Hey guys, as discussed in my other update, I will discuss the other aspects of IB here, including: CAS, EE, and ToK.
Let's get ToK out of the way, because I didn't do too hot on that assessment. Though I had my suspicions why, a discussion with my teacher a few months ago confirmed why. I had known that I had done well on my presentation, and had worked hard on my essay, so it was hard to see a D pop up next to Theory of Knowledge. Now, before you scoff and skip this thinking, "I'm not taking advice from someone who nearly failed ToK," let me tell you that it was frankly a ridiculous reason why, but a good thing to keep in mind when writing your essay. I wrote my essay with a qualified thesis; therefore, I agreed with the prompt to an extent, but provided evidence to the contrary later on in my essay. If you've already caught my flaw, then congrats. You've scored well on the essay. For those who don't see the issue with this, are you ready? The IBO had a problem with the fact with the fact that I disagreed with the thesis. My teacher informed me that I wrote a well-crafted essay, but I couldn't score higher due to this. And while I had suspected as such, it was kind of a relief to have that confirmed. It told me that I didn't bomb it because of a lack of understanding on my part, but because I didn't complete the task as the IBO wanted me to. That may seem like a win-lose to many of you, but at the end of the day, I rather know that I have absorbed the material correctly. I am in school to learn, and the essays and exams are just the hurdles to overcome in the process of learning.
On a much happier note, I did extremely well on my EE. I got a B (Sure, it's not an A, but shit, I wrote probably the best essay I have ever written). My advisor was (and still is) very proud of me. As I said in my previous post, it was a philosophy paper, but it wasn't always a philosophy paper. It began as a biology paper, despite discussing the ethics of using a certain technology. When it was time to select an area to publish the paper under, I had trouble finding a subject area that fit well with my paper. After sitting down with my teachers, we concluded that the topic of interest fit best as a philosophy paper. This also meant that I would have to restructure the whole paper. Oh, and I had just over a month to do so, keeping in mind that winter break would be my last chance for revisions (we turn them in in early January to remove that responsibility when it comes to IA and testing season). Using the skills I discussed in my last post, I put some of my sources through this lens, while scrapping some and adding a few more. At the end, I actually had few sources (around 10), but in terms of a philosophy paper, this meant that I packed that paper with analysis. Within 2 weeks, I turned that heaping dumpster fire of an essay into a work that I was proud of. Do I think that paper could have been an A paper had I made these changes a few months prior? Yes. Am I proud of that B nonetheless? Hell yes.
Lastly, CAS. This was another thing that I sorta procrastinated, but the hours piled on fast. 150 hours feels like a daunting number, but in reality, it's nothing. 10 hour max? Alright, that 15 activities. Does your activity overlap into all three categories? Cool, you can get up to 30 hours out of it. That's a fifth of the way. I actually turned my CAS book into a tumblr blog, so if you wanted to check it out for some ideas, here you go. @cas-book-srs You'll notice that it seems it bit rushed (because it was), but I did fulfill the requirements. And just by doing stuff that I'd do normally, like hiking or cooking or cleaning dissection supplies. While I'll stand by what I said before and tell you that this is a great opportunity to try new things, that doesn't mean you have to try things like skydiving or painting, it can be something like trying new recipes (check me trying to cook authentic Chinese cuisine and kinda failing).
Alrighty, that's what I got for you in this post. I know I said that I might discuss IAs, but I wasn't quite sure how to condense that. However, if you want to ask questions about that, please don't hesitate.
Next time, I'll discuss my first year in college and how being in IB still affected my work ethic there.
