Because I Am Bored

Signs that you are an IB student

Because no IB blog is complete without an IB checklist of signs that you are in the IB programme, here is my own list…

1. You OPLV movies, cartoons, stage shows, and other forms of entertainment.

2. You wonder if sexual intercourse counts as “action hours” in CAS.

3. The due date for your EE is suddenly very near, yet this somehow doesn’t scare you because you’ve mastered the art of writing multi-page papers the day before they are due.

4. You actually know what the past three acronyms stand for.

5. Caffeine.

6. You understand number 5 of this list.

7. Four hours of sleep is “a good night’s sleep.”

8. While reading the criteria for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) for your psychology class, you wonder why it’s considered a disorder.

9. You don’t play games on the computer, you play them on your beloved TI-83/TI-84 Plus.

10. You’ve had your graphing calculator taken away by a teacher because you used it as a diversion from their boring lectures.

11. On a short-answer test requiring a one-paragraph answer, you write an entire essay.

12. Free time no longer exists in your vocabulary. (What DOES that mean? It seems like a vaguely familiar term non-IB humans use.)

13. “Burn out” is a major understatement of what IB has made you into.

14. You have more than 100 hours of community service hours.

15. Despite being educated in an American school for the majority of your young life, you spell everything according to the British conventions for spelling. (Colour, programme, etc.)

16. When comparing physics test grades with your friends, you secretly feel mildly accomplished despite scoring only a C. Thank heaven for grading curves!

17. You’ve read much more comprehensive (and humourous) IB lists here and here.

18. You know what’s wrong with item 17 of this list.

To Students Just Starting Pre-IB/IB

Dear poor naive young soul,

Welcome to your first preview of what is called the IB Programme. Now that you are enlisted to sacrifice your social life for academic “advancement,” I feel it is necessary to enlighten you about what is to come in these years in IB.

A Sort of Preface

Good evening. It seems you’ve run into the files of IB Student, the identity of whom you do not really know (which is good for IB Student). You may ask, IB Student, what is the point of this blog and what the hell does IB stand for, anyway? Your questions will be answered by the About section (hopefully). You may also ask, IB Student, why must you write about yourself in the third person?

That is a question that produces many different possible answers. For the sake of (the lack of) brevity, a philosophy which IB Student never condones to in her writing/speaking/general communication, I, her loyal spokesperson, will go into as much detail as possible regarding that very question. To avoid her from deviating from the question at hand, I will prod and poke IB Student into answering that as immediately as possible after this paragraph ends.

On second thought, answering that question is deviating from the original purpose for this entry, which is to introduce one to the files of IB Student.

So what is contained/what will be contained in such files? You will discover, in your quest to research more into the life of IB Student, that her IB Files are mainly narratives on her experiences with the IB Programme. IB Student’s trials and travails in IB Programme is at once one of the worst and also one of the best experiences of her life. Be prepared to see her cry out in pain, dance in rapture, succumb to a mental breakdown from her state of stress, get back on track after burning out completely, and watch as she somehow manages to maintain a sense of sanity. Be wary also of her droning on about how rewarding the program is…occasionally.

Be forewarned also of IB Student’s seemingly endless writing style. She does not, as I have mentioned before, seem to like being brief or direct about anything. This basically means that entries posted on this blog may be either really lengthy or really boring. If you so manage to stumble upon a post that seems to be a dissertation on a topic like the effects of overwhelming stress on a young person, the contradictions between Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and other laws of physics, the various processes of the human mind, or something, do not hate her for this. Forgive her as she is now programmed to immediately ponder upon issues such as these.

So do you like music? I happen to love bebop jazz and alternative genres myself.