IB Finished!

On the agenda for today: a State of CI Address, and then our previously scheduled post.

Obviously a blog about the insanity of the IB program will quickly run out of material once I leave the program, which I did at about 9:00 Thursday morning. But I’m not shutting this down, just closing down the chapter of CI that dealt exclusively with my IB life. I will continue to post here, but it will be a much more broad, random selection of my writings – funny anecdotes about random things, essays I feel like writing, short stories, my photography, and maybe the occasional excerpt of the novel I’m working on or another comic-by-the-hour day. Hopefully by expanding the range of topics here I can keep to a weekly update schedule.

You all have noticed that almost all the stories that involve me enjoying life also involve Roi (Retard on Ice). Roi is my very best friend and without her I would shrivel up like a Tolkien-reading raisin and die. Recently, as the reality of leaving has truly begun to sink in, I’ve noticed more and more the subtle little ways Roi helps me cope with the reality everyone else takes for granted. She can give directions to my house, translate whatever comes out of my mouth into normal-speak for anyone else listening, always say the right thing when I am upset, read my mind, and generally be there for me in whatever way I need. Roi is amazing.

Roi, this is for you. I know declaring it on an obscure internet blog named after an obscure poem by someone who stuck her head in an oven isn’t the most conventionally solid way to tell someone how much they mean to you, but this is what I know best, and I can’t afford much else. Thank you so much for never being afraid to verbally backhand me with the fact that I was being irrational but doing it so gently that it never stung. Thank you so much for being patient with my ramblings and inanities and complete inability to comprehend much beyond my own mind or part my own hair. Thank you for being my translator from Sal-speak to Normalese, for protecting me, for humoring me, for everything.

Thank you for spying on HT with me, for smuggling potatoes on the way to the zoo, for not killing us in your car on Valentine’s day, for looking ridiculous in photographs, for brainstorming the best expression with which to respond to a marriage proposal, for parking pointlessly, being my novia/madre joven homosexual, making copies at Kinko’s with me, enduring the Saturday Night from Hell, preventing me from committing hari-kari in Spanish, stealing anti-alcoholism posters, and creating so many other in-jokes with me that nobody else could keep up.

There are a lot of things I regret about IB. It blew. You would definitely be within your rights to stab me in my sleep for "recommending" it to you in the first place. But after all the screw-overs, Spanish class, Psych IAs, bio-room breakups, etc., the fact that it brought us together (and apart, and together) made it all worth it. 

To the rest of you: Thank you as well. My fellow IB kids have helped me grow and change in so many ways - my first kiss, my finding God, my first relationship, my forgetting of Elvish, my realization that "this is REAL". Here's to all of us - here's to ASU and UofA and NAU and Concordia and Goucher and IIT and Whitworth and Berkeley. Here's to nutty Bulgarians, traitorous Jews on trial, broken chairs, cancelled IAs, dangerous Group 4s, and so many other memories I can't list here. I adore and will deeply miss all of you (and I hope I can stay interesting enough on this thing to warrant you sticking with it and staying in touch.)

Class of '08, we are now the Class of '12! Congrats.

IB Studying

I do have an end-of-IB post planned but it's not for today. Today I have Biomedical physics! Roi got a bunch of IB review packets and decided quickly to give up on biomedical physics, so I helped her study by filling out the packet. It's like 60 pages and most of my answers are random nonsense that I swear are hilarious after an hour of Spanish class (it's like pot, really), but here are some highlights:

Suggest why it is preferable to use this isotope for imaging the thyroid rather than iodine-131: Because it show's off the thyroid's curves better

State a possible cause of the hearing loss:

Frederick: Susanna yelled at him

Susanna: Frederick punched her

State and and explain one situation in which these diagnostic techniques would be used:

X-rays: Superman killing bad guys

Ultrasound: Sonic the hedgehog killing bad guys

Nuclear magnetic resonance: George Bush killing bad guys

Outline two precautions an X-ray machine operator should take to minimize his/her exposure to X-rays: Don't have sex with/in the X-ray machine

State one way in which a B-scan differs from an A-scan: It can't call for help from the A-team

(Explain, with reference to the diagram, why the force P and the compression force S on the spine are much greater than the weight of W on the upper body of the person)

Ah, Spanish class. So excruciating it makes Chuck Norris jokes hilarious.

Tales From The Inside

"we're going to get in trouble"
we are apathetic.
nunu laughs
"if your ead this, we're probably already gone." and probably dead.
or high on caffiene, because we're not in the 6os, and being high isn't cool.
it's for stoners.
we should JUST leave.
rubix is spying on our narrative.
nobody says anything.
sal will NOT work on her novel.
no USB jobber.
gaygaygaygaygay. definitely not beinga ble to spell.
Nunu sucks at arabic computer-style.
the baby's name was tiny tim.
elevator.
beepbeepbeepbeep.
we felt dirty when we were eight and sung the dirty Miss Susie song.
loft...ooooh dirty.
SEXY TIME! in the loft!
pillow boys.
I DID A CALLIGRAPHY.
rubix makeded a drawing.
marijuana. THE INTERWEBS IS BACK!
bye.

[updated from: High School library during workday. in absence of the internet, we were forced to entertain ourselves with Notepad.]

IBy Any Other Name

I find myself constantly irritated at JF (temporary nickname for new player) because he's a well-read student of logic and debate and has a really annoying habit of not letting me say anything remotely unintelligent. He has been told countless times to "stop translating everything I say into stupid!" It's fascinating how a simple re-wording of a situation can make something that sounds very sensical suddenly seem like nonsense. Take, for example, this summation of dreaming. Or the fact that JF refers to Easter as "Zombie Jesus Day". IB is the same way. We unquestionably accept its weirdness until we have to sum it up to an outsider, and then the situation seems utterly ridiculous. Things I've said recently about my IB life (my mother has given up on asking me any variation of "how was your day?" or "what did you learn today?"):

"She can freaking suck it, and then cite her sources."

"I am taking notes on sensory perception and watching two moths try to bang."

"We're sitting in class arguing over what the "bases" are and studying for paper 2."

"I've been trying to convince HT that I didn't break anyone's jaw in two places by kissing them."

"Today I learned that animal crackers are math. So is throwing pens and shouting '9.81!!'".

"And I'm just really upset because the study guides are so easy and nobody ever told me the IB math exam was so easy and I am very angry about how easy the test is!"

"Just sitting in bio, listening to people yell about who isn't pregnant."

"What is ST talking about?"

"Naked indians in loincloths and how Latin Americans have Wal-Mart stores and the College Board can't re-schedule exams, and I think we're supposed to have our grammar books out."

and a straight-faced scolding from Roi to one of the Indians: "Stop humping K into the wrong desk."

All these things were said with completely unironic seriousness. Such are our lives. 

IB Arts and Crafts, Senior Edition

The last half of the third quarter really sucked. School dragged as we scrambled to finish CAS hours, said sad goodbyes to the extracurriculars that got us through the first semester, counted the days until spring break and plodded through massive amounts of homework that felt more and more pointless as the college acceptances, scholarships, orientation invitations, and other finalizations trickled in. We reacted to the misery the same way any group of frustrated, beaten people do: We complained, plotted rebellion, and in the meantime, created art.

These are play-doh superheroes one of my friends made in Spanish class (unfortunately for you guys, any amusing Spanish-class related rants violate my "don't publish negative stuff online" policy. Ah, Spanish class.)

It was my play-doh, which I brought because we were doing some Calc project on cross-sections. It was supposed to look like this:

But everyone agreed, this was the favorite:

Then of course there's the TOK Graffiti wall. We're learning about sociolinguistics in TOK and so we did an 'experiment' in which TOKT put up a big sheet of butcher paper and we were supposed to graffiti on it - anything we wanted. After a week we would analyze the graffiti. It ended up being a perfect self-portrait of IB - seethingly, angrily frustrated but somehow tolerant activism (obvious in the political and religious sentiments); comfortable familiarity and communal love (evident in the inside jokes and homoerotic teasing); and a large amount of pointless comedic non-sequiturs. I can't think of a better summation (barring Dante's Inferno) of what it means to be part of an IB class.

 These are pretty self-explanatory, but the "Make me a sandwhich, woman" was written by Stealth, the lovable pseudo-sexist of the class, but the girls figured his spelling mistake rendered it  the non-sequitur "Make me a sand, which woman?" and added punctuation accordingly.

 That's my "LOVE: we have bombs" (a reference to this). Note someone changed "bombs" to "boobs". The quote in red at the bottom says "nematodes are people too".

This may not be art, but it's a structure with a purpose (architecture?). This is the Contraption we came up with to hold the projector cord at a specific angle to prevent the screen from flashing yellow/red/green/blue/purple tints, after we gave up on using it to turn TOK class into a rave. The Juniors refer to it as the Projector of Doom. It took six of us to put this together (minds of the future, unite!).

SICKO

Blogger STILL won't let me upload photos. So I thought instead I'd try my luck with these word things for a little while.

Roi and I are working on a “framing” social experiment in a few days using some regular freshmen and juniors as our guinea pigs. What I realized from the “social science” unit in TOK is how we live and operate each and every day in a large social experiment code named IB.

Here, published for the first time, are some research results from the good folks over at Stressing IB Classes & Kids Out (SICKO):

Hypothesis: A stressful, “high-stakes” atmosphere will greatly decrease ability of participants to carry out simple tasks.

Procedure:

1. Ask participants to spell their names in capital letters in a space on paper designated “name”.
   
2. Ask participants to perform the same task again, reminding them that “THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT”, “THIS IS GOING TO IB HQ” and “DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MESS UP!!!!”
   
3.  Record number of times during each trial subjects requested new papers, lost pens, required assistance, shouted in frustration, misspelled their own names, forgot how to write in capital letters, or exhibited other symptoms of distress or incompetence.*
   

Results: When asked to spell their names in capital letters, IB students fail miserably under high-stress conditions.

Hypothesis: Building on previous research (see above), those at SICKO planned to test how other situations affected IB kids’ ability to perform tasks. This experiment sought to investigate the effects of structured classroom environments and guidance on the completion of simple activities.

Procedure: Tell the class that a Socratic Seminar is planned. Request that they move their desks into a large circle.

Observations: Students took over ten minutes and still had not placed their desks into a circle. Observed behavior during the testing period:

•  Constructing a phallic shape out of desks instead of a circle
  
• Creating smaller circles with social isolation as the apparent intention
  
• Laying on the floor
  
• Gentle tugging or pushing on desks so as to move them slightly without offering any assistance whatsoever in the construction of the circle
  
• Loudly commanding peers to move their desks into the circle while not participating in circle construction themselves
  
• Wandering aimlessly
  
• Asking the teacher if turning in make-up work at the time was acceptable
  
• Discussing the inability of peers and themselves to successfully construct the circle
  
• Satirically behaving like misogynists
  
• Loudly complaining about other students’ misogynistic behavior (satirical nature of these complaints is unknown)
  

Results: The students failed to complete the task until the teacher directed specific students to complete the circle (this process itself took approximately five minutes). Researchers at SICKO determined that without strong guidance, IB students are unable to construct geometric shapes (excluding those phallic in nature) out of their desks for the purpose of discussion.

*you think I am exaggerating for comedic value. I am not.

Scraps

So, sorry guys for not posting in so long. My upcoming posts are kinda image-heavy and blogger is doing this neat thing where it decides not to post images. It sucks. So, I figured I'd just put up some little scraps of stuff I threw down with plans to take them sometime from "rough draft" to "coherent and amusing post". Plus a teaser for one of the pieces I'm currently working on. Woo, fun! And hopefully soon blogger will stop failing.

IBOMGWTFBBQ

Who remembers this bit of conversation from this post about IB lunch?

The discussion shifts to my opinion that paying for a sub when we have a student teacher every day is a waste of the school’s money. I comment that “a monkey could sub a class of IB kids”.

Rubix: If a monkey stuck a video in and told me to watch it, I’d watch that movie!

Me: No, Rubix, you’d watch the monkey.

Rubix: True. But if it left, then I’d watch!

Me: Are you joking? I’d follow the talking monkey!

In TOK, we watched a movie called Waking Life. In that movie, there is a scene where a talking monkey shows a video to a class.

I'll say that again.

In TOK class we watched a video of a talking monkey showing a class a video.

After we talked, and I wrote, about being shown a video in TOK class by a talking monkey.

Rubix and I lost it. It was so incredibly perfect and funny. My mind, she is blown!

Unfortunately we freaked out so much over it that TOK Teacher had us explain the cosmic significance to the class and nobody else thought it was nearly as amazing.

A list Roi and I came up with during a specifically excruciating time of stress:

Inane Bureaucracy

Intelligent BS

Imminent Burnout

Impossible Burden

Increasing Bitterness

Invisible Benefits

Impending Breakdown

Idiotic Buzzwords

Immense Books

Infinite Boredom

(readers are encouraged to submit their own!)

From "Juicy" (one-word prompt inspiration from Frenchie)

Juicy. The story spread, delicious on young wet lips, facts luscious and succulent. Words sinfully sweet as drops from the forbidden fruit that cursed the womb of earth, deep red and strange as birth.

Deidre hadn’t meant those words, hadn’t meant for the story to become what it did. But when her best friend Frasier asked her that morning how the appointment had gone, everything moved, sloshed around in her mind, opaque red and sickly. Her hand went to her stomach, flat, eternally dead. The metal of her jeans snap under her thumb, she remembered the doctor’s voice, womanly low, earnest sympathy overtaking her disbelief but not the shame. 

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?