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.

IB Dysfunctional Diversity

IB kids are a pretty diverse bunch and we all take it in stride. Of course, for IB kids, the definition of “stride” is something along the lines of “skip-hop-crawl-stumble-halt-sprint”. So when I say we take our diversity in stride, what I really mean is that we have forged an obscene, tolerant, offensive, and loving bond based on it. Like I mentioned earlier, IB kids are close enough and intelligent enough to come up with plenty of in-jokes and labels that seem terribly off-color to an uninitiated regular but are everyday banter to us.

~Like the time Stealth and a friend made a ton of paper airplanes and threw them at a Japanese girl on Pearl Harbor Day, asking her “how do you like it?”
~Or the claim that our IB class has “two real Jews” made by combining the four “half-Jews”.
~We’ve known each other for 4+ years and yet we all continually mix up the names of two of the Indian boys (who are referred to collectively as “The Indians”). We also can’t get straight the similar names of a girl from Afghanistan and Goa.
~The “matching factor”, which means that the entire class is going to insist that people will make a good couple if they are both the same color.
~People who’ve known each other for 4+ years being shocked every time a black girl says she is Jewish.
~Constant harassment of one kid for rides, paper, gum, etc. because he is “loaded”.
~Insistence after the mock trial that I become an on-call lawyer for one of the Indian boys because “he’s brown and could get arrested any minute!”
~We have a girl who’s a real big feminist, so Stealth enjoys making posters for class presentations about how women belong in the kitchen. The boys will also ask each other ~“Hey, you know what’s a great joke? Women’s rights.” Once I edited her paper and she had stapled the pages all messed up so I wrote “as a woman, you should have better secretarial skills! These pages are all out of order!” She was going to harm me, so I told her Stealth told me to write it.
~“Of course Rubix is brilliant. He’s Asian.”
~“How do you have a C in [class]? [Teacher] is [ethnicity] and so are you!”
But then again, it’s not all one-sided. I learned the hard way that if an Indian kid tells you something in Hindi to go say to the other Indian kids, it’s probably not “Can I borrow some paper please?”

The cool thing is that we all think it’s funny and none of it is out of malice. The other cool thing is that we stay really far away from the real racism we heard around us, which where we live is mostly directed towards Hispanics and Muslims.

IN OTHER NEWS:
I pressed the [submit] button on my college application to my dream college, Haverford! Scariest moment of my life. Wish me luck!

Me: Frenchie, your backpack looks all misshapen.
Frenchie: That’s because of the stuff that I just put in it.
Me: …I know that. I’m not an idiot.

Frenchie: Then how come you said something so obvious? “Your backpack looks like it has stuff in it.” /“That’s because it does!”/ “Well duh, I’m not dumb!” That’s the conversation we just had.

WGA Strike

Alright, so, I promised myself that since I use every other aspect of my life and my writing as a soapbox, I would use this to entertain you guys and keep my opinions to... well, everywhere else. And you'll all notice that I didn't post anything during NAMI's week.

But this is important; and it's also relevant to this blog because:

~this is the beginning of my writing-for-people-to-actually-read career.

~as IB kids, we know a lot about intellectual property and wanting to get credit for our hard work, as well as the consequences of plaigarism. In fact, when I was deciding whether or not I wanted to jump into this big program, the biggest "whoah, what?" factor was the IB agreement that whatever I wrote for my Extended Essay and other send-it-to-IB-stuff became theirs.

So, without further ado:

The Hollywood writers are on strike. And honestly you guys, don't let the word "Hollywood" fool you. These are not actors wanting to make another three billion dollars per movie. If you watch the short informational video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ55Ir2jCxk you'll see that this is a truly worthy cause.

Here http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/ is the "unofficial grassroots blog" of the strike, and if you spend some time on it you can watch a videos of The Office and Grey's Anatomy cast members and writers picketing and being hilarious, and you can also see photos of Scrubs, Desperate Housewives, and more cast members and writers picketing. More videos here: http://www.youtube.com/wgaamerica

Okay, so what can we do about it? This is also where IB comes in. Most of us love our TV shows (Roi - Desperate Housewives, Meg - Grey's Anatomy, Me - Scrubs/The Office) but our crazy schedules don't allow for watching them on tv, so we watch them online or on DVD.

Oops?

I, for one, am refusing to watch TV online until this gets resolved. Maybe if the networks start losing the ad revenue from these "promos" (ha!) they'll see how important that money is (not only to them!) and that the people are behind this movement. Also, the United Hollywood blog has a petition we can sign and will soon be letting us know how we as viewers can make our feelings known to the networks.

Misery Loves Company

An IA is an Internal Assessment – something you work your butt off, your teacher grades, the IBO gnomes audit, and then they take your firstborn child away. That’s how they get new IBO gnomes. Most IB kids don’t have firstborn children, so the IBO gnomes take our scores instead.

Anyway, Internal Assessments. Last year we were doing them for Psych and PT went over the ethical rules three million times. The IBO’s ethical rules regarding animals are stricter than PETA, which sucks because our original idea was to light hamsters on fire and throw them at people. Come to think of it, we probably would have gotten a better grade with that. (Are you sensing some bitterness on my part regarding IAs?) But their guidelines about people are basically YOU CANNOT STRESS THEM OUT ON PURPOSE. YOU CANNOT STRESS THEM OUT ON ACCIDENT. YOU CANNOT STRESS THEM OUT.
At the time, when PT was making sure she had said this to us every minute of every class period we were working on our IAs, I thought it was silly. Why would we stress people out on purpose?

Now, I realize, there’s a reason IB is so worried about it. Apparently sleep deprivation, high stress levels and four years in IB have a negative effect on the psyche. (Who knew?) And by now, we’re the psychological Hannibal Lectors of high school. We’ve suffered and we want everyone else to feel the crushing pain of a stress-maxed all nighter.

How did I come up with this theory? We’re working on another IA in bio about heart rates. My partner and I, despite both having been in Psych last year and getting the IB rules drilled into our heads hundreds of times, decided we wanted to test the effects of stress on heart rate. And not just any stress. We wanted to make lists of faked “stats” about college admissions, one with horribly stressful stats (90% of college students are unhappy with their dorm room, 80% are not at their first choice college, etc.) and another one with the same stats only reversed. We planned to ‘debrief’ the participants afterwards and tell them the stats were made up. But when we asked whether it was “ethical”, PT asked us if we were pod people replacing kids who had actually been in her class. Well, she didn’t actually ask that. But her face said it all.
The thing is, we knew it was completely unethical from the start. It was only a fantasy. Which leads me to two conclusions:

1.) Subconsciously, we’re sadists who want to see regulars endure the same stress we do
2.) Subconsciously, we’re masochists who wanted to get a zero on that IA, thus denying ourselves our diplomas.

Good evening, Clarice.

IB Justice

We did a mock trial of the Rosenberg case in History class today. Here’s how things go down in court with IB kids at the wheel.

The bailiff, dressed in combat boots, a leather jacket, mirrored aviators and a cowboy hat, opened up and, we all rose for Honorable Judge Roi. She looked quite judge-like in a black robe HT had in his closet (which, contrary to her pre-trial anxiety, did not appear to be crawling with lice). The effect was lost when she got to the podium and proceeded to announce that she could not find “her paper”. The court reporter located it on the floor.

Prosecution called their first witness, who was sworn in on a copy of The Communist Manifesto that he would “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Mr. History Teacher.” A short recess was called when said witness refused to take the stand because there was “something funky on the seat” and a jury member came down to replace the offending chair. Judge Roi restored order by banging a - ball-peen hammer? what was that thing? – on HT’s Far Side daily calendar. She then threw out a perfectly legitimate hearsay objection (haha no bitterness here!)

I was a lawyer for the defense. My co-counselor Rubix and I prepared so well for some objections that we wowed (read: annoyed) the crowd with synchronized objections. My other co-counselor, Duckie’s Friend (he needs a new nickname) in Stealth’s shirt (two sizes too big), black basketball shorts, and a leg brace, was instrumental in, well, in distracting my clients from the fact that they’ve already been sentenced to death. But then he didn’t really have anything to do today.

Monday: Defense presents their case! DUN DUN DUNNNNN

Things I Learned In IB

Despite its best effort, IB is really educational! Here are a few things I have learned:

1.) Hindu = religion. Hindi = language.

2.) There is no Hindi birthday song.

3.) Most Hindus are vegetarians.

4.) If you offer a vegetarian chicken, they will not eat it.

5.) When trying to distinguish between American and Asian Indians, the clarification is not best made by saying "Indians with dots or Indians with feathers?" while pointing to your head.

6.) If you are male, it is less "gay" to have a Bollywood male movie star as your phone wallpaper than a Hollywood male movie star.

7.) "INDIA is in ASIA, people! Why is this so hard?"

8.) You WISH you were invited to wild Indian-only parties.

9.) You tried to copy something in the Hindi alphabet? You did it all wrong.

10.) Indians do not consider the Kama Sutra to be their greatest contribution to global stability.

11.) You cannot imitate an Indian accent. Don't even try.

IB Word Games

I'm not entirely sure how I should go about explaining these. The short version is: We were bored.
Long version: My calc class is combined into AB and BC. Two classes, one teacher. IB kids find creative enough ways to get into trouble when the teacher is constantly paying attention - now imagine what it's like when you put together juniors and seniors who've know each other for years now, into a last-hour class, and add one overworked and distracted teacher. The lassiez-faire classroom management means that, well, lots of "stuff" goes down in calc class. It's the red-light district of IB classes. (Last year there was penny melting, mace spraying, hand-sanitizer burning, and general mischief and mayhem.) Now I don't mean for this blog to get Calc Teacher in trouble. It's not that she condones any of this or that she sucks at keeping us under control. We're just all nuts and she can only deal with one class for about 1/3 of the time (the other 2/3 spent with the other class or at her desk doing teacher stuff). And, to her credit, HS has really high math scores and to my knowledge there have been no fatalities as a direct result of her class.

Anyway, if the class is that self-determined when she's around, we're a million times worse when we have a sub. (I have a suspicion that her sub notes said something like "pass out worksheet, then duck and cover"). On the last sub day, we got bored translating words into as many languages as possible (I think our record was "water" - we got it in 17 different languages just from one classroom of IB kids) and noticed someone had already messed with the Objectives board. Every day CT writes "Obj.: I will" and then whatever we're doing. The board said:

Obj: I will do well on the test. We changed this to "I will do sucky. Welcome to the test." (the idea was to change as little as possible about the original sentence but change the meaning completely - here all we changed was the "l on" to "come to"). I like the ominous sound of it.

Obj: I will graph f, f' and f" We changed this to "I will graph fluffy fish". Then it was whimsically illustrated but my only photos of that have people's faces in them.
Obj: I i t t ti tit ti ...some comedian erased all the Calc AB objective to be nonsensical and presumably sexual (this was the origin of the "let's mess with the objectives board" because my friends and I felt it needed to be fixed). We managed to change it to "Objects will not rest until" but couldn't figure out a word that had "tit_ti". Frenchie commented that he was "pretty sure that some objects do rest until titti" and offered an example; we declined. Goa walked by (she was off doing her worksheet or something dumb) and said it was "substitution". We all felt dumb, then finished the sentenced with "institutionalization of sock".
The head and hand in the second photo belong to Rubix.

Blog Action Day

http://www.blogactionday.org/

Happy Blog Action Day!

This year's topic is the environment. I'm not going to try and relate this to IB by poking fun at how much paper our teachers use or anything like that. All I can really say about this issue is:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, PEOPLE?

Why is the environment even an "issue" we're raising awareness for? It should not be, and I will tell you why.

IT SHOULD MATTER TO YOU ALREADY.

It's a travesty that they had to choose this as the topic for BAD. There are plenty of issues out there that do need attention from the public, but this should not be one.

Guess what?

YOU LIVE ON EARTH.

You drink water, you need medicine, you breathe air, you live in a house. There is no possible way you can twist this issue to be selfish and not care about it. But I want to drive an SUV! Would you like to be able to breathe in a year?

Here are a list of semi-understandable (not justified, per se, but that make sense) reasons not to be a huge activist for many causes:

You are not an orphan in Africa.

You are not a political prisoner.

You are not a member of a religion persecuted by your government.

You do not have cancer or AIDS.

You are not serving in Iraq.

You are not gay.

You are not mentally ill.

You are not a drug addict.

You are not a chicken, pig, or cow that somebody plans to eat.

Etc.

It's altruistic to be an activist for a cause that does not "directly" involve you. Now, I believe that as children of one God and members of the human race, we have a responsibility to take care of each other, and that every single one of us should be doing as much as they can to help every cause I listed and more. But I'm not here to be idealistic or judgmental. I'm here to say that if you don't care about the environment, you're an idiot in denial. It's not even selfish to not recycle or to litter or do other things that hurt the environment. True, it's selfish to buy Starbucks with money that could have gone to an African school, but in our humanity and our culture, nobody's saying it's wrong. What I cannot fathom, absolutely cannot fathom, is people not caring about the Earth.

There's activism in what's seen as the WWJD-hippy-love-protest-altruistic sense - and there's activism in the SAVE YOUR OWN BUTT sense. Don't shy away from being an environmentalist just because other forms of activism seem like too much effort. Running away from a fire is a good idea, even if most people who run all the time do a lot of training work. It's not that hard, really, and it's going to help you a lot more in the long run.

I'm not going to hit you with warnings or statistics. We all know the Earth is in trouble. Step up and do something.

People need to stop being pseudo-selfish idiots, and then maybe next year we can get to a cause that should be the source of an awareness day, like, oh, I don't know, advocacy for the mentally ill, or helping the lost and discouraged, or Ugandan children.

DO SOMETHING:

Greenpeace International

The Nature Conservancy

National Wildlife Federation

The Sierra Club

The Conservation Fund

IB Arts & Crafts

Remember this post about the Psych in-class project? Well Roi and I teamed up again for a stunningly apathetic and mediocre take on a Spanish origami assignment. We're learning imperatives (commands), so Spanish Teacher had us get with partners and give each other directions for origami penguins and fish. Our penguin came out relatively alright considering it's the lamest origami design ever (it's really only recognizable because we decorated it); except that we did it backwards so it doesn't have wings. The fish, on the other hand, is totally wrong. We gave up on the Spanish instructions (which Rubix later pointed out were the same as the penguin with one variation) and improvised our own idea of an origami fish, then drew on it so it looked kinda-sorta-maybe-a-little-bit like a fish. I should have taken a photo of Meg and Geo's perfectly done one. We were supposed to write something about the imperative tense on ours. On the fish I wrote "El imperativo es en la tercera persona" ("the imperative is in the third person" - that's what ST said but I learned that in English Lit, saying "you..." is second person. Whatever. Feel free to comment and explain.) On the penguin Roi wrote "Mi nombre es Margarita." ("My name is Margarita." Has nothing to do with the imperative.) I don't think they were graded. Haha.

Margarita the penguin, chilling with my waterbottle and ST's boombox that she uses to play "Gasolina" for us.

IB Bored

The above is a comic Roi and I were collaborating on during class. (I won't say which one in case any teachers read this. heh.) The hangman games at the top are unfinished because we guessed them correctly after only a few letters. Hangman isn't as much fun with someone you share a brain with. (They say "something wonderful", "on sprocken", and "origami penguin". Yes - I guessed "on sprocken" after just one letter. It's scary.)

We (Roi and I) were discussing a movie we watched in TOK called The Power Of Nightmares, about the rise of NeoCons in America and Islamic Fundamentalists in the Middle East. I commented that it would be a ridiculously awesome wake-up call to the White House if they woke up one morning and all of America's citizens had just gotten fed up and bailed and gone to Canda/Europe/etc. We were laughing at the image of a collective America saying "We're sick of this!" and just walking out, like a sexy girlfriend slamming the door on an irresponsible boyfriend. Unfortunately, Roi noted, most of the South would insist that our government really doesn't mean it, and that they really do love us, and they'd stay.

So I illustrated the conversation with a sketch of the White House and a thought bubble that says "WTF where'd everyone go" and a stick person holding aloft a Confederate flag yelling "AH'M STILL HURR". That was all it took.

In case you can't read it:

The Candadian flag is thinking "When did we become the new America? Eff! Eh?"

Mexican flag: "Still not happy..." "Oh, the irony."

Confederate flag: "You can't make me leave!"

Hammer & Sickle: "PWNED."

Union Jack: "We knew they'd be back. Private healthcare too much for ya?"

Chinese flag: "GO COMMIES!"

Australian flag: "WTF mate? ^^" (if you don't get this joke, you're a failure at the internet.)

Libyan flag: "Can we have a cooler flag please?" (in-joke from Psych last year)

Oh, and don't even think you know what's with the turtle.

Just try and imagine... two high schoolers get bored in class and start passing a note. Is it about a cute guy? The boring factor of the lesson? Plans for the weekend?

No.


It's political cartoons.

Welcome to IB.

IB Victim Support

Today they (the proverbial They, of “The System") handed out a flyer for an IB parent support group. Now, something has to be pretty rough when they have a support group for “parents of…”

But, uh, where’s our support group? Seriously, folks.

It would be more like an addiction meeting than a cancer support group – after all, as victimized as we make ourselves out to be, we did this to ourselves. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and now we hate it - but we’re in so deep it’d be equally painful to quit.
Here’s how it would go:

Hi, I’m Sal.
Hi, Sal.
I first heard about IB as a kid, in elementary school. I started slow, you know, Pre-IB in middle school. Nobody thinks it’s such a big deal – I mean lots of middle schoolers do honors classes, and it’s not much extra work. It was actually kinda fun when I first started.
Then in high school I started hitting the harder stuff. It was just a natural step from Pre-IB, I guess. They told me I could quit anytime; it would always be a choice. It doesn’t feel like a daily choice anymore.
Understanding nods.
I knew it would be hard, and you’d always be at risk for losing your diploma. I’d seen kids get into that stuff and lose their boyfriends, their families, their social lives, their jobs, everything. All they did was IB. I knew what it did, how it made you lose sleep and everything. I knew, I knew! I don’t understand what made me decide to start it. Maybe it was the pressure – all my friends were doing it - even the teachers made it sound so awesome.
I don’t know why I started. It’s just so hard to quit! It’s eaten up my life… if I left, where would I go? All my friends and all my classes are IB. I still like the high, I do… the TOK class, the kids, the teachers, the feeling of accomplishment… I’m just sick of the crashes. The times I wonder if it’s really all worth it in the end, or when the work gets to be too much. I don’t know how much more I can take.
Muted clapping.

Wow. That was a moving story. Thanks for sharing. Stay strong, sister! We believe in you.
Amen!

Next meeting is Thursday at 3am – no whining, you’ll all be up anyway.
Begrudging nods.
Remember to tell your parents about the support group for them. Topics will include “Calculus and Cold Chicken: When They Just Can’t Come Down To Dinner”, “Clarifying Condoned CAS: What Counts, What’s Copulation” and “Computer Time: They Have An EE To Do, So Shut Up And Live Without It Or Buy Another One, Cheapskates”. [Note: The second talk topic has been canceled due to lack of interest. Apparently parents of IB kids don’t worry too much about their kids having sex.]

Disclaimer: Okay, so IB is slightly more enjoyable than a meth addiction. And we do have a pretty solid support system in our fellow students and teachers. This bitter nature of this post is brought to you by sponsors Extended Essay, CAS, TOK Perception Essay, and Bio Lab. Blaargh.

IB Mature?

I’ve mentioned before how IB kids are in a lot of ways more immature than our peers, or at least more creative and enthusiastic about our immaturity. A lot of us are younger than we ought to be for seniors (skipped grades), and a lot of us kind of missed out on the experience of being stupid little kids because – you may be familiar with this concept from various sitcoms – oftentimes advanced intellects come with less competent social skills. The government says some of us can vote/join the army and most of us can drive; the school system says we are now responsible for choosing and applying to the perfect college as well as saving the world with our bio labs; many of us have jobs – and yet we’re all essentially just seven year olds who can differentiate functions, as illustrated by the Homecoming assembly.

Yesterday Roi and I were at our job (tutoring first graders in reading) and we had to do things a little differently because we needed to give our kids a pre-test to measure their progress through the year. However, because we have such little ones, we needed to take them out of our groups and test them one at a time over reading sight words. We came up with a brilliant plan – combine our groups so one of us can teach all the kids (about 12, since another tutor was gone that day) and one of us can take their kids out individually to test them. When I say “brilliant plan”, I mean that in a “Let’s spy on the Democrats!” way.
Yesterday, Roi and I learned a very important lesson. If you disrupt the routine of first graders by introducing a new situation, person, game, etc. – they become as manageable as rabid gophers. The testing took less than ten minutes, but we spent the remainder of the hour chasing after the kids, yelling over them, pulling them out from under bookshelves, confiscating toys, breaking up brawls, and getting tackled. Geo and another first-grade tutor combined their groups to do the same thing, with the same effects. It didn’t help that Roi and I found the antics exceedingly hilarious and so we were yelling at them to stop while laughing. Fun fact – if you laugh at something a kid does, s/he will continue the behavior, no matter how many times you punctuate your laughter with “quiet mouths please! Let’s all sit down!”

Tonight is the Homecoming game so this morning we had a pep assembly (I have a separate blog about that) between second and third hours. That meant that all the classes today began and ended at weird times. That routine disruption, coupled with leftover “pep” from the assembly, made us about as manageable as, well, rabid gophers. We spent History class playing Cold War jeopardy on the computer. Usually History jeopardy games are slightly tense (IBers are competitive about everything) and mostly just an opportunity to sleep/do other homework when it’s not your turn to stand at the front and not know the answer. Today, on the other hand, we spent the hour banging on desks, cheering, yelling, Middle-Eastern war whooping (Nahidface, help me out here, what’s it called?), and generally reacting to the Jeopardy game with passion rivaling Superbowl fans. We got into TOK and found a giant pile of Play-Doh containers and insisted on getting to play with them (even though they weren’t meant for our class). Rubix made a supercool dinosaur, unfortunately I didn’t have my camera on me. TOK Teacher tried to teach but we mutinied and demanded a “free period”, so she surrendered to the insanity and gave us a little kinesiology demonstration and let us loose. It was boffo!
Lesson for today? IB kids are just as bad as first graders. Throw off our routine, and we jump from zombies to Chihuahuas on crack and make it impossible for anything to get accomplished. We like Play-Doh, dinosaurs, and yelling.

Oh, and speaking of obnoxious immaturity, this has to be shared:
The Speech team has a sort of rivalry with the team we were playing, so even though I know nothing about football, I was being as annoyingly spirited as possible at the game. Then I got bored with football and carried that annoying energy over into entertaining myself. For the homecoming game, everyone dressed up in “crazy black and gold” to be supportive, and I had a gold sash tied around my waist. I wrapped it around my hand and shouted “hey everybody look – sash knuckles!”

IB, therefore I BS

Announcement: Updating schedule is now Mondays and Thursdays. EXCITING!!!

Ok, readers, here’s your assignment for today.
1.) Design an experiment you can carry out with materials and knowledge accessible to a high school student.
2.) Come up with a way that your experiment affects the world.
3.) Work that “global impact” into the “purpose statement” of your baking-soda-volcano lab write-up.

That’s what we’re expected to do from now on with all our labs. There’s a saying among us IBers that says “IB, therefore I BS.” It’s true that we get pretty good at coming up with pretentiously intelligent-sounding nonsense, or at re-wording lowbrow concepts so that they sound higher-level. But that’s usually the result of our own desire to take shortcuts and not the absurdly impossible nature of the assignment.

This requirement is essentially a command to BS something. You’ll note it does not say “design an experiment that affects the world.” It says “figure out a way to spin some aspect of your experiment so that it may possibly be written to hypothetically affect the world.”
Think about the labs we’re doing. If you could cure cancer, end terrorism, or bring about world peace by looking at pond scum under microscopes, don’t you think the IB class of 06 (1806, that is) would have figured it out? Maybe the secret to a stable economy can be found right under an eggshell – just dissolve it in vinegar! It just hasn’t been noticed for centuries because we’re all too busy playing with the shell-less squishy bouncy eggs (which, by the way, is insanely fun).

But instead of writing up that lab and getting the lesson on osmosis that it was designed for, I’m too busy thinking up what it has to do with bird flu in Asia. Nothing. It has nothing to do with tea in China or bird flu in Asia or any other “global impact”! It’s an egg that was soaked in vinegar!
Lately I’ve had a hard time distinguishing between when I actually know something, and when I’m writing a bunch of buzzwords that sound nice. Maybe that’s all “knowledge” is – making easy stuff sound important.

My bio paper: “the theory of evolution has met with resistance from some groups who believe that the story of Creation found in the first book of the Judeo-Christian Bible is literal fact.”
What I really said: “some religious people don’t think evolution is real.” Now that’s not really higher-level IB thinking, now is it? Lots of people know that. Consider also that it had very little to do with the question I was answering about the influences on Darwin’s theories (those beliefs influenced his publicizing of his theories but not really his theories). But, I got points for it.

I do that all the time in just about every class except possibly Spanish. I’m not saying all of my work is lame ideas dressed up in fancy words, just that it’s a really easy fallback.
The thing about IB is it teaches you how to do that really well – first by piling on so much work that you don’t have time to craft higher-level theories, and then by asking you to come up with things that are impossible without an extremely high BS content.

I wonder, if we all stopped and thought about how much of our work really means something compared to how much just sounds like it does – we’d reconsider a lot of what we think we’ve “learned”. But then again, maybe this skill is just as vital as being able to actually say something of importance. What does that say about the world that IB is preparing us for?
Ah. There’s the “impact on society.” Dang I’m good.

IB History

So maybe History Teacher thinks my choices of CAS activities are suspect (sleeping around and running an underground magazine – one allegation false, the other true) but at least I don’t act like this in History class:

HT: …so then Reagan sold nukes to Iran *pauses so class can take notes*
Class: *taking notes*
Roi: Did you know the elderly are having more sex than we think?
Class: !?!WTFLOLZ
Me: What does that have to do with anything at all?
Roi: No, seriously, they are!
HT: ooookay... So Iran was fighting with Iraq…

HT: Why are political prisoners imprisoned?

Roi: Politically!

HT: Who can tell me something about Henry Kissinger?
Me: Oh! Oh! He was secretary of state!
HT: Yes. Who can tell me what he was before that?
Roi: German!
HT: ……I’m pretty sure he was German his entire life.
**(Roi would like me to point out that she was joking. HT’s reaction was still hilarious.)

HT: Someone e-mailed me the other day... The email “love2kitty” isn’t going to go over well with employers and colleges.
Stealth: Wait, how is “kitty” a verb?
EF: Hey, hang on, I never e-mailed you!

HT: Pop quiz! Write the name of these events and their dates. *shows slide*
Class: This is cruel and unusual! We don’t know the date for this!
HT: Ok, I’ll give you this one as a freebie. March 32, 1965.
Class: Har har.
Goa: Wait, Mr. HT! That’s not a real – oh. *erases*

HT: We're talking about the theories of a man named Melvin Lifflen.

Me: Melville what?

HT: Melvin. Lifflen. Just say Lifflen.

Me: Melvin Lifflen!? What kind of name is that?

Roi: Sounds like something out of Dr. Seuss.

Me: *snrk*

...HT lecturing...

Someone in class: Wait, so why didn't the military do that?

HT: I don't know. Lifflen didn't talk much about that.

Roi: He was too busy talking about the wocket in his pocket!

Me: /incapacitated by giggle

HT: What was Stalin good at?

Class: Bluffing!

Roi: I bet they played lots of poker at Potsdam. Potsdam Poker Playing Conference! Like the CCCP - except PPPC!

HT: Be quiet.

HT: Over less than ten years, Stalin was sent to Siberia six times. He escaped five times.

Roi: So he was just like in and out; "Hey guys, it's me again!"

Stealth: He had a season pass.

Someone: So Stalin killed a lot of people?

Stealth: Oh yeah. At least five.

IB Lunch

IB kids at my school have a tradition that dates at least three years back. Our cafeteria is tiny, so most kids eat outside under The Ramada, a bunch of picnic tables under a big metal shade. One table on the farthest corner has been claimed as The IB Senior Table. The choice of location is incredibly strategic because 1.) it means that in the summer, half of the table is exposed to the sun and 2.) the “nerds” are easy to distinguish and throw things at. We may be the best and the brightest minds, but we tend to be ritually dumb creatures of habit when it comes to sitting at an awful table three years in a row.

The results of containing too many IB kids in an unstructured environment with food and regulars include fistfights, social experiments, iPod soap operas, violent discussions, rubix cube tournaments, and pointless “hypothetically…” conversations.
Yes, a couple of IB kids did get into a fight last year. I won’t go into details because I wasn’t there – but trust me, hearing about it secondhand was enough. Don’t throw French fries at IB kids. We will mess you up! Actually, please don’t sucker punch us. We don’t enjoy it.

Last year, there was a period of time when there was a fight at lunch every few days. Young adolescent behavior during a fight involves running around, standing up, and, most noticeably, yelling. Even if one cannot see the fight, one is obliged to yell “OOOHHH”. The purpose of this yelling is apparently to alert the administration so they can come stop the fight as soon as possible. There is no other result of the yelling and therefore no other plausible explanation. (it's nice that we have such an activist student body) One day, we were looking out over the regulars and their pathetic lunch tables devoid of TI-84 calculators (plugging them into each other for Tetris competitions is also popular). Someone commented about the “wave effect” that fight yelling has and we decided to stage a social experiment of sorts. Our table started yelling and within seconds the entire Ramada had picked it up – at which time we stopped and resumed eating our lunch/doing our homework. Everyone was yelling and half the kids were craning their necks around or standing up, trying to locate the altercation. Monitors and campus cops were running in every direction, walkie-talkies in hand, also trying to find it. It was a sobering lesson on mob mentality. But mostly it was hilarious watching everyone go crazy.
Yesterday was a typical IB lunch table experience.

The Ramada has structural support beams that criss-cross the entire underside. Pigeons like to sit on them. Think about what happens when you eat lunch at picnic tables under a pigeon parking lot. The other day, Tigre’s backpack was a casualty, so we were all extra-vigilant when it came to the pigeon situation. One decided to sit right above Roi, who scooted intimately close to Goa. Tigre talked about his vendetta against all feathered creatures while M threw bottle caps in an unsuccessful attempt to make the pigeon move. I clapped and yelled at it, which must have startled it, because right then, it pooped. Someone commented on how it hurts to be pooped on by a bird, a claim that was disputed. The physics kids proceeded to try and figure out how one would calculate the velocity of falling bird poop. I’m a bio kid who didn't feel that the current discussion enhanced my enjoyment of my taco, so I yelled at them to shut up. 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!
Physics kid: We’d have to figure out a way to weigh it…
Me: Are we seriously still on this!?
Other physics kid: Just put a scale under the bird!
Me: Oh my gosh. Seriously.

Side note: SUPERCONGRATS to the National Merit semi-finalists! Yay for names on the marquee!

IB Movies (are boring)

If you guys have a couple of hours to kill – and you really want to kill those hours, not just maim or injure them – may I suggest a movie called Mind Walk by Fritjof Capra. I don’t really know if the “by” means he wrote it, or directed it, or whatever – but they are definitely “by” Mr. Capra. I own a few books by him (The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point that my dad gave me as hand-me-downs from his days in college) that I have read little bits of.

The movie takes place in France, but all three characters are Americans, causing the audience to question the exact point of the European setting other than a long and dreary hike through a swamp to an old castle haunted by a divorcee and her bratty daughter. It is about a politician (played by “That One Guy From Law & Order”), a poet (played by “The Dad From Home Alone, I Think, Isn’t He?”) and a physicist (played by “Who The Heck Recognizes This Lady?”). The physicist is an expatriate American who managed to pick up a very thick French accent in only a few years, possibly by living in a tourist-attraction castle with a torture chamber and a teenage girl. The poet also lives in France but sounds like any other American (he does not live in a castle). The politician lives in America and came to see his friend the poet after losing in the presidential primaries. He is emo, which may have something to do with the fact that the poet voice-overs his thoughts about the politician, and they are never very nice.

The entire movie is dialogue, with a few shots of an old clock and torture devices. The physicist spouts opinions while the politician is emo and the poet randomly says lines of poetry that the castle “gives him”, not participating in the discussion at all. It is possible he feels so unfavorably toward the politician coming to see him because after his wife left him (a pointless bit of exposition we got through – hey! – dialogue) he didn’t have to share the drugs with anyone. Except the lady he was in bed with at the beginning of the movie – apparently not his wife (unless they’re doing a Cox-and-Jordan thing)? Whoever she is, she makes his “waah I am divorced and lonely” crap seem kinda exaggerated.

As I write this, I have only seen the first hour of the movie. Twice. TOK Teacher had us watch it all period with a sub and then decided we should start it over so she could pause it and we could discuss it. I made an effort to pay attention the first day, but the second day I lay on the floor, used Duckie as a pillow, spaced out and accidentally kicked Monica/banged my head on her desk for an hour. (Monica is a very patient person when it comes to being kicked.)

The other great thing about this movie is the abundance of possible comparisons that can be made to Manos: The Hands of Fate, the worst movie in existence. (It is because I have seen this movie at least 10 times that I can sit through Mind Walk without stabbing myself or becoming comatose.) From the painfully dull dialogue in a car, to credits over bland landscape, to repetitive dialogue, to the obnoxious daughter, to a completely pointless young couple to rusty old torture devices – Mind Walk is what Manos would be if Hal Warren grew weed (“that’s deeeeeeep, man”) instead of sold fertilizer (“this STINKS, man!”). If you didn’t get this paragraph, go find Manos: The Hands of Fate and watch it – get the MST3K version unless you have a very high tolerance for suckage. It’s something every human should experience, no joke. I’m willing to lend it out to those of you who know me in real life.

I love my TOK class and my TOK teacher… this movie just sucks a lot. I think IB makes us watch awful movies (Inherit the Wind, anyone? dame el religion de tiempo viejo, era bueno para David pequeno!) to unite us in irritation and inside jokes. Because that unity is what gets us through the hard times. Speaking of hard times, I have to go fill out CAS sheets, senior reflection, Haverford application, and do hours of homework. You should go watch Manos.

IBureaucracy Paper

IB is a bureaucracy in the purest sense of the word, a fact that becomes more and more obvious the more enmeshed one becomes in the web of red tape, required steps, buzzwords and confusion (a large reason IB seniors grow so close to each other and their teachers… we’re essentially all hostages of the giant IBureaucracy). IB has the ability to take very good things and turn them into very bad things. It also has the ability to take very simple things and make them excessively complicated.

I am talking about paper. That thin, flat stuff made of dead ground up trees. Most non-IB outsiders (the equivalent of Hogwarts muggles; “normals” or “regulars” to us) have the luxury of taking paper for granted. IB kids, on the other hand, understand that paper is actually a life or death issue. It is yet another part of the painful burden of knowledge IB bestows upon us.
IB paper is an entirely different breed of paper. It’s all in Spanish, English, and French, for one thing. How can a paper be in languages? Because it has instructions on it. Why would paper need instructions? Because it is complex beyond the point that any piece of paper should ever be.

It’s a weird size. Why? I don’t think even the IBO knows. It just is. It’s bright white with blue lines on it, but very different from the white and blue looseleaf we’ve been using for the last twelve years, and it’s also somewhat smoother and thicker. IB elves in Switzerland make it out of mandrake roots. The lines are inside a rectangle set in the center of the paper, allowing for pristine margins which serve no purpose except to not be written in. Writing in the margins is against the rules. Apparently that’s part of the test, because if they really cared about not having written-in margins, they could have made the lines go much closer to the edges. Above the lined rectangle is the special section for putting your special secret IB information, like your candidate number, which is also presumably part of the test since they change it every year and give you barcode stickers for your papers anyway.

That’s right – IB kids have their own barcode stickers. If you’ve never had your own personal barcode sticker, it’s one of the strangest feelings ever. You know what has barcode labels? Cans of peas. And all those meaningless scraps of paper, parts of packaging and receipts that mean nothing to humans except “this is part of The System”. Then kids get bored and start sticking their extra stickers on their necks; which doesn’t really help the creepy factor.

And that’s just the paper for writing on. IB graph paper has green lines with a grid size roughly the same as that of a screen door. I’ve used it for a few math assignments and ended up giving up on scales and counting the little squares and decided to just eyeball the stupid thing and make a line that looked right. I’d be worried about how to graph on the exams but honestly, I have no idea how they expect anyone to grade it accurately. I bet they use the same “does it look kinda right? okay.” system we do. Or a microscope, in which case I’m screwed.

I know all this, not because IB is liberal with its paper distribution – blank papers enter the Test Center sealed in bulletproof plastic to prevent Contamination – but because our teachers make Xerox copies of the paper for us to use on tests so we can “get used to it” and not “be scared of it on the test”. When your paper is so bizarre that IB kids (who really aren't fazed by anything) have to be allowed to approach it slowly in a safe and familiar environment like new zoo animals – congratulations, you’re officially the most inane bureaucracy in existence.

To top it all off, IB, in its spirit of “internationalism”, decided that the best way to be “internationalistic” was to set an “international” standard, universally uniting every single IB school with something that nobody in any of the countries uses. (I guess it brings us together by giving us something to have in common – the fact that we all have no clue.) Instead of sending staplers to those few remaining staplerless countries (apparently Kyrgyzstan and Brazil are the last anti-stapler holdouts), they decided that everybody was going to attach multiple exam papers with things called “toggles”, made out of plastic and yarn, once again finding a way to make a very simple task as complicated and bizarre as possible. There is only one other historically documented use of “toggles” – some ancient bone ones were found in the tomb of young King Tut, possible evidence that he may have been the first IB student and also a clue regarding the cause of his early death.

Also this week: happy birthday to myself!

Angst. Angst. Angst.

I'm sorry. Last week, there was absolutely nothing funny about being in IB. Next Monday will be funnier, I promise. Have some quotes.

HT: Somoza invites Sandino over for a dinner conference -
Roi: They were going to TP Sacasa's house!

HT: Roosevelt said Sacasa was an "SOB"
Stealth*: What's that?
HT: ...son of a... gun...
Stealth: Ohhh, it's in Spanish, so it's "B" in Spanish! I get it.
Entire class: ???? /rofl
Me: Okay. Pick a nickname.

*New character! Stealth has been mentioned a few times - he's a member of the NADS and he's also the "jerk" from this entry. But he's also a pretty cool guy. Not sure what's up with the nickname he chose. I'm tempted to get Freudian on the 007-style nicknames the guys keep picking for each other. Also he's way smarter than this quote implies... usually.

Geo: Remember that one time we ate all that trail mix?
Roi: What one time?
Geo: That one time we ate trail mix!

Me: Exposition is like when in movies there's that old wizard and he's telling all the backstory about how there was a big battle and the elf died with his magic crystal and the fairy took his staff and stuck it in the stone and I'm combining nine stories right now...

IB Kids Use Their Powers For Evil

IB kids are intuitive, quick, and intelligent.

Sometimes we use our powers for evil.

HT is talking about the Monroe Doctrine when I accidentally knock everything on my desk to the floor. (You’ll notice most events in my life - or at least history class - center around my clumsiness.) The crash catches HT’s attention (and that of the entire class), so he decides to ask me to explain what the Roosevelt Corollary was. Some jerk says “Oh, that’s easy!” - except that I didn’t crack open a history book all summer. I have an idea but am not sure it's right; and I don't want to get it wrong after the remark and having just embarassed myself. I give Roi a quick wide-eyed “I don’t know!” look and she shrugs – she doesn’t remember either and can’t help me. I decide to try and buy some time by picking my stuff up off the floor. Roi takes the cue and runs with it. She mentions me falling out of my desk two days ago; somehow, HT managed to miss it. Roi is telling about that and how I fell off a chair at Meg’s house once. Now everyone is paying attention to her, laughing, and I’m on the floor looking up the Roosevelt Corollary in the textbook. I find it (turns out my original guess was right…), sit back in my desk – without falling! – and Roi immediately turns center stage back to me. I answer correctly, look smart, and HT continues with his lecture.

Muahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Quotes of the Week:

"Sushi is not vegetables."

"Sorry, I didn't hear you; my earlobes were in my ears."

"Are Jose and Josefina Schmo on their little farm going to modernize? No."

Announcement

School's three days in and already I've got a ton of material.
I plan to update this weekly, on Mondays. Let's see if I can keep it up.
Quotes of the week:
"Don't projectile things at me!"
"Go back to Ellis Island!"
"If the answer is 'the devil' and you wrote 'Christ', you are not 'close'!"
"Inside never gets any fights."

How I Managed To Embarass Myself The First Day Of School

Today was the first day of school. I'm so lucky this is my senior year, because if this stuff had happened the first day of freshman year, I probably would have dropped dead out simply of a strong desire to do so.
Major props to: 5, and all my other friends who love me despite my complete and utter awkwardness.

Period one: out of an almost hour long class period, I managed to drop and spill my purse during the only nanosecond of silence. Also, I had a book I borrowed from Monica (of SeekingZoe) and when she came in, I went to return it. I ran to the front of the room and yelled “Monica!” and threw out my arms to give her a hug. Except she didn’t hear me and walked over to talk to someone else, and the whole class was watching this because I’m loud.

Period two: Accidentally left my schedule in my locker and, when Bio Teacher asked to sign them, had to tell her I didn’t have it. Ten seconds after she said “If you guys don’t have yours… come on. You’re seniors, for crying out loud.” Oops. So then she made me lie on a desk and pretend to have passed out after sniffing sulphur so we could practice yelling CODE ONE! (don’t ask).

Period three: I don’t remember what Spanish Teacher said, but, I thought it was really funny. Too bad absolutely nobody else laughed.

Period four: Fell out of my desk. Seriously. I was sitting on one of my legs, and when I used the other one as leverage to get out of the desk, I slid off the seat and onto the floor. Also, accidentally reminded History Teacher of an incident last year I haven’t yet lived down.
IB kids have to do CAS hours - 50 each of Creativity, Action, and Service. One day at lunch I remarked that sex could be the ultimate CAS activity – there are opportunities to be creative, it’s definitely action, and depending on your partner, could also be service. (then)-Boyfriend thought it was hilarious. Hilarious enough to warrant sharing it with History Teacher (also the CAS coordinator) by saying “Hey! Sal has a question!” and repeating my joke. Even though Boyfriend said it, HT associates it with me, and brings it up way too often.
Today, he asked if any of us had done CAS over the summer, and Roi exaggeratedly turned to look at me, because I recently got busted when my mom called HT and found out I hadn’t done any paperwork for CAS yet. I whispered “You know what HT associated with CAS in my case. You just can’t do that or he’ll think we’re lesbians or something. You just can't do that.” But HT heard me and asked “What can’t she do?”
Me: Uh… join mock trial.
HT: Why not?
Me: Because she sucks?
Roi: Actually she said I can’t look at her when you mention CAS.
HT: Why not?
Lua (another girl who hangs out with 5): because remember the sex-for-CAS joke from last year?
HT: I had forgotten about that. Thanks.
Me: *headdesk*
(I’d like to note that I’m usually a much better liar than that and I’m pretty good with a quick, plausible answer to bail myself – or someone else – out of something pretty quickly. 5 will back me up on that.)
In retaliation, I threatened to give HT a “gift” of a poster-size print of a photo I have of Roi, where she looks absolutely HIDEOUS to the point of being almost deformed. It really is the worst photo of anyone I’ve ever seen.

Period five (lunch): I didn’t do anything, but Roi managed to get gum (the same piece) on the bottom of both her shoes, the top of one, and her toes. How, I really don’t know.

Period seven: I don’t remember what I was talking about, but Calc Teacher walked up at just the wrong moment. Twice.

Friend Promotion. Am I Internet-Important Enough To Do This Yet?

Everybody's doing it.

A good friend of mine (and fellow IBer) has her own blog now.
Seeking Zoe
I think between my irreverence and her deeper musings, together the two blogs are one of the best representations out there of what it really means to be IB. She has a lot of really interesting stuff to say, and despite the fact that I almost always play devil's advocate in my comments, I usually agree with most of what she says. But where's the fun in that? Check it out.

IB Kids Applaud Their Parents (thus creating awkwardness)

Sorry guys, this died a little over the summer. School starts in a week and hopefully senior year will provide lots of material.
The other night was the IB Meeting, which was boring except for the Moment Roi and I caused.

History Teacher: I introduce the next speaker, Mrs. Roi's Mom!
Me and Roi: *clapping and cheering*
Entire room: *silent*
Silence.
Me and Roi: *loud laughter*
Entire room: *silent*
Silence.
Mrs. Roi's Mom: ...I'm her mom.

1000BWC - Offensively Religious Version

IB kids have minds that may be mature in other areas, but when it comes down to it, we're all the same hormonal teenagers the rest of the world is so familiar with. We're just a little bit more esoterically-intellectual with our immaturity. (see "Ted Kennedy killed your mom"). Something we all find incredibly amusing is being as non-PC and offensive as we can possibly be at each other.

During the game, we had two Jews, one of whom is also a Christian, making 3 Christians, and two atheists, for a total of six smart, snarky players.

This card is terrible. It's terribly anti-Semitic, terribly offensive, and terribly funny. (Note the grammatical error.) And I'm Jewish. But, see, we kind of asked for it, since the other Jewish player made the following card:

I have no idea what the shark attack or speech bubble has to do with anything. I don't think he did either.

Note how both cards poking fun at the Jewish players contain spelling errors.

This is me teasing Tilapia, because he works at Starbucks and apparently there's a Bible study group that meets there at 4:30 in the morning, forcing them to actually open when they open.

Roi made this after getting tired of all the religious-themed cards.

More 1000BWC fun

I made this one during a game with 5... a few of us had some boy issues that everyone else kept making cards about, so I put an end to it.

Another one of mine, drawn in a burst of inspiration.

Pretty sure Jono made this but I'm not sure. I think it's hilarious.

Geo made this during the first ever 1000BWC game with 5. Everyone always plays it on Roi (who is perfectly normal-sized), and it's remained in our permanent deck since its creation, despite her protests.

My regular readers should recognize this.

Made by Jono, our resident Finland expert. I like how on all his cards, the points look like they were added as an afterthought.

More 1000BWC Highlights

IB scores came out this week.

You'd think I'd have more to say about that.

I don't.

I drew this, mostly becayse ladybugs are the one thing I can draw without hating myself completely. Jono added the menorah, I think so Roi's "religion" card would discard it, though I don't know why since it's positive points.

This is one of mine. The irony of the card is that almost every single card ever made for 1000BWC either is, or becomes, an inside joke. The game itself is almost an inside joke. Bonus points for anyone who knows the source of the "No ah hate munkehs!" drawing.

(Awesome Asian) was kind of quiet during the game, but he made some awesome cards.

Roi and I are convinced that Freud was gay for Carl Jung, but that's a blog for another day. Someone played this card to Tilapia, who determined that the next card (which was about bears) meant that the person drawing it had been deprived of teddy bears and other affection as a child.

Jono made this. Apparently Stanford's application doesn't include a "draw a crab" section.

This card makes me laugh but I can't tell who drew it. Nigiri added the "trillion" and played it to Roi, who told him he couldn't alter cards. He responded by writing "this card is homosexual" on one of my cards.

Movie Reviews, IB Style

Bonus post! Two in a week! To make up for my complete lack of material during the summer. Get ready for lots more KBWC scans.

So, I saw Transformers the other day. It rocked.

Pros:
~Shia LeBeouf. Seriously, can you ever go wrong when he’s in a movie? No. He’s awesome.
~Character development. In a movie like Transformers, no less! But the main character, Sam (Shia LeBeouf) actually felt like a regular person, as did his parents and the geeky computer analyst people (they were great!). The heroine, not so much… more on that later. The dialogue was mostly not terrible too and had some genuinely funny lines.
~Ridiculously awesome action sequences. Honestly – GIANT ALIEN TRANSFORMING ROBOTS FIGHTING EACH OTHER. Is that ever not cool? No.
~ Voice cameo by a Bush impersonator, haha.
~Little squiggly talking computer hacking robot.
~Secret government conspiracy agencies. Again – try to come up with a situation when that’s not cool. Bet you can’t.

Cons:
~Plot points kind of discarded… what happened to the invisible force fields? And wasn’t there a dog in the first half of the movie?
~I didn’t think it was possible to take a giant alien transforming fighting robot… and make it a total wuss. The Autobots sounded like the brain-damaged, wastoid pre-teens on that old show Rocket Power – awfully cheesy dialogue, and total wimpy-ness in all situations. They were like Emo-bots. I bet all their computer brains have instant hookups to LiveJournal, constantly updating their deep inner robo-thoughts. I can see it now: “those Decepticons are SO gay!!!!11 why cant they just leave us alone? also were helping this kid and his parents are so totally annoying. parents suck. i wish they were dead.” I’m not making this up – go see the movie and tell me those aren’t the wimpiest, most emo robots you’ve ever seen. They shouldn’t have been given dialogue at all, and instead been the strong silent type of ALIEN ROBOT KILLING MACHINES. Would have been way cooler.
~I’m sorry, but there is absolutely NO WAY “Mikaela” (Megan Fox) was in high school. I know high schoolers in movies are always played by older actors, but come ON. Was she actually a teacher? Did she get held back five or ten years? Give me a break. It was like watching Angelina Jolie try to play Lizzie McGuire.
~Since when do secret government agencies hire wacked-out schizophrenic sadist guys? Some top-secret organization you got going there. Same psych evaluations as NASA? Might want to keep an eye on the diapers.
~That little squiggly-talking computer hacker robot? Very cool. Also very VERY annoying. Almost as bad as the little blue thing from Something Positive.
~Last scene – can anyone say voyeur? Can someone else say CREEPY?

With that said – go see it. It’s cool. Not exactly cinematic gold, but definitely fun.

EDIT: Nigiri says the robots weren't emo and the "parents should die" comment I'm making fun of is taken out of context. But he has ovaries and we aren't going to listen to him.

IBers And The Games We Play

One of the best reasons to join IB is the people you'll be forced to spend your entire day with. We're quirky, nerdy, neurotic, and one big intellectual family.
One of the games we play, which is a good demonstration of how an "IB-type" personality manifests in ways besides just being book-smart, is 1000 Blank White Cards. The point of the game is - well, there isn't really one. The general concept is, everybody makes up cards to play on each other, themselves, or that can affect the entire table. The cards consist of a title, a silly drawing, and a point value or other action. If this sounds like a complete waste of time and you can't possibly imagine how it could ever be fun, then you may be a little too normal for us.
A few nights ago, Roi and I met up with four of the senior boys at Starbucks to play. Below are some of the highlights from the game. There were too many good ones to post all of them here, but since it's summer vacation and I have nothing else IB-related to talk about, you'll probably get to see them all.
Also, since I talk about the senior boys enough now, they all have their own nicknames. There's Tilapia, who works at Starbucks, Nigiri (named after a cut of sushi in keeping with the fish theme) was in mock trial with me, Jono has known me since I was in 2nd grade, and (another one who hasn't picked a nickname yet) is so awesomely Asian, he gives me free pocky from his job.

Tilapia made this one. It really needs no explanation.

Nigiri drew this. The colors change halfway through because I didn't want the purple pen and made him trade me. Ah, the joys of being an empowered woman.

I made this one and it is by far one of my favorite cards, ever.

Jono made this one. The utter randomness of it makes me laugh every time I look at it; as does the contrast between the caption and the dog's expression. Is it me, or is everything funnier without punctuation? (Case in point: this guy)

Tilapia made this card, which upset Jono because " 'go to hell' is not a valid card action!" so I think he awarded bonus points for people who got the reference. (I have never played a game of 1000BWC where points were actually tallied afterward. The game is such anarchy that it would almost defeat the purpose.)

The Stories Behind All The Silly Nicknames

So, when I decided to start a blog about school halfway through the school year, I kind of didn’t realize that material would dry up a bit over summer vacation. So, to prevent this from completely dying (all two of you who actually check this for updates), this week, you get: The Stories Behind All The Silly Nicknames.

When I actually started getting serious about this, I realized that I needed to have actual Tucker-Max-(no link for you, I’m clean now)-type nicknames. And because I didn’t want to get jumped by a disgruntled fan who didn’t appreciate their nickname, I let people pick their own. That was a mistake.

The following conversation (via facebook) between me and Roi: (And no, we’re not actual girlfriends, that’s a JOKE. And yes, we do tend to refer to ourselves in third person. Don’t judge us.)

Me: You need a nickname. That's not "my girlfriend".
Roi: how about "amazing friend that is so awesome, you can't even put it into words without sounding ridiculous and using too many "a" adjectives
Me: your nicnkame makes the acronym "aftisoaycepiiwwsrautmaa". That's a bad thing.
Roi: 1)coolest acronym ever 2)extremely annoying for you to type (a definite plus) 3)please don't give me a mean one now, like retard on ice. (roi)i kinda like that. like a feminine version of roy.wowza, i'm cool.love, roi
Me: that's it; you're Roi on Compaionable Ills. What is it with three-letter two-vowel nicknames?
Roi: [Roi] wants to cry. only a little. i like roi. you better mention i named myself.

Side note: Roi is the only one of these that has caught on in real life. Ha ha.

Red Dog was less-than-thrilled about being associated with something as… well, you know… as an IB blog – until he realized he could pick any name and I had just agreed to call him that all over the internets. Tell the truth, I’m surprised - and eternally grateful - that he didn’t pick The Earthly Manifestation Of All That Is Manly And Hot (Temoatimah) or something like that. (No, Red Dog, you cannot change your nickname to that now.)

Geo and Meg are nick-nicknames – manipulations of their real-life names into untraceable, three-letter internet names. They don’t stand for anything, though suggestions are welcome.

Goa is a city in India. Goa herself is a proud Indian. It fits, and it’s what started the three-letter, vowel-heavy tradition of 5 nicknames.

5 is our 5-girl clique. We have a name for it that’s made up of the first letters of our last names, but here 5 works just fine. Call me lazy.

Ex is… Roi’s ex. The nickname fits him, since it’s only his status as Roi’s ex that makes him even remotely noticeable to 5 or worth mentioning here. His nickname might change to Turtle soon – the result of a 5 inside joke that would be pointless to try to explain. It would also make clique-related nicknames kind of a requirement, given that he’s good friends with Duckie (also Ex’s Friend, who really doesn’t warrant a nickname yet). Duckie is another nick-nickname, and also really fits, if you know him.

The Senior Boys are… a group of senior IB boys we hang out with. They’ve never needed specific nicknames, so they just go by SB#1, SB#2, etc. with the exception of Tilapia, which is a personal joke between me and him, and really doesn’t warrant any explanation – I’m a little sadistic at times, is all.

My nickname, Sal, is taken from J.D. Salinger. Why? Because The Catcher In The Rye is the be-all-and-end-all of teen-angst literature, and I’m writing a blog about being in IB. Try and tell me it doesn’t fit.

IB Insults

IB vs. “Normal” Insults:
(Yes, I or one of my friends did say every one of these)

Normal: Hey, what moron dumped their stuff all over my desk?
IB: Imperialist swine!

Normal: Wow, way to say something retarded.
IB: Your Wernicke’s area just failed big-time.

Normal: You’re a sucky driver.
IB: In Soviet Russia, car drive YOU!

Normal: That’s a really bad grade.
IB: That’s a bigger failure than the Bay of Pigs!

Normal: You’re gay.
IB: You sound like Harry Harlow.

Normal: You’re a nerd.
IB: You’re even more of a nerd than me.
*A little note on the n-word: It’s just like the other n-word. We can use it with each other, but nobody else is allowed to call us that.

Normal: OHH BURN!
IB: You better buy some stock in the Aloe-Vera company, ‘cause you’re gonna need a lot of it for that BURN!

Normal: Does she ever shut up?
IB: Major oral fixation.

Normal: Don’t be such a girl.
IB: You have ovaries.

Normal: My little brother’s so annoying. He’s all into sports with my dad…
IB: My little brother’s so annoying. He’s totally latent stage…

Normal: If my boyfriend ever talks to me that way again, he’s history.
IB: He sounded just like Torvald, and I will not be Nora.

Normal: Hey, that was kinda racist.
IB: Uh oh. Do we have to break out the dolls?

IB Books

It's summer vacation. I should be relaxing and not thinking at all about colleges, high school, IB, or tests. Instead, I take the SAT tomorrow. I'm also sitting at the computer answering two pages of Biology questions thanks to summer homework.

Surprisingly, though, I could have maintained a cheerful attitude through it all. Heck, nobody joins IB unless they have a larger-than-is-probably-healthy masochistic streak. I'm used to it. In fact, I'm grateful for this summer homework. Really! But what finally got to me, is this:

IB makes books.

That don't open.

Alright, to be fair, the book isn't directly out of Switzerland IB HQ. But it is "for use with the IB". And it's an okay book, too. The diagrams are easy to draw and it's paperback and easy to carry around. (See how optimistic and forgiving I can be?)

But the thing is, the book doesn't stay open long enough for you to actually learn anything. It's got a one-inch spine that's even more unbreakable than my spirit. All year, in Bio class, whenever we had to draw a diagram or answer some questions, you could look around and see kids with their elbows at awkward angles, trying desperately to hold their books open while completely destroying their ability to draw, write, or feel their fingers. I use my other Bio book, which is hardback and weighs more than all 5 members combined (though that's not saying much) to hold the book "flat". Here's my technique:

1.) Find a space big enough to accomodate two textbooks and whatever worksheet you have. (This eliminates both of my desks and the area in front of my computer)

2.) Open the little blue book (remember to stretch first) and find the page you're looking for. Beware: the index is done by chapters, so this might take a while.

3.) Lay the blue book open at the correct page. When it snaps itself shut, repeat step 2.

4.) Place the red book on top of the blue book, at least two inches down from the top. (If you need to look at something close to the top of the page... good luck.)

5.) Tilt your head parallel to the floor if you need to read anything on the bottom half of the page, as it is curved due to the book's valiant efforts to close itself. (Pretend you're reading one of those code things on the back of cereal boxes - it's fun!)

6.) Repeat steps 2-5 if you need to turn the page.

But, seriously. I know we're IB, and we're smart and everything, but that really doesn't mean we don't need books that open. You can give us summer homework, and you can give us two incomprehensible textbooks, and we'll be fine... but please don't add insult to injury by requiring us to be both engineers and contortionists in order to read the textbooks.

Oh, and you're not fooling anyone making the history textbooks look like novels. They're still not interesting, and now there aren't even any pictures.