The exams are over...So the gap year begins...What will come of the future?
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
The International Baccalaureate has been quite the experience and I believe experiences can encompass both positive and negative things.
On the positive side of the IB, I have been forced to be confident in my work. Although before I went to sixth form, I was quite confident in my writing style, it wasn't until I did the IB when I realised that I had to really believe in my ideas and sell my ideas to my teachers. This really manifested itself in the English oral exam, where I had to give a 10 minute long academic speech about two bodies of work (a literary and a non-literary). Here I had to pick my own bodies of work and construct my own line of inquiry. Believe it or not, I found this to be a real challenge but it made me a better person in the end because I had to believe in what I said in order to create a strong argument and get a good grade for it. I also had to believe in my work when it came to all the essays that I had to write for the IB. There were plenty of occasions for my dance extended essay where I was questioned by my supervisor on the suitability of some of the topics I was discussing in my essay and although I wasn't always successful, I did attempt to argue my point and I became a stronger person for it. I wouldn't say that I'm still the best at dealing with confrontation now but I'm certainly a lot better than I used to be because of all the arguments I had to put forward to my teachers during the IB.
Another positive of the IB is that the course really made me become more organised as a person. I think everyone in my family would say that I am a naturally organised person - I've always finished my homework on time in secondary school, I never got a detention, and I always completed assignments to the best of my ability. However, there were many occasions when I was writing my IAs (my essays for each subject) where I thought no matter how much I attempted to plan my time out so that there was some space to write everything, logistically I would not be able to complete everything. I spent the summer last year writing my Nature of Science IA because I wanted to catch that first deadline in October and it was a real challenge. However, in the end, I did complete all my coursework and it was because I did organise my time effectively. And I must stress that the line between organised and unorganised is very thin for the IB - one miscalculation of time either way would have had me asking for extensions on those deadlines. Some of my old classmates are even repeating the year because they could not complete all that work in such a short space of time. Nevertheless I got through it because I am a very hard-working person and I did try my very best to plan everything and in the end, it paid dividends. Thank God!
However, on many other levels, I am also disappointed that I chose to do the IB. I am not ashamed to admit that I am a massive crier. When I was younger and I had a falling out with my friends or I failed at something, I would always cry to my parents. I guess I'm just naturally a very emotional and sensitive person. 😂💜 But even my sister said to my friend recently, that she had never seen me cry as much as I did this past year especially. Because everything was such a challenge. I enjoyed my first year of sixth form because it was all about learning the content and enjoying the process of education. But year 13 was on a whole other level. I had my IAs to complete, my extended essay, my CAS, my TOK essay, and my TOK exhibition to complete pretty much in that year. And in-between that I had my January mock exams to revise for and my English and Japanese oral exams to complete. It felt like one thing after the other, with little time to relax and breathe. Plus it was just critique, critique, critique from the teachers with very few compliments when it came to all the essays that we had to write. Despite my sixth form also being small, I didn't feel like I had as much 1-1 support from some of the teachers with my work, like the school had initially promised me. I felt like the teachers came up with the excuse that everything we did had to be done independently because we were adults and needed to take responsibility for our own work. I felt the teachers were abandoning their roles as teachers and yet expected us to produce high quality, academically honest, and insightful essays at the same time. So at times I felt like I was very alone fighting what seemed like a losing battle.
What tipped me over the edge was my maths IA. I had put in so much work to complete this IA before December last year. I wrote nearly 15 whole pages for a subject that I had zero interest in 🤣🤣. When I handed in my first draft my teacher flagged up some issues but said she would talk to me about them after the January mock exams and told me not to worry until then. I wish I had worried about it sooner because my maths teacher ended up telling me towards the end of March, a week before the IA was supposed to be handed in, that I had to change this whole set of data to make my IA stronger. She basically told me to change nominal GDP to GDP per capita. She said it would make the biggest difference in the world but I ended up just wasting time as my graphs didn't produce better results. I attended the two intervention sessions that she had allocated for those of us who were also behind on their IA - it turns out that I was not the only one there! She created those intervention sessions so that she could help us. Yet she turned up late for the sessions and kept walking in and out of the classroom trying to teach other classes at the same time. When my dad tried to help me and called the teacher to try and resolve the situation, my teacher lightly suggested to me that it was my maths IA and I should be working on it by myself. I get that my maths teacher was the head of nearly everything and had entire departments to run, which was why she barely had the time to focus on us, but I never felt more trapped in my life.
Not to mention the awful experiences I had with my dance course. But I don't think there's much use in speaking about it now. There are plenty of my blog posts that you can read from that time that explain the lack of practical work I was allocated during my time with IB dance. 😂😂
Eventually I did ask my mum if I could get some help with dealing with this busy time period. Not because I had a mental issue but because I just wanted to take care of myself during that time of stress and get some helpful tips on how to get through the exams. My mum understood and asked one of our long-time family friends and ex-child minder, who had a degree is psychology, if she would be willing to speak to me and she was extremely understanding. I never felt intimidated when I spoke to her, I was quite comfortable speaking to someone who would not be effected by what I said and yet could still unpack everything I had to say at the same time. After the first session, I felt much lighter and after the second, I felt even lighter 😊. And I truly think that's what helped me get through the final stages of school and I am very thankful for that. 💜🙏🙏
Then came the final exams. Yes I was nervous. Especially for history as there was a lot of content to remember and it was a subject that I really cared about doing well in. However, I was able to use the techniques I had learnt about dealing with stress and I was able to get myself through all those history essay questions. By far the most difficult exam was maths but that was to be expected. We had only just finished learning the content not long before the final exams began so we couldn't revise everything properly in the end. We ended up doing weekend, last-minute revision sessions to help us with the exams but even then the papers were difficult and I felt as though I had missed out quite a few questions. 🤦♀️ However, with all the issues that I had with my maths IA, I wasn't entirely surprised that the exam went the way that it did. But, the other exams were okay. I got through science and Japanese okay. I felt like English could have gone better because my first essay went really well and my second essay I struggled to write. I don't know why. I think everyone found the second text that we had to analyse was pretty dry and not full of amazing techniques to draw out. But that's the way that it is. In life you have good days and you have bad days and that concept applies to exams too. I just have to remind myself that the exam results are not a measure of how good I am at something. As long as I pass the course, that's all that matters.
Although the IB was very challenging, I can say that I met some good friends along the way. When I first arrived at sixth form, I didn't think that most of my friends would be international students but that ended up being the case. I met people from Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and the Philippines. All of which I had mentioned on my blog and all of which are amazing people who will definitely be my friends for life. Just yesterday, we had a final get together as a group before everyone left to go back home to their countries. We went to the fair and ate pizzas. It was a lot of fun. My friends even got us flowers and wrote a poem for me and my family, thanking us for being so warm and welcoming. Even my mum cried, it was quite emotional!
Now it is time I embark on my gap year. Everyone in my family keeps on asking me what it is I'm going to do during this year. I feel stupid at times for not knowing. I just say I'm going to do what I want to do and then people ask what it is I want to do and I just don't know. With the greatest respect, I sometimes wish people just left me alone and didn't try to pry or dictate my future plans. I feel that I've been through enough control these past couple of years. I feel its time I taste a bit of freedom. I know people see the potential and are just excited but it still doesn't give them the right to tell me what to do, especially since I wouldn't ever try to plan their future either because I believe it is a personal journey for each individual. I guess my aim is to truly want to do whatever it is that I end up doing. I have already applied for a few jobs and signed up for my provisional driving licence which is a good start. But what will ultimately be right for me will not miss me so if I keep moving in the right direction, I will eventually find what it is made for me. That's what gap years are supposed to be all about. Exploration away from the education system and finding out who you really are.
How did you find your time at sixth form? What are your plans for the future? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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