Advice for IB first-years
Or school in general, really.
This summer, as I reflected with my friend Chiara about the mistakes we’d made throughout the past school year, I realised that there are a lot of things I would go back and tell myself — a lot more beyond the thing that I normally say I’d tell myself (which is, incidentally, #1 on this list).
In the past few weeks, I’ve seen a lot more kids in the year below me, getting ready to brave the new world that is IB (acronyms and all), and most ask: What advice do you have for those going into IB?
My answers have gotten more detailed and well thought out as I’ve answered more people, but I just thought that I’d put them all together in one single Medium article to make it easier — and I even consulted a few friends, mostly from my year, but also from one who recently graduated this year from IB (International Baccalaureate).
Before I start, though, one more thing to clarify: these tidbits of advice don’t really just apply to IB. They apply to AP, or gifted programs, or even just regular school. Because school is hard, and let’s be real — help in any way, shape, or form, is always appreciated.
So, without further ado: the list.
#1: Don’t procrastinate.
I’m serious.
…
No, like seriously.
Every time I say this to someone, they laugh in my face.
Deep down inside, though, we all know that we shouldn’t be procrastinating. We should be productive, hard-working students. After all, that’s what helps us finish our work faster, right? Hard work?
This used to be my biggest piece of advice for people going into IB, but as I’ve kind of grown up and looked back, it’s pretty much impossible not to procrastinate, and my friend Victoria (an IB alumna from this past June) agrees with me.
“I don’t advise [procrastinating], but you will survive if you do, and it’s impossible not to.”
Okay.
So #1 is kind of impossible to do.
What is possible to do then?
Enter tip #2.
#2: Review a little every day.
It’s hard not to get distracted sometimes, and before you know it, it’s 11:30 PM and all you’ve done since you’ve gotten home from school is watch six episodes of your new favourite TV show.
Pause, realise that you’re mildly screwed, then finish your episode.
Now, turn off your internet, and pull out your notebooks. You don’t have to do your homework. Doing your homework and getting lots of practice is good and incredibly important, but the most important thing to do every day is review your notes from class.
Reviewing your notes is important because:
- It gives you a chance to fix any mistakes you might have made while writing your notes (helloooooo, write-os).
- It gives you a chance to check whether you didn’t fully understand a concept.
And if your lesson the day after is almost certainly going to be based on the one you made notes on today, and you can’t even understand today’s lesson, how can you expect to understand tomorrow’s?
You can’t.
Which brings us to #3.
#3: Don’t be afraid to ask your teachers questions.
This almost goes without saying by this point.
Your teachers are there to help you learn. No matter how utterly terrifying and soul-shattering they may seem, they are still your teachers. And they want to help you as much as they can.
I made the mistake of not doing so last year, and I think I missed out a lot on what could have been not only a lot of help in a subject I struggled a lot in, but also a valuable student-teacher relationship. My friend Arthur struggled with this as well — and was in fact the person who first suggested this tip — but he had the courage to go ask, often, and says that his relationship with that soul-shattering teacher I feared actually grew, which is something he definitely appreciates.
So go ask your teachers lots of questions, and get to know them well, because they’re amazing people who can teach you tons of stuff. You just need to take the time and round up the courage to go ask.
#4: If you’re going to lose a lot of sleep, you might as well make it worth your while.
Personally, I’ve never pulled an all-nighter for school before. I’ve come close at times (my latest is 4 AM ... so … not that late, I guess), but I’ve never really done it. My friend Stacy has, though, so I asked her: Were any of the all-nighters she pulled for school worth it in the long run?
Stacy: For the times that I did pull all-nighters, they were worth it. I had a bunch of other opportunities but at around 11–12 I realized: you know what, sitting here trying to research more ideas and plan this thing out isn’t gonna do me much good than if I get seven hours of sleep. And then perhaps an idea will pop into my head as I shower or right before I fall asleep or at another random point in time just not siting here at a desk.
S: Also I like to think of it this way: if you’re asking yourself the question of if an all-nighter is worth it, it’s probably not.
[Me: So if you’re gonna go, you might as well go all the way.]
S: Yeah, like either you go into it with full confidence like “this shit’s gotta get done” or you don’t do it at all if you have any doubts about the outcome being worth it.
S: Sometimes it just comes down to the need for working hours in quiet for concentration that you can’t get anywhere else. (Or that you work really slow and can’t type it out during lunch.)
Conclusion? All-nighters can be worth it. Just make sure that you’re staying productive while you stay up — after all, you’re losing precious hours of shuteye for this.
#5: Keep everything in perspective.
IB is not an impossible challenge. It is not designed to be a test that will weed out potential candidates that aren’t perfect enough; it is a program that is designed to encourage you to work harder and ‘think critically.’
The more you treat IB as an impossibility, the more likely you are to fail.
Personally, one of my biggest problems last year was panicking way too easily about everything — every single assignment we had to hand in, no matter how small it was.
I’d heard so many rumours about how hard everything was going to be, so that was the way that I approached every assignment: as a hard piece of work that I would have to work really hard to do just decently on.
In a way, it was what helped me start my work a lot later, and burn out a lot faster. I spent most of my time before starting my work lamenting how hard it was going to be, or how much I didn’t want to do it, because I didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of it not being as good a piece of work as I could make it (those repercussions, FYI, don’t really exist). Then, once I actually started working, I lost motivation so quickly — since I treated all my work as hard work, I overthought simple concepts and easily overlooked small details, making my already hard work even harder. By the time I was ready to hand in my assignment online, I was only halfheartedly adding in page numbers and citations (which, BTW, you should actually do while writing any paper— it saves you at least an hour of work at the end).
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it basically shows the correlation between procrastination and perfectionism — a topic which so many articles mention.
Learn to pick your battles wisely*— if it’s a small assignment your teacher is asking for just to make sure you actually do your homework sometimes and understand a concept, maybe it’s not the greatest time to nitpick over word choice and how long it should be and so on. If it’s an assignment that’s going to be worth a decent chunk of your final mark, then maybe word choice should definitely be on your list of ‘to edit.’
*N.B.: Picking your battles wisely and not being an incredible perfectionist on every assignment does not mean ‘complete some assignments halfheartedly because they aren’t worth anything.’ Not being an incredible perfectionist on every assignment means that you accept good work as a final product. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just good enough.
“It won’t all be perfect. Actually, it will all not be perfect.”
If you treat your work as a hard challenge that’s out of your league, you’re only making your own life harder. As my friend Chiara says, “Keep the mentality that you can get through it if you try, and remember your personal best is good enough.”
Just take a deep breath, and take it one step (or assignment!) at a time.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
#6: Enjoy what you can.
Because there are going to be days when you feel utterly overwhelmed. Because there are going to be days when you have multiple assignments due and everyone around you is either stuck in a flurry of thoughts in their own mind or inducing panic by saying all their anxious thoughts aloud. Because there are days where you need to take a step back from all the panic and calm yourself down.
“Don’t let everyone else draw you into insanity.”
My friend Brianna adds, “You may be stressed and overwhelmed with assignments but it still is possible to have fun.”
And she’s right. You are going to have fun.
You’re going to have fun when you learn about things that utterly fascinate you — because c’mon, wasn’t that one of the reasons you signed up for this program? Well, you’ll get what you asked for, in tenfold.
You’re going to have fun when you stay up until midnight with twenty other people in your class racing to finish an assignment the next day, because you can’t stay up late with other people working on the same thing and not find some sort of bond being formed. You’re going to have fun laughing at all the other people who stayed up late — or pulled an all-nighter — on an assignment that you, for once, didn’t procrastinate on too badly.
You’re going to have fun trying to make yourself laugh at a teacher’s really bad jokes in class with your friends — and then laughing for real as the teacher realises what an absolutely terrible joke they just told. You’re going to have fun doing your CAS activities with all your friends, and you’re going to have fun laughing at how much of your EE you haven’t done yet over the summer (you might regret that one, but it’s funny for at least a day). You’re going to have fun meeting the younger kids and giving them advice (like this!) and you’re going to have fun getting to know your teachers and their thoughts and opinions so, so much better.
And that just might make your day, even if it’s overwhelmed with assignments and tests and panic, a little bit better.
Final Remarks (and More Tips!)
Victoria: “Remember your emotional support people because emotional health is important. You’ll be awesome :)”
Brianna: “Create deadlines for your EE and keep to them.”
Stacy: “I’m one of those people that mindlessly waste time so advice from me: make routines and keep extra fucking organized (ESP LISTS!!!) bc otherwise you’ll end up on your bed with YouTube.” [sic]
Chiara: “As much as there’s a weird competition to see who can sleep the least and still function properly, sleep is actually important, and you will be super stressed if you don’t sleep. Know when to just stop working and go to bed or do something you enjoy.”
Arthur: “Keep up with homework, and do practice questions.”
And finally, me: “IB is just a stepping stone to something else. You might never find anything like this again, or you might find that everything you do after this ends up just like it. No matter which path you end up on, let yourself experience this fully — because you never know which path you might take.
Oh, and make sure you know how to pick topics for your assignments; otherwise, you’ll find yourself bored to tears while you write at 2 AM the night before it’s due. And try to do your homework and keep up in class.”
If you’re an IB alumnus/alumna, or you’re going into your second year of IB like me, and/or you have more tips that I’ve neglected to mention, add it to the comments on the side, or write your own response for others to see.
If you have any other specific questions for me or some of the people who helped me write this article, you can reach out to us individually on Twitter and/or Tumblr:
Don’t lose your fight, kid.
— All Time Low, “Missing You”, from their 2015 album Future Hearts
