a very fun subject and not so terribly difficult.

My English teacher picked out “Of Mice and Men” for us to analyze this period, and she had this horrendous idea to divide us into small groups and make us keep the lessons to our peers ourselves. I do hope I’ll be still spending my holiday when it’s my groups turn. It’s not that bad in theory of cource, I love doing stuff especially in English class, but my group isn’t the best and I feel like it’ll be me doing all the work again. 

Also I’m already sick of that damn book even though we’ve been talking about it for like 3 lessons.

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End of the exam week! Except not, our bio teacher decided to have the exam at the beginning of 2nd period, which means the next two lessons we’ll spend doing multiple choise questions and  essays. 

But the best thing now is that after the exam the teacher will start only HL lessons, and since I’m in SL I get free periods. Honestly it’s a blessing, my schedule for the next period is so packed I wouldn’t have survived without any freetime to relax or catch up in homework. 

one of the reasons for my terrible schedule now is obviously TOK. I really tried to stand it in pre year but... most of it is pretty much saying the same things again differently. And the teacher told us last spring that we’ll still be “practicing” this year so she can pack all the hard stuff for the third year. yay. Looking forward to that.

Personally my goal is not to die of boredom during those lessons, but i know few of my classmates have already gotten in a fight with the teacher. I’m not saying I’m excited to see if any drama unfolds between the students and the teacher to keep me entertained, but i am.

Last exam week notes, biology:

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Greetings my fellow human beings

today my math teacher was annoying lol. He didn’t give us an exam, so we just had to sit for four hours and do so_many_exercises. It could have been fun actually, I like math, but 

a) the teacher was clearly annoyed to be there. 

b) two of my friends complained about math the entire time

c) the teacher kept coughing and eating some sort of lemon candies while he should have let us have our lunches 30 minutes ago and we were all starving 

gladly I only have three more exams left (would only have two if the russian teacher would have showed up last monday) biology, russian and english tomorrow. Having some issues with understanding carbon flux right now

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Today I’m pissed at: My Russian teacher, who failed to show up at our exam appointment. I was so damn stressed about that exam, and now it’s been pushed back by a week just because she forgot I existed. nice. Thankfully my parents were as mad as I was when I told them later.

Today I’m very much happy about: my boyfriend just sent pictures of him trying out a terribly fancy suit for our traditional Old Dances (or whatever I should call that) next winter. I still haven’t got a dress which is also lowkey stressing me out, but damn he looks good in that suit.

Also I spent my afternoon with Economics notes, happy to be productive

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My physics exam experience: 

We had no overseer, and i do not count the teacher on the other side of the tv- screen. We could have literally just switch the mike off and do the exercises together. Then in the middle of everything the class and our teacher on the other side leave for lunch. And so do we, apparently. It’s not like I could have gone through the exercises, and then googled all the answers during the lunch break. Well. 

Then I ask for help in one of the problems, which means I have to almost yell in the silent af class so that the teacher behind the screen hears me. He starts to ponder out loud that the particular problem is in fact quit much challenging, as if he had never seen that one before.

I’m so c o n f u s e d.

I hope that I managed to gather at least half the points. Right now I feel like a train has ran over me.

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Whadduuup

I’m starting to realize that my physics teacher is not very qualified for his job. NOT TRYING TO BE MEAN or anything. It’s just his teaching is extremely hard to follow, because he switches languages too often, seems to explain simple things too difficultly, and I seem to learn better by just reading the coursebook than listening to him. I always try to ask questions and such, I do not yet feel that insecure about my skills than I could, considering it’s IB physics (for god’s sake). It’s just that my boyfriend gets very negative and annoying when he does not understand something. i always try to be positive during lessons so that my morale for studying stays high, but sometimes the guy next to me seems to be completely given up. Often I feel the same and understand him, but I feel like the things certainly won’t get better if your attitude sucks. 

But no offense to my teacher, I know this is only his third year teaching the IB programme. I just wish he’d actually give some base for us about the topic before jumping to the hard-as-hell exercises. I’d do as much of those as possible if I got time and the teacher actually next to help. No it’s mostly feeling lost in the world of thousand equations. 

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me: why the hell am I this lazy, I should have revised this stuff days ago

friend on the national side: lol this assingment has been due for two months, still not gonna do it tho don't feel like it

me: well

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a collection of study tips

i’ve been really into browsing through other ppl’s blogs looking at study tips posts, reading through them to glean an idea of how other people make their study time more effective, and i wanted to combine them all in one place for easy referral so here goes ;;

what to do when you feel like you just can’t keep studying

how to feel good about yourself when school is kicking your ass

top tips for dealing with a bad grade or failing class

an overview of stephen covey’s prioritization matrix

a guide for the school year

how to make a stress-free exam study plan

college tips that actually help

quickfire study tips

tips for a more productive session

how i study

general study tips

more study tips

5 revision methods to try

tips for success

how to handle having too much to do

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Scratching the surface of CAS

I posted my first CAS reflections ever literally few seconds ago. We survived through a day of making little pre- IBs play fun games that help them to bond as a group and all that crap.

No actually it was very much fun, and probably more bonding for us than the younger students. Some of the pre-IBs were so incredibly stuck-up (”We didn’t come here to play games blah blah blah”) and it was endless fun dragging them down. I only wished that we could have interacted with the sencond year students more, as they spent the entire day working on their EEs. It would have been fun to chat with them about the first IB year and kind of know a little more what to expect. 

At the end of the day we all went swimming, there was a lake right next to the area were the day was held. None of us had swimwear with us, but that didn’t really bother anyone. We decided to use my mom’s old raggedy blanket as a communal towel (i had it with me in case we’d need that whilst playing the games). The water felt incredibly relaxing, and in the end more than half of us were in the lake. It got even funnier when we saw our homeroom teacher walking down to the shore, seemingly a little stunned from our actions. We may be quiet in class, but once the cat is away we all strip down and jump in the nearest puddle :D

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First week feelings

My first week of IB1 has gone by and this weekend feels like a blessing. Not because I’d already have like piles of homework, but returning to school after ten weeks of doing absolutely nothing is at first very exhausting. 

Some of my subjects are taught with distant teaching (which means that the only connection to the teacher is via tv- screen), and it causes the same troubles as last year. Especially physics is a though one, because the teacher really can’t see what’s the problem when I ask help. And we all need courage to yell at a tv- screen. We only have five students at our end of the class (the other end being in the next city with the teacher), and the three of them are know to be like the top 3 quitest people in our class. I get them, but it would be much nicer if I wasn’t the only one chatting with the teacher there. Luckily we see the teacher in flesh at least once a week

At least for now, math feels much nicer right now. Propably because we started witch revising quadratics which were like the main theme in pre-IB math. And even though the math books weighs like a brick, it’s damn good schoolbook. I have to bother the teacher much less. 

I feel weird because my best friend took the studies and she isn’t keeping me company in math class anymore. I’m happy for her that she realized to bite more than she could swallow, but it leaves the me alone two of our friends who seem to fight constantly for some idiotic reason. I try to get to sit next to my boyfriend in math class, not only because he whines less in general, but he’s also HL math student and I can check my work from him if I doubt anything.

Other classes have gone fine, mostly the same stuff as last year for now. I love my economics teacher (her technique is pour the knowledge into our heads), and next monday in biology we get to do some field work (IA:s in mind :D). Now I’m just glad that we aren’t drowning in homework yet after the first week.

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Hi All!

My name is Siiri and I’m starting my 1st year of IB next august (2018). I’ve mainly decided to start this blog to mark down my way through the programme and to keep my motivation up. I have spent the last year on pre- IB, preparing for the actual studies and deciding my subjects. For the next two years I’ll be studying (hopefully :D)

HL English

HL Finnish

HL Physics

HL Economics

SL Biology

SL Math

and of course TOK and that damn CAS

So for now, if you are also fellow IB student, please follow me, I’d love to follow you back :)