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.
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.
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