I’m terribly sorry, Blog.
There is nothing of note to write about except my memories, which I have dwelt on for far too long.
However, I do have a draft on some tips I learnt from being in the IBP. Hopefully I’ll finish it by tomorrow.
-IBS
You will only drive yourself mad if you try to attain perfection, then find yourself wanting when you do not reach such an impossible standard.
I suddenly feel as if this is directed at myself, IB Student.
Ahahaha.
This is what a 100 degree Fahrenheit fever will do to you.
There really isn’t much going on in my life at the moment. I am breathing (somewhat at a normal rate); I am alive is what I’m trying to convey. The life of a biological and chemical sciences major isn’t conducive to leisurely time. The moment I finish one assignment or complete a laboratory report, it’s on to another. I march ever on, hoping that I’ll reach my destination at some point, and without sacrificing the remains of my sanity.
I’ve barely written for there isn’t much privacy when two of your closest uni friends live either near you or with you. I have come to fear the creak of the door when I am immersed in my words, and rush to close the tab in which I write my drafts.
Writing, I feel, is very much an intimate experience. The final product may be displayed to the public, but the alchemical process of combining words and making ideas alive is very much the work of a singular entity (as far as individual-run, self-dramatising, blogs are concerned, that is).
I am very much an introvert, so I find myself wanting solitude amid all the socialization and the pressure to socialize in a university environment. It’s taxing to constantly adhere to people’s perception of you as some butterfly flitting here and there to have a little chat (or seventeen). But I suppose that’s my own fault for trying to expand my social horizons (whatever that means, anyway).
Exhausted, I am leery of engaging in another activity that involves sitting around a table and being expected to contribute to the conversation.
Anyway, I apologise for pouring all this rubbish in spite of my lengthy absence. After letting the words simmer in my brain for so long they just pour out when the opportunity displays itself (often in the form of an electronic journal which at this point probably reads like some dramatic English major’s/aspiring writer’s diary).
Final line: If you are pushing twenty years old (as I am), are feeling directionless, and have a sickening tendency to relate to literary characters, I recommend you do not, under any circumstances, read books about directionless, nineteen to twenty year old aspiring writers with melancholic temperaments. It’s like looking in a mirror. (But not for me as I am a science major with some sense of purpose in her life! Neener neener neener! Or so I tell myself).
Strolling through the hallways at dilapidated Unnamed High School (UHS) in a city in the United States Midwest, IB Grad endured multiple horrible flashbacks of ToK, English A1, History, Physics, Math, Biology, and ToK. Harassment of IB Student was common practise among non-IB students, or so she deluded herself into thinking when she had been an overstressed and paranoid IB Student. When she visited UHS this past week, she was struck by how annoying high schoolers are and gives her former teachers multiple props and imaginary accolades for putting up with annoying students such as she and her peers had been.
She was ever amused to be able to be strolling freely through the hallways without being apprehended by security guards, or Dementors as she is quite fond of calling them. How shocked and embarassed the Dementors were when they saw the “visitor” tag stuck to her shirt.
Though she loves her eccentric professors, she missed her weirdo high school teachers. (Note that weirdo, when used by IB Grad, is normally meant to be a compliment). When she sees her teachers, that part of her that secretly wants to be a teacher is awakened and then immediately suppressed by IB Grad’s Ego when she suddenly remembers that she does a piss poor job of explaining stuff and has little resilience when faced with the task of controlling disrespectful and cocky high schoolers. She would also be too lax with grades, which benefits no one especially if they are doing a crappy job.
What struck her like a brick that suddenly appears as one is strolling casually through a garden (as her history teacher was fond of saying), was how much she did not miss the oppressively over-heated and smelly atmosphere of UHS. Peeeee yoooo.
I’ve decided that my last very short post was quite a bummer, as Americans say, so I have posted this absurd story that is based on one of my dreams. I really believe that IB examiners ought to have given me a 7 instead of the pathetic 5 they gave me for English A1 for my pastiches alone (which I will post at some point). It’s amazing that I’ve graduated from IB and yet it continues to act as a muse. When I win a Pulitzer, a Nobel Prize, a Booker, and a National Book Award it shall be a big finger flipped to IB examiners.
Once upon a late, late night, so late that even ghosts were appalled by the time, a young woman sat in front of her computer screen and stared at the creepy glow it emitted. The light in the room was dimmed so that her parents would not realise that she was still awake and then complain about her effed-up sleeping pattern and her unhealthy caffeine addiction.
…is there a grade of E instead of F. E for Elementary, that is.
…will the programme be worth it if you scored enough to receive credits for your performance on the exams.*
…will you find yourself wallowing in low self-esteem years after being in the programme.
…will you get a fancy folder in which to put your fancy diploma.
I have a very “dark” sense of “humour” that seems to come out often on this blog. So if you find yourself reading a post and saying to yourself, “My goodness, this young woman needs therapy to deal with her issues of self-esteem and inward anger” you are probably right. But that is not what I meant to write about. So I will begin again.
I have a very dark sense of humour that rears its macabre head when I write posts for this blog. From what I write about the IB, it may seem like the most horrid experience of your life. Or Hell. But seriously though, you have to understand that this was my “creative”/angsty outlet, which is to say that my experience is definitely not representative of all IB experiences. I am just one person trying to convey to an anonymous audience the trials and travails of her own experience in the programme. And also post the stuff I write that I am too afraid of showing to my teachers.
For the most part, venting my frustrations on this blog while in the IB helped maintain most of my remaining sanity. I pride myself in knowing that I never turned to drugs, alcohol, smoking, and promiscuity as a means of escape. I did, however, read a lot of depressing novels about overachieving students and wrote things on this site. Which, one could argue, might be just as bad as turning to the demon drink because reading good fiction can cause one to overanalyse. But I am rambling again.
Some of your classmates in IB who appear more inclined towards the “practical” subjects may call written works and visual arts as “pointless”, but there is a point to art. Art is a means of expression by which…oh oops, I will stop there. I do not want to get into detail as I might as well post my TOK essay on that subject.
I have decided then that I will try to be more encouraging as a survivor of the IB Programme to young’uns who have just entered the programme or are currently going through it.
But I cannot guarantee that I will slip something dark into my posts (evidence of this is above).
…ironic that I wrote a lot of essay-length posts on this blog while railing against essay-writing for IB.
And by A Novel I meant “fictional” memoir. Wrap thy brain around that.
Since it is Novel Writing Month, I am trying to write a chapter a day on my supposedly “fictional” “memoir” of IB. However, my poor female protagonist is not faring well at the moment as her author keeps vacillating between a Bell Jar/Catcher in the Rye type character and a sort of modern day Jane Eyre.
The Novel may as well be called The Catcher in the Bell Jar: A Goddamn, Crummy, Phony, Stillborn Fictional-But Not Really Fictional Autobiography About (a) Nervous Breakdown(s) of a Plain, Emotionally Disturbed But Overachieving Young Woman. BUT that’s much too lengthy a title, so I’ll stick with Of Sleepless Nights and Barrels of Coffee.
In the meantime, I have made up a really crummy song to the tune of Rehab by Amy Winehouse, a song which I anticipate will be in the Bottom 40 as it will only be sung by me.
They tried to make me do my homework,
But I said NO NO NO.
Yes I have work,
But then I go beserk
When I have to do my ho-homework.
I’d rather be on the ‘tube instead,
Waiting for my brain to go dead.
Cuz there’s nothing, nothing you’ll state,
That’ll stop me from doing my work laaate.
…and so on.
I sit in my dorm room at this moment, munching on the sandwich that has just been delivered by the sandwich shop a few steps away (I was much too lazy to walk there myself). The fan buzzes below my roomate’s bed, the air blowing at my face as I lean on the wall, laptop burning my sensitive parts because the inner fan is essentially ineffective. And I am frozen with ABSOLUTE UNENDING despair on my bed as I realise that I could have gone to the pub with friends tonight and gotten drunk off my face and possibly dying of alcohol poisoning. But really, I should not tell you youngsters matters of an alcoholish nature.
What has IB Graduate been up to her 2nd month of university?
She has immersed herself into the theatre scene on campus and is featured in various plays. FEATURED, mind you, not STARRING as she so evidently deserves as she is a magnificent, a brilliant actress. Sigh. How they will regret it when she wins an Olivier, a Tony, an Oscar, and then a Razzie (when she falls into has-been status after a much-publicized ordeal with drug addiction). But to be in a play is enough especially since she had no opportunity to be in any plays while that thing called Life Outside of IB was put on hold.
IB Graduate is convinced that she was given roles in the plays she is in out of pity as she is not, despite the paragraph above, truly a great actress. Almost passable, maybe, but not great or good. At the moment she is attempting to write a play about globalization, which seems to be what everything boils down to in her international studies classes. She is attempting to make it satirical, but every so often when she attempts that she ends up with a work that is so very serious and depressing. And yes, she has time for writing plays and books of poems now. Her fictional memoir of IB is germinating.
It is Halloween week in her dormitory and she now has just returned from a practise Americans seem to call trick-or-treating (only once has she encountered a trick), minus the costume, the kitschy decorations, the masses of little boys and girls dressed as cars/princesses/witches/vampires and the lame treats (who gives pennies to little children??). Her costume du jour is blue jeans and a hoodie. Can you guess what she is dressed up as?
On her messy bed a caramelized taffy apple awaits its gestation.
IB Grad has no idea where her roomie is, but for the moment she’ll just assume she’s off studying as usual.
