Boredom

So I’m a little lacking in material this week, since it’s Christmas Break. Since we spend half of break being bored and half of break doing dumb things to keep the boredom away (like school, with more sleep!), I figured it might be appropriate to post a list of things IB kids do in class when they get bored.
· Write notes/text message
· Figure out how to pass said notes
· Sanitize our desks
· Sleep!!!!!
· Sit on the floor/Sit on our desks/Sit in our desks, but creatively
· Do homework for other classes. (Physics is very popular.)
· Origami
· Re-organize our purse/backpack/binder/day planner
· Make that phone call and sit on hold for a while
· Ask dumb questions
· Juggle/do handstands/do pushups/etc.
· Read (usually our own books; if we’re desperate, textbooks)
· Grade/pass back papers
· Listen to iPods
· Take very detailed notes on the lecture
· Draw pictures/comic strips/on the chalkboard
· Take photos
· Fill out job/CAS forms
· Fantasize about hacking into the computer system and making the clocks go faster
· Use our calculators to make pretty graphs/play games/figure out every possible scenario that would prevent us from getting an A in the class
· Use the hole-punch/pencil sharpener way too much
· Figure out how many weeks/days/hours left until the next half day/end of the year/graduation
· Come up with ridiculous couples from our class we’d like to see on a blind date
· Plan our schedule for next week/semester/year/the rest of our lives
· Try to predict what’s going to be on the final
· Have panic attacks

College Propaganda

I always hate myself when a deadline I make comes around and I actually have to start doing something I’ve been putting off. Hello, college search. I haven’t been ignoring it because I’m in denial, or afraid. It’s the tiny, panicky feeling that I’ll end up choosing the wrong one.
I get at least two brochures in the mail every day from colleges, and even though that’s an enormous stack to wade through, there’s still the nagging feeling that my dream college is out there – but it didn’t send me a brochure. If I want to expand my search, it’s difficult. There are some great sites out there to help your search, but the feeling doesn’t go away. Even when I do find one that sounds like a perfect fit, I have to base that on the propaganda put out by the college itself. They all make themselves sound perfect.
Over the summer, I took tours of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore, and Princeton. All the tours were led by a trained guide, and all of the colleges sounded wonderful and went straight onto my list. When I visited Johns Hopkins, however, I went with a family friend – not a tour guide – and I was much less impressed. In fact, the tour kicked Hopkins off of my list.
Obviously, there’s a lot of advertising that goes into colleges. Before this summer, I never once considered Princeton – I absolutely do not want to go to an Ivy – and Hopkins was one of my top 10. Did I get an over-glamorized picture of Princeton? Of course. But I don’t know if my view of Hopkins was accurate or not. The day was horribly humid, and we ended up walking the length of campus almost three times, since my ‘guide’ didn’t know the right path to take to hit all the high points in the shortest distance – so the campus seemed way too big to me, as opposed to the smaller feel of the other colleges. I also visited the week before final exams, so none of the students had anything good to say about the school. My guide asked a friend of his to tell me about all the fun stuff there is to do on campus. She looked at him with a sarcastically wide-eyed expression and asked incredulously “There’s fun stuff to do here? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I was in Yearbook in 8th grade, and I loved every minute of it, except one day. We had all been at school late the night before, and we still missed an important deadline. Our teacher was upset with us, we had lost the yearbook a lot of money, and we were exhausted and frustrated. One of the 7th graders chose that morning to ask us if being in Yearbook was fun. We replied with a resounding “NO.” I’m sorry to say that kid didn’t join the next year.
So what can you base your opinions on, if even a visit to the campuses doesn’t give you enough information? I don’t know. I’m going in the opposite direction – instead of looking for things I like, I’m looking for things I don’t like, and throwing those colleges out. Maybe that did Hopkins in, but I’d rather miss out on a good college than end up at a bad one because it looked better from its point of view.

Finals!

Well I’d like to start this blog with a bunch of wonderful news related to IB – final exams! For one thing, they’re over, and it’s officially Winter Break. For another, I kicked butt. This year, my grades didn’t do as well as I’m used to. Junior year is the first “real” year of IB, when every one of our classes is IB-level. Some of us have been in the program since Pre-Pre-IB in middle school and we’ve all been doing amazingly, so none of us were very worried about our junior year. We should have been. I don’t know anyone in the junior class who has been satisfied with their grades for the entirety of this semester.
My final exams took place on Monday and Tuesday, both half days – giving us over an hour each for 3 exams on Monday and 3 on Tuesday. Monday I took Language Arts and Math (I should have taken Bio that day too, but we took it on Friday). Language Arts is my best class, so I hadn’t studied much and wasn’t really worried. I did well enough to keep my A. Math, however, is my worst subject. It’s been a struggle for me since middle school to accept a B in that class – it’s the best I can do, no matter how hard I try, which is difficult since I’m used to straight A’s. The week before finals, I had just pulled my grade up from a high C to a low B, and I needed a 75% on the test to keep my B. I studied and worked really hard and when I turned in the 20-question test 5 minutes before the bell, I was confident that I had hit that 75% mark.
I waited around after class for Math Teacher to grade my test. When she got to mine, I was crushed. I had missed one too many questions, gotten a 70% on the test and was condemned to a C for the semester. I don’t get C’s, and I was really upset with myself for missing one too many questions. Boyfriend was great, though, and came home with me and stayed all afternoon, cheering me up and studying for the next day’s finals. When I thought about the math test, I realized that one of the questions I had seen her mark wrong was the one I didn’t know how to do, so I plugged the multiple choice answers into the problem on my calculator – I couldn’t have gotten it wrong. I planned to talk to Math Teacher about it the next morning.
Now here’s the good news. That evening I got a call from one of my friends, telling me to check my grades online. Apparently another friend convinced Biology Teacher to curve the final. (There was a bit of a problem with her final; almost everyone failed. It brought my grade down from an A to a B, and I was upset.) That put my grade back to an A! Then I saw my math grade – my final had changed from a 70 to a 75, and my grade to a B. Turns out I had been right about that answer.
As for the next day’s finals; Psych, History, and Spanish, I studied a little bit and did well on the tests. My grades are now all A’s and a B in math. Yes! Also, a congrats to Boyfriend for acing his French finals, a thank-you to my friend who phoned me Monday night and to the one who convinced Bio Teacher to curve the final, and another congrats to all the IB juniors who did well on their finals. We’re ¼ done with IB!