hi! I'm going into the pre-IB program next year, and I was wondering what you've thought about your IB experience so far and maybe some tips? x
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:
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
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!
If you or anyone else ever needs ANYTHING with help in IB, please come to me. I am your Mama Rivkah now and I will be your shoulder to cry on, your help with studying, and your reminder that you are loved.
