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Hey if you guys could help me out and sign this petition really quick it would be so great and i’d be really thankful! 

There’s more info on the petition page but basically the Swedish council for higher education wants to make the grades you get from the IB Diploma Programme (which is an international education programme) be worth less. This change in conversion would devalue the grades of extremely high-achieving IB students undertaking one of the most difficult high school programmes in the country!

I’ve went through this programme and this change would mean that I would not be able to attend some of the more demanding university educations. I want to have those opportunities since I have worked hard, just as hard as the national students, to get the grade I deserve and need to be able to apply to any university course. Now they want to lower my grade to an unfair and illogical level which does not represent the hard work I have done.

Help us stop this before they jeopardize our chances of admittance to the universities our grades deserve!

THANK YOU SO MUCH IF YOU HELP ALL OF US AFFECTED!

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Me: *reblogs studyspo, gives advice on studying, posts dank memes about studying and college*

Also me: *hasn't touched a textbook in weeks*

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Do you have any tips for upcoming sophomores regarding Personal Project? Love your blog btw x

Aww you”re so sweet! Thank you!!!

Yes, I do have a ton of tips for you poor things so get comfortable and buckle up. 

1. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. I saw so many of my classmates get caught procrastinating during the presentations and almost fail. Just don’t do it. Easy peasy. Break up the work. Do a little every week. You have time to work on it, don’t waste that time. 

2. JUST DO THE PROJECT. Meet all of your requirements needed. Whine, bitch, sulk, cry if you need to. But just get it done. You know what an exemplary student should do. Listen to the annoyingly reasonable voice in your head for once and JUST DO IT (totally made a Shia LaBoeuf reference). It will get hard and stressful, but you will be fine. This is essential as some of the assessors can be quite biased and unfair. If you do all of your work, they’ll have nothing to knock points off from. PS: Don’t forget to do process journals. 

3. DO NOT TRY TO CHARM YOUR WAY THROUGH. I saw a guy not do anything for his project. His product was pathetic. His process was nonexistent. His binder was practically empty. He thought he was charming and adorable enough to pass just by putting on a great presentation at the end. When I saw his presentation, I have to admit, I almost believed his pure bullshit. He was extremely good at faking it. Regardless, he failed. Why? He didn’t anticipate having a past teacher (one who hated him) as a “judge.” 

4. ACE YOUR ESSAY. This is the first “real” view of your project your assessors will see. They will thoroughly read your essay and critically watch your presentation. By then, they have basically already made up their mind about whether to pass you or not. You have time to think this one through, edit, delete, get opinions, etc. Take advantage of that. 

5. CONSTANTLY CONTACT YOUR SUPERVISOR. Annoy him/her if you have to. But you need to show that person that you are organized, prepared, and on top of things. This will impress him/her and he/her will put in a good word for you during the assessment. 

6. DO NOT STRESS TOO MUCH ABOUT IT. Breathe in. Breathe out. The day of presentations was horrible. Absolutely everyone was nervous. Get everything done a week prior to presentations. Trust me, you don’t want anything on your mind during that week. It is scary stressful. You’ll survive. I did. 

I think that’s about it. Just don’t be stupid. I saw people who were in IB for 5 years. They failed for the most idiotic reasons. Do not lose your chance of getting that certificate that you have worked so hard for because of one project. You can do it. I believe in you. 

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Personal Project Tip #3

By now, I really hope you’ve started working on your product. If you have, I really hope you’ve taken a bunch of pictures of your process. Your presentation will mostly be about how you’ve reached your final product. Start thinking how you’re going to present it, and what you need to give the best presentation. 

For me, I made a website for my PP. Instead of making a PowerPoint or a Prezzie, my presentation consisted of me going through every page of my site and explaining how and why I decided to make my final product this way. 

You need to start thinking about how to set up your visual for your presentation. And trust me, you need one. Presentations without visuals made it seem as if the student had nothing to show. Think ahead. 

PS: A bunch of sophomores have come up to me personally to ask to see my final product (thanks whatever teacher that has been talking about me…), so here’s a link to my website. Hope this helps!

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Personal Project Tip #2

This is the time where most people start to realize that they actually have to start working. Don’t freak out. Breathe. If you haven’t gotten much written down, do a little every weekend. Use your free blocks given before winter break and those during finals week to get a large chunk done. Try writing a paragraph every day. Get all the standards done. The writing is the most exhausting. Take advantage of your time now. 

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Personal Project Tip #1

1. DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. I saw so many of my classmates get caught procrastinating during the presentations and almost fail. Your assessors will not take it lightly. Stay on top of things. Just don’t do it. Easy peasy. Break up the work. Do a little every week. You have time to work on it; don’t waste that time.

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Me: I'll just lay down for a couple of minutes and then I'll start studying

Narrator: she knew very well she was not getting up again for the next five hours

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I should do my EE

she said as she continued scrolling Tumblr and avoiding all comittments through Netflix, Youtube, and food. (via color-and-light)

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Looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you: Theory of Knowledge

Looks like they could kill you but is actually a cinnamon roll: Extended Essay

Looks like a cinnamon roll and is actually a cinnamon roll: Caffeine

Looks like they could kill you and could actually kill you: CAS

The Sinammon roll: your IB coordinator

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How To Write An Extended Essay

A) Subject Decide from which subject your EE will be on. It is most advisable that its from one of the subjects you’re studying. B) Topic Which area in the subject you’ve chosen are you interested in? E.g: History: Cold War E.g: English: Pride and Prejudice E.g: Chemistry: Acids and Bases C) Research Tres important mes aimies! It’s through research you will find out what you do like, and what you don’t like. E.g: I rather like World War Two, but I do not like the involvement of the US. This means I will not focus on US involvement in WWII. Gather as many resources which are relevant, even if it’s just a sentence. You never know when your EE focus point might change. D) Question The focus point of your essay. In most cases, it continues to change slightly, until a pinpoint focus in a topic is found and liked by both the supervisor and student. E) Planning Decide on the relevant subtopics. Are diagrams needed? Gather resources. A basic dot-pointed list of what will be included in the essay for each sub-topic F) Drafting Place butt on suitable surface and type/write. There are two ways to go about this: i) Set a goal and write an x amount of words every ‘session’. ii) Type/write until you can no more! At this point it is the introduction, background information abour the topic and the body of the essay which is being written. G) The First Complete Draft 4000+ words have been put to paper. This is an Accomplishment. Reread it and edit. Then show your supervisor, who will provide you with feedback. Do not ignore the feedback (unless your supervisor is clueless and has no hell of an idea what you’re doing- which is very bad). It is not necessary that a conclusion and an abstract are written, since they come at the end. H) Continual drafting Edit and rewrite and improve your essay as much as you can. Keep track of ALL sources used. The correct presentation of the essay (formatting, font, etc…) can be implemented at this point. I) The Final Draft A viva voce (oh, the IBO and its fancy Latin!) is conducted. This is an interview with your supervisor regarding any more changes which can be made. Your supervisor actually records points they’ve noticed about your essay and other notes about the interview. The essay is checked for plagiarism. J) SUBMISSION! Your EE component is done and dusted. The IB warlocks will give you a mark. This mark, along with your TOK essay will contribute your final IB diploma mark, with a maximum of three. Links Here are a few much more thorough guides regarding the Extended Essay (in order of usefulness) IBO official Extended Essay Guide (click on the other pages listed on the right hand side of the page to view criteria, regulations, presentation guidelines, etc…) City Honours School EE guide IB Survival EE for Dummies

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I really wish pictures were actually worth a thousand words. Then I’d just need four and I’ll be done with this shit

talking about the Extended Essay (via shit-ib-students-say)

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IB Internal Assessments, Written Tasks and other coursework

I was clearing out IB related stuff from my computer (should’ve done so ages ago lol) but I just couldn’t let go of some of the work I spent not hours and days, but weeks and months on. I decided to upload the final versions of the work on Scribd and link them here for any IB students that would like to see a pro’s work  are stuck and want some help on getting started.

My HLs:

Biology:

IA: Osmosis (The effect of increasing sucrose concentration on the mass of potato chips)

IA: Enzymes and Inhibition (The effect of copper (II) sulphate on the activity of catalase.)

Chemistry:

IA: Energetics (Calculating the enthalpy of combustion for the first five alcohols.)

IA: Kinetics (To determine whether H+ ions in HCl act as a catalyst in the reaction between hydrochloric acid and sodium thiosulfate.)

English A: Language and Literature

WT 1: Language and Culture (A blog post discussing Palestinian identity, resistance and other themes that was made in response to an “Israeli hummus” ad.)

WT 2: How and why is a social group presented in a particular way? (An essay on the piece of crap that is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)

WT 1: Language and Mass Communication (not sent, it’s a talk show script discussing feminism, first ever work in IB so wasn’t my best)

Further Oral Activity (Lang and Culture)  (Prezi about tobacco advertising past and present. My partner and I did most of the work verbally so it may not be very helpful but this was fun)

Further Oral Activity (Lang and Media) (Hated doing this so so much. The god-awful Madeleine McCann case that our school in Oman made us analyze for no reason)

Individual oral was on Carol Ann Duffy's Havisham but I don’t have a copy of that.

My SLs

Economics:

Microeconomics commentary (market failure in relation to cigarette consumption, specifically negative externalities of consumption and whether tobacco tax works as a possible solution)

Macroeconomics commentary (discusses the causes and some solutions to recent unemployment in Spain)

International economics commentary (tariffs and protectionism, evaluation, other solutions, etc)

Français B: 

Travail écrit (un appel basé sur des articles est des chansons concernant la thème de violence aux femmes et la resistance feministe)

Orale individuel sur les adverse effets de tabagisme et orale interactif sur l'identité Omanaise mais ceux-ci ne sont pas disponibles

Mathematics:

Exploration (using differential calculus to model the spread of epidemics, FUN)

Core

Extended Essay in Biology (Research Question: To what extent is Miswak more effective than toothpaste in reducing certain colonies of oral bacteria, as observed by inoculation of pre and post usage oral swabs? ~ Spent over a 100 solid hours on this excruciating task. 2 marks off an A but it was still worth it.) 

Theory of Knowledge

Essay (response to prescribed title no. 5 in May 2014 examinations:“The historian’s task is to understand the past; the human scientist, by contrast, is looking to change the future.” To what extent is this true in these areas of knowledge.)

Presentation (Main knowledge issue: To what extent do prejudice and belief play into people’s resistance of new scientific knowledge?~ got 20/20 with my brilliant partner ildoctora like hell yeah but most of the work was done verbally so idk if this is any help. Pro tip tho: don’t write too much on presentations)

CAS evaluations

Model United Nations (creativity)

Sailing (action)

Tutoring (mostly service)

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Please note:

None of this work is perfect. I got 6s and 7s in most of these but undoubtedly there are hundreds of other approaches you could take (and should take).

This is intended to be used as a guide or as a way to help you plan your work. If you take out chunks of text or ideas directly it would be considered plagiarism (everyone knows this but just putting it out here)

This was written/presented in line with the specific requirements of the syllabi up to 2014 examinations. The IA criteria change often, make sure you use the subject guide for the examinations in your year. (Subject guide is your best friend tbh. It’s a better aid than myself, other IB students and even your teachers.)

You can send me a message if you have any queries regarding this or other IB stuff and I’d be happy to help if I can.

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IB PEOPLE -- EE CHECKLIST

(my school gives out an ee checklist right before the deadline, so i figured i might as well share with the despairing ib and ee tags…)

1. TITLE PAGE: - title of the essay - subject in which the essay is registered - word count - name of the author - candidate number of the author - title page has no number

2. ABSTRACT - placed immediately after title page - page has no number - research question is clearly stated - research question is highlighted (underlined, italicised, bolded, etc) - clear explanation of how research was undertaken - conclusion is clearly stated - abstract does not exceed 300 words

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS - neatly laid out - page numbers correspond with headings - first item is introduction - does not include title page, abstract, and table of contents

4. INTRODUCTION - research question is clearly stated - research question is highlighted (underlined, italicised, bolded, etc) - research question is set into context - significance of the topic is clearly explained

5. CONCLUSION - conclusion is clearly separated from body of the essay - conclusion is clearly labelled  - conclusion is clearly stated - conclusion is relevant to the research question - conclusion is consistent with evidence in the body of the essay

6. APPENDICES (if applicable) - all appendices are neatly presented - all appendices are clearly labelled - appendices are clearly referenced in the body of the essay

7. BIBLIOGRAPHY - consistently follows one citation style (eg. MLA) - contains only sources referred to in the essay - arranged alphabetically - date of access and URLs are clearly indicated for all web sources

8. OTHER - all sources used (both quoted and paraphrased) are clearly documented through footnotes or in brackets - the essay does not exceed 4000 words

basically if you can check all of these off you should at least have all the formalities down for a good extended essay :)

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hey!! as a high school senior in the middle of college apps, i figured i could give some tips on the process for my fellow classmates & any underclassmen trying to start early (pro tip: start as early as you can!) so yeah, here are my tips for teacher recs, the first post in my college apps guide series!

choosing your teachers:

choosing who should write your recommendation can be a stressful process, but it’s the first step! whoever you choose depends on a lot of factors, including: how well they know you personally, how well they know you academically, and how well they know what you’ve done & what you do. also, oftentimes colleges require teachers of specific subjects depending on your major, so keep that in mind too. it can be very beneficial to have a teacher who teaches in the field of your chosen major so they can give a perspective on your academic success in that subject.

generally colleges take two recommendations, so it’s important to make sure that your rec letters are a good blend of perspectives and that they are not going to be the same letter. two similar recs are not effective, and you may as well send in one. so when choosing your teachers, make sure that they can bring varying points of view to your letter of rec.

a teacher may know you well academically and personally, or know what you’ve done and who you are, so if possible, you want to get all three perspectives within your two recs, and it’s ok if one of them is repeated. however, the one thing you don’t want is a teacher whose class you didn’t do to great in, even if they know you well. i would personally say to completely rule out that kind of teacher, but if they know you 100% and have seen you grow and change, then i suppose that rec may be viable- but it’s still not the best idea.

requesting your recs:

this is a pretty formal process, so you don’t want to mess up too terribly. you’re essentially asking your teachers to tell a college why it should accept you, so you want to approach them very tactically.

unless you’re asking them over the summer, approach them in person. this establishes that you care enough about their rec that you can meet with them & reminds them of who you actually are so you’re more than just a name asking for a recommendation.

be nice & throw in the compliments (but not too many). you want to sound as genuine as possible, so lay it thick but not too thick. tell them you loved their class & why you loved their class.

and then mention that you’re applying to colleges this fall and would be honored if they could write a rec for you.

those are the basics. a lot of people also give gifts to their teachers, either when asking for a rec or sometimes after. this isn’t absolutely necessary, but it’s a nice gesture and makes them happy!

what to provide:

even if a teacher knows you well, it makes things a lot easier for the both of you if you put a majority of your info on paper. many teachers or schools provide forms for you to fill out, but if they don’t, here’s what you could give them:

a resume, with enough descriptions of positions you’ve held & things you’ve done for them to get the whole picture

a brag sheet, covering your activities, grades, plans for the future, obstacles you’ve overcome, what you’d like them to highlight, etc… basically put everything you want them to know about you.

whatever you provide them with, make sure it also has: some of your grades or gpa on it, the colleges you’re applying to, and your intended major (if you’re undecided then just let them know you’re undecided)

time!! time is so important. teachers have lives and other things to do, and you’re asking a huge favor when requesting a recommendation, so please keep time in mind, especially if you’re applying early somewhere! they should at least have 2-3 weeks to write your rec (at least!)

also remember an envelope with postage stamp and all that jazz if they’re mailing the rec letter in. and if you’re requesting a rec online, make sure you actually send in that request. even if you’ve asked them for a rec, that request is your responsibility.

other things to do:

check in with your teachers some time after you’ve asked them for a rec, especially if you’ve electronically requested one, to make sure everything’s reached them.

stay friendly with them, try to smile if you see them in the halls, just be a nice person in general. once again, they’re telling a college why it should take you. you want to make a continuously good impression!

++ a lot of these tips apply for counselor recs too! your counselor pretty much knows they’re writing a rec for you, but you definitely want to make that request (online or in person if that’s how it’s done) and check up with them + make sure you’re nice to them and they know you. they should be able to recognize your face & know some of what you’ve done around the school.

more masterposts!!

5 top math tips

stem studying

study methods

precalculus

algebra (I + II)

geometry

(ap) chemistry

ap world history

studyblr-ing

the everything book

the pomodoro method

how to use flashcards

how to use sticky notes

welcome to high school

tiny study spaces

what’s in a pencil case

i think there’s an important process to know for teacher recs & i hope i covered everything in enough detail! recs are a very important part of your application, so please don’t push them to the side! anyway, i hope this helps!! keep shining like the star you are and remember to be awesome today!!

- Aza

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