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

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.

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).

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.

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.

The darkness and the concentrated glow made her eyes hurt, but she continued to stare at the blank Word Document in the misplaced hope that her commentary on Mirror by Sylvia Plath would write itself. In the glare of the computer monitor she saw her face reflected, a “terrible fish” rising towards her hourly. Immediately she felt depressed by the realisation that she could be the woman in the poem driven by her own sad vanity. She became even more depressed when her tendency to connect to the speakers in poems hit her. Then she felt even more depressed than she already had been feeling when she realised that she had only written two words in the Word document: her name.

This of course inspired her to write a pastiche of another poem by Plath called “Whiteness I Remember”, a poem which she, a perverted teenager, hilariously misinterpreted as being about sex the day before her English teacher made fun of a former student who had thought the same thing.

Darkness being what I remember

About Plath:

She began to type.

darkness and the black words

She gave me.

She smiled smugly to herself and examined her progress with utter satisfaction. Having just seen a video biography thing on Plath’s life (an activity she justified because it was related to literature and totally NOT something to do to make her feel productive), which was graciously provided by the Internet, IB Student tried to read her pastiche in the voice of Plath, weird Boston accent with British affectations and all.

Just then, the alarm clock set at 4 am made her tremble as it set off. School would begin just 3 hours and 45 minutes from that moment. She would be late for English class for sure if she continued to procrastinate.

Figurative tears began to form in the wells of her symbolic eyes as she became overcome with despair at her failure to write academic papers. The young woman then left her room to get something to eat from the oven. Predictably enough, as she flung open the oven door, a ghostly figure flew out from the oven and stood beside her. The ghostly figure was no taller than herself, and probably no paler (IB Student never saw sunlight as she was often trapped in her Cave, the study room, to do her work) also.

IB Student jumped in shock and screamed in utter vulgarity the following question:

“Who the FUCK are you??”

“You moron”, the ghostly figured uttered in frustration. She slapped her forehead. “You devilish leopard”.

“Say what?”

“Never mind.” They stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, IB Student clutching dearly to a pan nearby. As if pans could fend off famous dead poets made of supernatural substances.

“I would think you would recognise those words from one of my poems and thus find yourself recognising me”.

IB Student was still perplexed by both the surreality of this exchange and the ghostly figure beside her. The ghost saw confusion twisted on IB Student’s face, so she continued to give vague hints as to her identity.

“Balloons”.

“Inflatable?”

“The Moon and the Yew Tree”.

“Wands?!”

“Spinster!”.

“I am?!”

“What?”

“A question?”

This awkward word association game went on for some time until the ghost relented and just outright told the young woman what her name was. IB Student set the pan down and glared at the ground.

“I really have gone insane”, she whispered to the air.

“Yes”.

“Oh. OH!” her face was suddenly alight with the realisation that the creator of the poem she tried to analyse was standing before her, albeit as a ghost.

“CAN I ASK YOU QUESTIONS IS THE LAKE TO WHICH THE SPEAKER REFERS ACTUALLY A LAKE OR IS IT JUST MEANT TO BE A REFERENCE TO THE STORY OF  NARCISSUS AND ACT AS A PARALLEL TO THE VANITY WHICH PROPELS THE WOMAN THE MIRROR CREEPILY WATCHES EVEN THOUGH IT CLAIMS TO BE UNMISTED BY WHATEVERS AND ACTUALLY CAN YOU JUST WRITE THIS COMMENTARY FOR ME I AM NOT A LITERATURE PERSON AND WERE YOU REALLY AN ENGLISH MAJOR WHY DON’T WE READ ANYTHING BY YOUR HUSBAND TED HUGHES WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF THE MYTHOLOGY THAT HAS SURROUNDED YOUR LIFE AND BEING CAN YOU WRITE MY COMMENTARY FOR ME PLEASE MY ENGLISH TEACHER HATES ME”

After that humongous block of text and the multiple run-ons that accompanied it, IB Student took a breath (finally).

The ghostly figure was so infuriated that she sat down and flung out a pen or something like it and began writing a poem on invisible paper. “Post-post modernism sucks!” she scribbled.

“Oh that’s right. I’m dead. No one really listens to me yet they hear words nonetheless, some of which I’ve never said or intended to convey!”. She sighed and put the chopstick down. An expression of perplexity coloured the dead poet’s face, as if she were trying to remember something of vague importance. “What was I saying? Oh that’s right! I am not here to write your commentaries, [OMISSION]“.

“But SP! I need your help. I suck at this literature essay writing thing!” IBS pouted and crossed her arms.

“Look kid, I have been dead for over 40 years now. I’ve spent the last 40 years stewing under my own dour air from within this oven. I don’t have time for this shit”.

“That does sound depressing. But I thought you were suffocating under the glass constrictions of a bell jar, which acts as a metaphor for the depression the protagonist of your only published novel slips into along with the social constrictions imposed by conservative mid-century America, not an oven”.

“Though that in fact was partly my intention in writing my first and only published novel (I had written another one, but in one of my rages I burnt it), do you not agree that my method of death was itself a poetic act? The oven represents domesticity, and in choosing to kill myself through the oven, I have shown how asphyxiating purely domestic duties are to women”.

“I would only agree if I were myself a severely depressed poet in the early 60s with two young children and a philandering but also brilliant poet husband who is quite fond of writing about nature in a dark way”.

“Or an oppressed housewife with a chronically unfaithful but sexually magnetic husband”.

“Oh, I’m no Betty Draper either, nor one of the oppressed suburban housewives in Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique suffering from the problem that has no name, nor a so-called ‘free woman’ in Doris Lessing’s epically long novel The Golden Notebook, but really no difference there if you think about it…” IB Student smiled imperceptibly at her pseudo-intellectualism which deluded her into thinking that she actually understood the latter literature which took her an entire summer to read, so bleak was it in certain parts and also very very long just like this story is becoming.

“Now, what were we discussing? Oh yes, I’m terribly sorry but you will never finish this essay of yours if you continue to hallucinate poets dead and alive”.

“You mean commentary”.

“Yes, that. Say, why can’t you just call it a literature essay?”

“Because in the programme I’m in they are fond of renaming things to make them sound fancier. Our history essays and lab reports are called Internal Assessments.”

“Bullshit, that”.

“Indeed. So what was in your journal?”

[OMISSION]

…….

Just then they heard the voice of a man with an Irish accent. The young woman eyed in the distance a tall figure who was either her only male literature teacher or a renowned Irish poet.

“Why, you’re not dead!” IB Student exclaimed.

“But I am old and am practically digging my own grave,” winked the Seamus Heaney of imagination. The world heard the collective groans of students at this terrible pun.

“This is the end of the story because I cannot think of anything more to write” concluded IB Student.

…….

The moral of this absurd, disorganised story borne from the loins of my perverted figurative muse? Do not write essays at 3 or 4 am in the morning for that is when the body is at its lowest metabolic rate and you will for sure feel either suicidal or begin hallucinating and sustaining conversations with figments of your imagination.

…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 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.

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.

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.