When some people hear the words International Baccalaureate Diplomacy Program (IB), they will cringe or even groan. For those who don’t know, IB is Advanced Placement (AP) on steroids. Each assessment for IB is graded within a different country and the IB program’s goal was for their students to be a student of the world. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, it was the most difficult two years of my life. You had either six to eight IB classes in a day, where the teachers would assign their large amount of homework which was mostly likely due the next day. Also, in addition to the homework, every assignment mattered. Whether it was the Extended Essay (EE), the Internal Assessments (IA), Creativity Activity Service projects (CAS), Theory of Knowledge (TOK), Paper Ones, Paper Twos, and Papers Threes, homework engulfed your life. If that didn’t stress you out enough, there was an entire month of testing over each fact and detail about the past two years of your high school career. Once all the exams and essays finally ended, you crossed your fingers, hoped that you passed and would receive your actual IB diploma. However, most of us just hoped that we would actually receive credit for torturing ourselves for four years. And if we didn’t receive any credit, we must admit we learned a lot from IB.
A lesson that I learned from IB was that your teachers can be more than just teachers. Your teachers could be your mentors even friends. These teachers cared; they knew the amount of pressure we endured, they knew we strived for successful and possibly perfection. Even the most intimidating teachers, who had vast knowledge of the Cold War will sit with you, call you pumpkin, talk you through a situation that seems hopeless and make sure you make it through to see the end of the exams. Even a teacher, who has a reputation for being mean to everyone and the king of sass, will make sure you pass that final oral examination and save you from a few failed relationships. Even the elusive, head of the IB program could cheer you up with donuts and a story about dinosaurs.
Another lesson that I learned from IB was to thrive under stress. I know my fellow IB graduates will understand when I say that everything was due within the same month or at the same time. Whether it was the EE, IAs, CAS or some other IB torture in the form of an acronym, there were many nights spent crying while typing a paper of some shape or form. I learned to use this stress in a positive way, to fuel my adrenaline and my fear of not passing in order to push me through the night of revising or possibly writing a paper. Stress fueled your life and kept you awake just as much as caffeine did. Stress taught you how to relate to your peers, who normally you probably would have nothing to talk about unless you were in IB together. For example, “how are doing today,” “oh, I slept for three hours,” “I feel you, don’t worry.” Stress became your best friend and best motivator.
IB taught me how to find irony in everything, because if I didn’t I probably would have cried a lot more than I actually did. After finishing your math IA, but then realizing you did a horrible job, but you remember that at least someone else in your class didn’t start writing the paper till the night before it was due. Maybe after thinking you were done with the written assignment for English; however, the book you wrote it on was no longer on the syllabus. Instead of crying you look back at your other papers and said, well, at least they didn’t voluntarily choose one without your consent, and your literature teachers did bring you donuts so it turned out OK. Even if you did find humor in each situation, sometimes you would still cry and laugh at the same time. IB is very emotional.
In the end, even if you didn’t receive credit or the diploma you have to look back and appreciate all the life lessons that IB taught you. IB gave you life skills, it taught you how to cope with large amounts of stress, to find the silver lining to every situation, and to look towards teachers for help with life and not just with academic questions. So thank you IB, thank you for the tears, thank you for the close friends, thank you for life changing teachers, thank you for academic endurance, thank you for the knowledge and thank you for all the stress.
