IB Tests, In Legos!

A few nights ago, 5 and the Senior Boys all went over to Meg's to play Wii Tennis and swim. And build things out of her little brother's legos.

Me: What should I make out of legos?
SB#1: Hell!

Roi: Ha!
SB#2: AAUUUUUGHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOO HOW DID I MISS THAT SERVE????

So there you have it. Hell represented in lego form. That's (from left) Roi, me (that is a mouth, not a mustache), and Ex (yes, a cyclops flower) taking our IB tests. The Test Invigilator has the machine gun to prevent TESTING AREA CONTAMINATION, which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.

My First IB Test

Yesterday was the senior's last day of school! Good luck and we'll miss you.

IB tests are, essentially, very big finals at the end of senior year that test everything you learned (or were supposed to) over the last two years, without actually asking – they’re very, very broad essay questions. They, along with CAS and the Extended Essay, are the Holy Grails of getting our IB Diplomas.
I took my first one on Thursday, as a junior, because the Psychology class my school offers is only SL (Standard Level – one year long). I’ve spent all of high school watching the seniors deal with IB tests, and it usually goes through four stages:
1.) Oh dear Lord, did we ever actually learn any of this?
2.) Of course we did. This stuff is easy. We’ll do fine.
3.) We really couldn’t care less about our IB tests at this point.
4.) Oh dear Lord, the test is TODAY! Did we ever actually learn any of this? That’s okay, I’ll bet we do just fine. Like we care anyway.

I’m happy to say that because Psychology Teacher is one of the most amazing teachers I’ve ever had, that the Psych test was really stress-free, at least for me. We started reviewing in class a week before the test, and I stayed every day for after-school study sessions. They really were more “review” than “study”, as we spent all year learning this stuff and most of us had no real need to go back and re-learn or cram any of it.
The day of the test, all of us were excused from all of our classes. The test started at 12, and we were to spend all morning in the Psych room reviewing. When we got there at 7:45, Psych Teacher had a whole table of sugary breakfast snacks set out for us. After completely demolishing the food, we filled up the chalkboard completely with empirical studies (the one thing we were all shaky on) and jumped around on sugar highs, yelling and trying to focus and memorize a bunch of names, dates, and experiments. That lasted about twenty minutes, after which we sat sprawled on the floor listening to iPods, throwing gummi fruit at each other, and studying various notes. If you had walked into the room around 8:30, you would have seen a bunch of jittery but lethargic teenagers lying on each other’s stomachs, surrounded by a huge mass of papers spread all over the floor, shouting out random facts, questions, or song lyrics.
By third hour we had been exiled to the second floor of the library because Psych Teacher had a class. The attitude by that point was “if we don’t know it by now, we’re just not going to talk about it on the exam” so we (me, Roi, Goa, Geo, Ex, and Duckie) spent the last two hours before the exam talking, snacking, and generally relaxing. Meg and the senior boys made an appearance during lunch because the seniors were under the impression that there was free food. Upon discovering that the food was back in PT’s room, and that we weren’t going to go get them fruit snacks, they left.
When we got to the testing room at 11:45 (fifteen minutes early so the Test Invigilator could make sure our pockets were empty and all that), it finally hit us that we were actually taking an IB test. Cue frantic last-minute studying. After getting yelled at for “contaminating” the front of the room, we all picked up our answer sheets, went back and got the right ones (so sue me, no one told me they had our names already on them!) found seats, turned our pockets inside out, exchanged wide-eyed silent “good luck” looks, and prepared for our tests. The Test Invigilator opened the plastic-wrapped exams in front of us so we could rest assured that nobody had tampered with our tests (that really does keep me up at night, you don’t know) and handed them out.
They were relatively painless, too. I blanked completely on one question at first but calmed down a little and aced it. I’m a big believer in karma and all that, and I really don’t want to jinx myself – but I’m also not going to lie. I feel really confident and I’m pretty sure almost everybody else does as well. In the language of IB – we PWNED that test! Great job everyone, and a huge huge huge thank-you to PT for everything – the teaching, the food, the relaxation, the all-around awesomeness. We really couldn’t have done it without her.

In IB, This Is Totally Normal

A few little announcements for the people at my high school who read this…

1.) Happy Birthday! to one of the senior boys. Happy 18th, Tilapia, much love and have fun in California!
2.) This is kinda late, but good luck everyone on their IB tests! With a little luck the IB Graders in Kenya or Mexico or Mars or wherever will have mercy on our souls.

Now onto our previously scheduled update.

In IB, This Is Totally Normal:

~Hearing “don’t forget to take your cocaine packets home and do them!” as you leave Psych class. (our teacher was, of course, referring to packets of PAPER with questions about cocaine use)

~Calling the White House from your second hour class. (while watching All The President’s Men, I asked if just anyone could really call up the White House. History Teacher looked up the number and we called and talked to the switchboard operator)

~ Finding out that some classmates of yours started a new political party. (And realizing that they’d probably do a better job running the country than the people who are trying it now)

~ “Ted Kennedy killed your mom!” jokes. En Espanol.

~ Having your locker attacked and crammed randomly with ten-year-old Mac software CDs.

~ “Just dump the bodies in the back of the room” (referring to the Psych drawings immortalized in a previous entry)

~ “So, it really means nothing?” “Yes, which is why it means something.” (Discussing Going After Cacciato)

~My mother: Sal! Why are there always so many towels on the floor of the bathroom? It’s like they appear there by osmosis!
Me: Uh, osmosis is the diffusion of water through membranes and has nothing to do with why Bro can’t clean up after himself.
Mom: So they appear by spontaneous combustion?
Me: Try spontaneous generation, Mom.
Mom: Well are you going to pick up the bathroom?
Me: No.
(My mother is actually a very intelligent woman – she just doesn’t remember the how-does-this-apply-to-real-life-at-all vocabulary lessons)

~Participating in a prank with the senior class that requires your entire class to go to a different classroom on the other side of campus, and realizing that every single classmate of yours is there before the late bell rings. (as Roi put it, “you know it’s IB when everyone’s in the wrong classroom on time.”)

~Ex: Well if Duckie got a B on his oral, then everyone’s obviously going to do well.
Me: Hey now, that’s not good self-efficacy for Duckie JANE ELIOT 1968!
(when studying for the Psych IB final gets to be too much)

IB Party (of the century!)

The reason it took me this long to blog the IB Party of the Century is that this all happened the same weekend as the Group 4 Project From Hell (which is redundant), so I had no time to write it down. Now that school’s almost over and I have exams all next week, I suddenly have time to devote to CI.

It’s noon, Sunday, in March. Today is one of the biggest events to hit the universe since Woodstock.
That’s right. It’s the first “International” IB Party. Held at my house. The general idea is to get as many people involved in IB as possible (that would include teachers, students, and parents) to cook food from their country of origin and bring it to my house to RAISE THE ROOF. Obviously, latkes + my counselor + everybody’s moms + warm soda + tabouli + my backyard = party of the century!
I’m sure you can all tell where this is going.
It’s one pm. Roi, Red Dog, Meg, and Geo are over (Goa couldn’t make it), as well as my counselor, a couple of senior IB guys, Ex’s friend’s mom, and some random people (sophomores and their families? I don’t know). We’re all standing around under the olive trees in my backyard drinking warm soda and eating latkes with our fingers. I’m trying to convince the senior guys to try the tabouli. My 14 year old brother is trying to determine his odds of a hot makeout session with Geo or Roi.
Happily fed (and much more worldly for it!) my friends gravitate toward the volleyball net I (was forced to) set up earlier. Badminton is the game of choice, but due to a lack of racquets, a hybrid volleyball/badminton game begins. I’m sitting out because my hand-eye coordination is about the same as that of a drunk toddler, without the cuteness. I am, however, participating in the volley (haha, pun) of “shuttlecock” jokes. In front of my counselor.
“Aw, look at little Minnesota girl soaking up the sun!” my counselor exclaims. (At the risk of disclosing my location, I live in one of the hottest parts of the country.) I look out at Meg, a tiny, pale-skinned, blond Irish girl who moved here from the Midwest a few weeks before school started. I can already see three thousand new freckles appearing on her bare arms.

“Uh, Meg?” I yell. “You’re wearing sunscreen, right?”
“No.” Every mother in attendance suffers a mild cardiac arrest. None of us natives gave any thought to sunscreen since it’s early March, but Meg’s complexion and lack of experience here mean that she’ll fry within fifteen minutes.
“Yeah, that needs to happen.”
Skin cancer narrowly avoided, we move to the pool deck. The girls, all of whom brought suits (or fit into mine) attempt to swim, but discover that although the weather is already scorching, the pool is still the temperature it was in January. The boys throw us into the pool a few times, then get bored. Red Dog and my brother wrestle on the cement. The seniors sit on each other’s laps.
We make a third migration, this time into my bedroom. Geo takes my papasan chair, RD takes one of my desk chairs, I sit on my big desk, my brother and one of the seniors sit on my bed, and everyone else sits on the floor. We call Goa, take photos, and end up playing catch with my stuffed animal from AstroCamp (4th grade overnight, heck yeah!) The innocent game of catch turns quickly into a game of “how many IB kids fit on my twin bed?” (Answer: all of us in attendance, plus my brother).
So when anyone asks how the IB party went, we’ll say there was food, games, scantily clad girls, shirtless wrestling, and a mass of people on a bed. It’s the truth, right? That’s the talent we use to pass exams.

Tape This To The Fridge!

IB kids are self-motivated! We're A+ students! We're perfectionists! We expect only the best from ourselves!

Except, of course, when we don't.

The above are some photos from Psych class of the posters that my friends and I made for an in-class project. The assignment was to draw a body, and then label all the parts with how they are affected by stress. As you can see, we took it very seriously. The sloppy, you-should-be-a-doctor handwriting belongs to yours truly. I would advise against trying to read it. (There have been reported cases of blindness, hysteria, erectile dysfunction, spinal injuries, and death as a result of to read my handwriting.) The eyes on the large drawing are also my work. Someone commented after Roi drew the (horrible) mouth that our person had no eyes, so I remedied the problem quickly. Very quickly. Too quickly. The result had us rolling around on the floor in hysterical laughter (to our credit, we were on the floor already, working on the posters). Roi drew the beautiful heart. Those yellow things are kidneys, and the purple things are the adrenal glands; not to be confused with the bruise on the right arm. The brain melted as a result of sitting in an SAT room for 300 hours, the stomach (yes, that lime green thing) is trying to digest the lungs, the intestines are disconnected from the rest of the body, and the spleen deflated. Stress is really bad for you! ...says the IB blog.

The smaller purple person (the "exhaustion" stage of fight-or-flight) was drawn by Goa and another friend. It came out all wobbly because they were laughing at the eyes I drew. Not quite sure what the story is behind the horns, or what the "resistance to infections" is pointing to... (stress makes your thighs infected?) The smaller green person (the "alarm" stage) was drawn by me, which you can tell because the handwriting is a combination of Korean, Elvish, and ASL.

So, yes. This is what IB kids do in class. As assignments. And the thing is, we'll probably get full points for it.