5 replies to this topic

[heme2kids]

New to the forum, i was just wandering how you guys keep enough motivation to get those 6/7 that i see under everyones names.
Personally i think im a horrible IB student and believe its my lack of motivation. sofar i have gotten a 6 in SL french (first mock exams) but i know that if i get like a 4 in another subject i will lose my steam and so get worse bad grades, which again will make me lose my motivation.
Any suggestions?

[Award Winning Boss]

if you don't do well then the IB monster will eat your bed

[kiwi.at.heart]

Honestly, one of my motivations for grades throughout IB was competing grade wise with my friend. We were always pretty similar grade, and by chance we chose the same subjects, so while we would help each other constantly with schoolwork, we would alwasy try to outdo each other and in the end it pushed both of us up to better grades. Towards the end, the only subject I could top in was chemistry and maths, but even then i had the motivation to try chase her grades, and she had the motivation to try to keep on top of me and now we will graduate with some of the best grades in our school, for her the best.

I was what you would call not the most dedicated IB student, but I love being competitive, and found what worked.

[Desy Glau]

always aim to achieve high grades, aim to get into prestigious universities...

[Capt’n Marth]

I'm here to save the day. I'm chief motivator.

There are so many ways to get motivated in this program. Some of them are mentioned above.

But it really all depends what your goals are, and how important they are to you. I believe that setting goals is the driving force for you to work. Everything you do, including how hard you work, are all part of goal setting and your standards. For example, taking the posts from the above, if you don't want the IB monster to eat your bed, (because you believe in IB monsters, and assuming that you love your bed) you'd work harder. If it's the goal to surpass a (preferably competitive) friend, you'd work harder. If getting into a specific university is important to you, you'd work towards their conditions of acceptance.

Stealing this from OJ (or Emily?), (I think) anything worth doing is worth well. Why are you even in this program? Because getting a quality education is important to you! If not, your parents might've forced you into it, so do it for your parents!

Anyway, don't you want to do well?

Don't worry, a 6/7 is a fantastic grade! But my mentality towards bad grades is the complete opposite of yours. If I start getting bad grades, I begin to have the fear of not doing well (or failing!) and that is enough to pick up my marks. I was getting bare 50s in my french mocks, bare 60s in my math mocks. I don't know about french, but I worked my butt off to get that 7 in math immediately after, because if there's one thing I was going to get a 7 in, it had to be math, AT LEAST.

Know where your strengths and weaknesses are. Try to set goals for them too. Eventually, you'll find the motivation to start working towards them for some kind of satisfaction that you'll get. (reward yourself!) So what I'm suggesting is find something that works for you.

In the end, just try your best! As long as you do that (paraphrasing from Keel!) you have achieved the highest possible mark. I really don't think anyone in IB is a total dumbass, and although everyone is not as academically inclined as the model student, they should be capable of 5/6 if they really work hard for it.

PS: The next time you make a thread, please don't capitalize every single letter -__-

[Lindsay]

That's right! Setting goals is definitely a good way to motivate yourself.

Some people find that visualising the outcome of their success helps motivate themselves to strive and work harder to achieve that goal! Others find a competative edge is what really keeps them going, really wanting to come out on top of everyone.

Either way, planning is a great step for doing well. Be willing to fail first if you want to succeed. If you get a bad mark, don't lose steam! Learn from it and it definitely helps the next time you bump into a similar question. Self study so that you will fail when you still have the chance to correct yourself and do so - this way, you can succeed when the real deal occurs.

Good luck! Self motivation is important!