Let's Call It "Creativity"

I’ve mentioned before the saying we have that says “IB, therefore I BS”. Nowhere is this more evident than on CAS sheets hat we have to fill out and answer questions like “How can you apply what you have learned in other life situations?” and “What did you learn about yourself and others through this activity/project?” Most of the time we’re not talking about working on Nobel prizes but some sort of structured screwing-around that fits into a CAS category. So CAS sheets become our biggest BSing challenge. Here are some excerpts from my sheets:

On one about the Mock Trial team:

Q: Who helped you think about your learning during this activity/project?

CAS Sheet: My coach, HT, helped the team stay focused and committed.

Translation: My coach, HT, yelled at us for slacking off.

Q: How can you apply what you have learned in other life situations?

CAS Sheet: My ability to analyze arguments for different perspectives or fallacious logic helps when evaluating claims in literature, history, or the media.

Translation: Now that I treat everything like a trial, I’ve talked my way out of every family argument and threatened grounding!

 

Q: What might you do differently next time to improve?

CAS Sheet: I will spend more time examining exhibits and evidence in the context of the affidavits.

Translation: I will never again let those prissy private-school boys catch me up on a stupid trivial detail I forgot to memorize.

 

Q: What did you hope to accomplish through this activity/project?

CAS Sheet: …and to become part of a close and committed team.

Translation: There were cute upperclassmen on the team I wanted to meet.

 

On volunteering at a cultural festival:

Q: What did you learn about yourself and others?

CAS Sheet: I learned how independently my peers and I are capable of managing ourselves when presented with the opportunity to do so.

Translation: I learned how to deal when abandoned by the docents who were supposed to be supervising.

About tutoring the wrestlers:

Q: What did you learn about yourself/others?

CAS Sheet: I learned how to recognize and handle different perspectives and attitudes than my own.

Translation: I learned how to deal with misogyny, vulgar pick-up lines and having my butt smacked.

Q: How can you apply what you have learned in other life situations?

CAS Sheet: I can use my communication skills to reach out to people who see the world differently than I do.

Translation: I can refrain from smacking stupid sexists across the face when they try to talk to me. I could also try and pick up lesbians, I suppose.

About Speech and Debate:

Q: How successful were you in reaching your goals? What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

CAS Sheet: A fluctuating tournament schedule made team-building a challenge but we overcame this by playing improv games at meetings and doing other things at tournaments to stay entertained and grow closer.

Translation: We got bored and screwed around and made lots of noise.

 

Q: How can you apply what you have learned in other life situations?

CAS Sheet: It also helps in general discussion among my peers to be able to quickly and clearly express myself and bring in relevant commentary.

Translation: It’s fun to win arguments and impress people!

There Are Some Things IB Can't Buy

I think I'm a pretty grateful, unmaterialistic person who enjoys the simple internal reward of a job well done.

Unless it's a job I'm not entirely sure how I did well... a job where I got a little bit lost along the way and started walking into the tress because I couldn't see the forest. I recently made a friend who goes to a supersmart private school - essentially IB without the bureaucracy and the surrounding regulars - and when Roi and I marvel at the "shenanigans" he and his friends get up to, we think "that's exactly the sort of thing we and our friends do - wait, would do - why don't we?" The reason IBers (at least in my experience) aren't as radically using their brains to incite revolution, annoy salespeople and harass authority is because we're a little more burnt-out than our academic peers in different environments. And this burnout is precisely why I have regressed to the level of my first-graders when it comes to my appreciation of rewards.

When I made National Merit Semifinalist, I got called into the office's conference room so the administration and counseling staff could tell me about the honor and hand me the packet for applying for Finalist status. My first thought, I must admit to you, was "Fantastic. Another application to fill out." I was more amused by the Top-Secret Classified status of my award than proud of my achievement. My parents were giddy with the glory and my mom photographed the school's scrolling marquee with my name on it. I smiled absently. My true moment of NM-related joy came when a few days later, I received a tin of cookies in the mail from our financial people as a congratulations.

Finally, my hard work over the past three years had produced a tangible, enjoyable reward that sat before me encased in cellophane. This was not a title, a certificate, a reading of my name at ceremony. This was chocolate and sugar and flour. I beamed. I was the first time in my memory that any academic accomplishment had directly yielded non-abstract gratification. These cookies were MINE. I had EARNED them. I saved them, and when I came home one day to find my mom indulging in one, I yelled this at her, in true entitled-smart-kid fashion, ignoring the fact that ever day I ate stuff paid for by my dad's salary.

When I found out I made Finalist, I was called in to the conference room a second time. On the tables were big bowls of assorted candies, including apple-watermelon nerds. Have you had those things? Seriously amazing. I grabbed a box and thoroughly enjoyed myself while the adults asked my fellow Finalists questions like "What has been the most important thing you learned" and "What would you advise an incoming freshman?" (I should note that I'm lucky I had candy to keep my mouth occupied and prevent me from answering these questions in an inappropriately snarky manner).

Conclusion:

Four years of my life: 4.0+ GPA

Essays, grades & volunteer work: Various certificates & recognitions

National Merit Semi/Finalist Status: Cookies & Nerds

The palatable satisfaction of a job well done: Priceless

THAT IS THE STATEMENT SHE UTTERED

Another one of the little doofy things about IB that makes you go "Oh, yeah, we're international" is the realization that whoever called our spoken exams "orals" obviously does not have English as a first language. Hello, innuendo? The following were all said by me and my classmates today:

I hope I get someone good for my oral!

It makes me so nervous that they're taping our orals.

These orals, they're so long and so hard!

The other person kept making weird faces during my oral.

I think she really liked my oral!

It got really good at the end/the ending was great.

I was up all night working on my oral!

My mouth kept getting all dry.

Man that was rough!

Thanks for all the tips on how you do your oral, Sal!

I kept getting so lost.

I went too fast with my oral.

(And I can remember that there were a few other hilarious ones that I've forgotten.)

We are the "Best and Brightest Minds" of our generation. We are future leaders, future revolutionaries, future politicians, future doctors, future engineers, future lawyers, future artists - HAHAHAH THE INTEGRAL OF E TO THE X HAHAHAHA - what was I saying?

IB Peanut Gallery

TOK is the quintessential IB class. We tell regulars that it's a "philosophy" to save ourselves the explanation. The majority of IB in-jokes originate in TOK class and the nature of the class allows (and even encourages) us to take an idea or a project and just run with it (for example, creating an imaginary classmate named Fidel Castro). It also helps that we have an awesome teacher (and honest I'm not just saying that because she reads this. Hi TOKT!). TOKT is the kind of teacher who's flexible and excitable, so if we come up with something we're more into than the lesson plan, she'll let things run their course and let us run wild. It's constructive, guided Montessori-style anarchy at its very best. Our assignment was to describe peanuts and let other groups try and guess which peanut was ours from our written descriptions. But some of us started personifying our peanuts and getting attached to them, so TOKT brought out boxes of markers and had us decorate our peanuts, then made a little peanut stand/stage for me to photograph them. She got really into it, encouraging the class to give their peanuts personalities and to put them on the stage "for the blog! for Sal's blog!" We had an awesome time. Here are some of the peanuts:

The peanuts on their little peanut stand/stage. The one being held is my peanut. It has a little peanut-nut thing peeking out of a hole. I gave him eyes and named him Claude.

This is Claude peeking out from his peanut house. The sparkly nail polish is mine. It turns red in the sun.

Elvis Peanut!

The orange one is sleepy.

Rubix made his peanut into a squirrel.

This is Penguin King Peanut.
Penguin King Peanut sitting on his creator's shoulder.

Roi named her peanut Mr. Angrynut and described him as "shaped like a clog, like from Holland."This is Mr. Angrynut.

I'll Bust A Cap In Yo Run-On Sentence!

Extended Essays are due tomorrow [I wrote this yesterday], so naturally I’m making good use of my time and... writing a blog for you people. Shut up, I’m taking a break.

IB kids are all smart, but similar IQs don’t mean similar minds. I gave my paper to four people (K, Roi, Monica, and Frenchie, in that order) to make editing marks, and it became a forum for idiosyncratic disagreement and one-sided debate.

It started out friendly – Monica changed a semicolon to a colon and Frenchie added “I agree”. He backed her up by re-phrasing her question of “whose?” by writing “the narrators’?” (Actually he wrote something like “narralûeez’” which I assume means narrators’. He has funny handwriting.) Roi wrote “I agree” or “Word.” under some of K’s comments.

The tone changed quickly when Frenchie wrote “Makes sense to me...” under a comment by Monica that one of my claims didn’t make sense and “uh, why not?” after Roi told me not to capitalize a word within a quotation. K changed a word, claiming that my original sounded awkward, but Frenchie asserted that “Meh, I think either word is fine”. Some verb-tense confusion led to someone mistakenly crossing out an “s”, which Frenchie circled with the assertion that “this person is dumb”. K responded to my mention of “archetypal symbols” by telling me that my discussion was more of “symbols in the setting rather than archetypes”, but Roi jumped to my defense by circling the word “river”, drawing an arrow to K’s comment and writing “archetype!” K wanted a topic sentence for a paragraph but Frenchie insisted that it was only a continuation of the previous paragraph and instead should be merged.

Ah, IB kids. Regulars throw punches, but we believe the red pen is mightier than the sword. Yo momma's so dumb, she thinks a dangling modifier is a boob job!

(Okay, that last joke was awful. I make no apologies. EE fried my brain.)

A Day In The Life = Comic Style!

With a few notable exceptions, IB places all of its emphasis on research-based learning rather than creativity. We're not expected to come up with new ideas, just to put other people's ideas together comprehensively with proper citations and credit. So, in true IBer fashion, I've stolen someone else's idea and am presenting my version of it, with appropriate credit due (but don't expect to see parenthetical documentation).
The idea came from this guy: http://www.hourlycomic.com/ who does a comic every hour; little doodles that capture the minutae of every hour in his life. I adapted the format beyond a two-panel comic and instead of "every waking hour", comicked every period in the school day.
If this gets a positive response - if you guys like it - I'll try and do it every month or so. If you all hate it, then I'll stick to my sporadically-updated writings. And if I do do it again, I promise more legible, larger writing. Apologies. Also if you click on them they'll open up bigger.

TOKT Loved This

First off, I’d like to apologize for not updating as frequently as promised. The first semester of IB was so crazy intensely busy and the second one is shaping up to be the same way... so I’ll just be updating this sporadically when I have time and ideas.

Okay, I decided when I started this blog that it would not be for ranting about all the crap we were going through at the time because I consider myself mildly intelligent and have a good grasp of action-consequence relationships as well as the vastly public nature of the web. You readers did miss out on some hilariously scathing tirades against... stuff... but anyway because of this, the introduction to this is as follows:
One day, one class was somewhat slow, and Roi and I got kind of bored, and started passing this story back and forth and adding to it. I’m the purple and she’s the red. I had a ton of fun with it; playing into all the how-not-to-write fallbacks of melodramatic and self-important romance and sci-fi (the two genres that are the easiest to suck at, imo).

Once upon a time there was a zombie robot who fell in love. His paramour was a vampire pirate wench who was fascinated by his advanced technology. One night they went walking under the moonlight. She gazed lovingly at his sparkling body under the starlight where the brilliant silver shone under the zombie rust. She knew their love could undo the damage years of oxidation had done to his heart. All of a sudden there was a FLASH of lightning!

The bolt reflected off the lightpole and struck his heart. It glowed with the energy of the storm, and sparked onto her dress. Her dress caught fire and she ran into the sea where her pirate ship waited dark and silent. The zombie robot could not follow her into the water and the heartbroken wailing beep was carried by the ocean wind to the ears of the undead werewolf waiting on the ship for his enemy the vampire pirate wench.

His crew had grown weary waiting for the impending battle; they would rejoice at the news of her return to the sea. The werewolf found pleasure in the forlorn beep of the robot’s heart, knowing he could use the robot to his advantage. Glancing back at her love, the vampire pirate wench saw him carried away by undead werewolves. She knew from his blank eyes that they had pressed his Standby button. Torn between her disabled robot zombie prince and her prized ship now swarming with enemies, she drew her sword, bared her fangs and charged into the surf toward the ship with passion in her heart and war in the rest of her. The undead werewolves frothed with anticipation as they collected their weapons and prepared for battle. When they saw their enemy approaching, they rapidly disembarked, leaving a few behind to watch the captive robot. She met them in the surf, her sword and teeth moving like celestial bodies in orbit, perfectly following through from path to target. Many werewolves went down but soon she was surrounded, outnumbered. The image of her robot love came into her head and along with it came an idea. Swiftly she replaced her sword in its scabbard and raised her hands in surrender. Soon she would be on board, close to the zombie robot.

Meanwhile, aboard the enemy vessel, the guards watching the robot had taken a break to watch the battle. One of the stray dogs aboard the ship began sniffing around the robot. He leapt onto two feet to sniff the robot’s head. In the process, he bumped the standby button. By the time the vampire pirate wench was carried aboard, the zombie robot was waiting for her on deck. Their eyes met in mutual bloodthirsty love and in a flash of fangs and lasers the werewolves released their hold, falling back from the attack in defeat. “Where is the undead werewolf leader?” she asked him, glancing around the ship, empty save for the bodies of incapacitated werewolves strewn about the deck.
“I vaporized him in the skirmish.”

She sighed, satisfied in the clanking, angular arms of her hero. A cool sea breeze billowed through the sails and made her cape ripple like the waters beneath. A ray of sunlight appeared on deck and in the misty dawn the werewolves morphed back into harmless canines. With the robot as first mate, she sailed the ship to a deserted island, where she released the pack of canines. Afterward, they returned to her ship to decide their future.

Yes, I did say that. Just a moment ago, in fact.

SUPER DUPER apologies for not updating in almost a month. Been swamped with IAs and xperis and such. Anyway, on to the post:

Since Bro is a wrestler and I need CAS hours, I tutor the wrestling team for an hour after school two days a week. Not many of the wrestlers are IB kids, and in talking with them, I’ve discovered that IB kids and wrestlers speak completely different languages. I’m constantly expecting to get an answer characteristic of my IB friends only to be shocked when I am met with a completely different response.

Me: This is okay, but shouldn’t it be longer?
IB Kid: Yeah, this is just a rough draft. Do you think I should go into more detail in the second paragraph?
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

Me: I think you have your periods in the wrong places. I marked them in red.
IB Kid: Thanks!

Wrestler: *hysterical laughter*

Me: If you would just shut your mouth for a minute please!
IB Kid: You’re constructing a straw man fallacy; I’m just pointing that out!
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

Me: A word that rhymes with “work”? How about “shirk”?
IB Kid: Hmm, let’s fit that into my iambic pentameter.
Wrestler 1: What does that mean?
Wrestler 2: You know, like “shirk chicken”.

Me: See, that curvy part doesn’t come up high enough.
IB Kid: Wait, how again do you tell if it’s a sine or a cosine graph?
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

Me: That line has too many syllables.
IB Kid: Oh, yeah. Oops.
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID
Me: that doesn’t even make any sense.
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

Me: Okay, I’m leaving now.
Wrestler: THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID

Me: Are you surprised?

And then there’s the infamous rubber-band ball dialogue. I realize that my questions seem completely inane, but keep this in mind: I’m used to IB kids, who have conversations like this:

Me: What’s that?
Roi: It’s a rubber-band ball that I made since I was TAing for LAT for CAS because I don’t have a seventh hour, and she didn’t have grading for me to do because her freshmen are all doing presentations, and she had this box of rubber-bands because she bought them for her freshman to do a project that she decided not to have them do because their presentations are taking too long, so I made the rubber-band ball, see how high it bounces?

So, I was a little dumbstruck at Wrestler’s answers and trying to prompt him into my type of conversation during this exchange:

Me: What’s that?
Wrestler: A rubber-band ball.
Me: Where’d you get it?
Wrestler: I made it.
Me: Out of what?
Wrestler: .............rubber bands.
Me: Where’d you get them?
Wrestler: .....A box of rubber bands.
Me: ...Oh.

Which, of course, led to the surrounding wrestlers laughing at me, which led to the teacher supervisor asking what was going on, which led to me saying this:
“I was just asking Wrestler about his ball.”

Which, of course, led to a collective THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!!!

IB Thankful For:

Not your typical list but hey, we take whatever we can get in IB.

~Not doing dissections the day before Thanksgiving

~A Calculus test the day before the long weekend (no homework!)

~G-2 Pens that let you see how much ink you’re using – the only thing anymore that gives me a sense of accomplishment

~Freshman brothers to bring things to school that you/your friends forgot

~The school grading system crash in first quarter that allows “It’s probably the computer – let me talk to [Teacher] on Monday” as an excuse for every bad grade

~IB Juniors to remind us that there was a time when we felt hopeful and driven too

~Teachers like PT who help us navigate the bureaucracy by copying IB paper, hitting us over the head with things like CEGM and Ethics guidelines, and generally being on our side

~Wikipedia’s endless link-chain that allows us to entertain ourselves while still feeling/appearing productive

~ IB workdays – the closest thing we get to having a social life

~Lockers halfway across campus that force us to get fresh air and exercise

~And all of you wonderful beautiful people who read this! Happy Thanksgiving!

In IB, Cigars Are Never Really Cigars

IB kids just think differently than the rest of the population. We have “higher level critical thinking skills”. What that really means is that we can use metaphor to relate almost every concept to sex.
In LA, every book can be summarized in one short sentence containing the word “bang”.
“Oedipus killed his dad and banged his mom.”
“Hamlet basically wanted to bang his mom, but he also wanted to bang Ophelia, but then everyone died.”
“Emily killed her husband and kept him around to bang. Necrophilia ftw.”
“Kurtz lived in this weird hut with skulls and a random black lady he liked to bang.”

Biology… you know what? I’m not going to bother. Here’s a picture of the “enzyme lock-and-key model”. Go crazy.

In Spanish today, Roi and I were having trouble translating a sentence. It sounded like it said “Nobody in the class got done” or “Nobody in the class did anybody”. We asked Sna to translate, and she told us it meant “Nobody in the class did it”. Well, the idea had already been planted, so Roi and I cracked up at the translation. In front of the whole class. I think we’ve almost blown our cover as fourteen-year-old boys in disguise.

TOK opens up a lot of open-ended discussion. We close off those ends by talking about SEX. Our discussion on the privacy of perception hinged on the example of “two people having…the same… experience… at the same time… together… but not really… feeling the same thing… together.” An introductory activity on perception using inkblots led one of us to blurt that one of the inkblots looked like “a giant penis with a hole in it.” Apparently when we’re talking about perception, the easiest conclusion to draw is that we perceive SEX in just about everything.

Psychology is almost too easy. So Roi and I took it to the next level. Think about this for a minute:
1.) Freud got a lot of his theories from psychoanalyzing himself.
2.) Freud came up with the theory of phallic symbols.
3.) Freud originally wanted to research the reproductive systems of eels.
4.) Freud started a club of men who sat around and smoked cigars together.
Conclusion: Freud liked men, including Carl Jung, who split with him not over “theories” but when he got tired of being a booty call.