Struggling with Ib

[m.k.2015]

Hello everyone,

So I started my first year of IB in September and I am really struggling with it .. So I was wondering if anyone struggled with IB at the start? what did you do to get yourself together?

[Guest Marioti]

At the beginning it might be hard because maybe you're just now grasping the idea of IB... For me that was it. The idea that everything I learned in 1st year I had to know in 2nd year.

Honestly if I could back in time my advice for myself would be:

- Study. You will have free time later but study.

- Get sleep. although studying is important in 1st year I would put both studying and sleeping off sometimes to stay up late

Also complain about IB haha complaining is fine and fun and releases stress

Anyways, good luck on your 1st year!

[by.andrew]

I think my school prepares students very well for the actual IB program. Firstly, we only 100 students out of a pool of 1000 students, so all of us are very qualified to do/continue the program.

I think IB is difficult because of the countless IAs that you have to juggle, along with CAS and regular tests that are used to predict your marks. My school spaces out the IAs very well (finished a lot of these IAs in grade 11) so our senior schedule isn't as bad. Everyone has difficulties in managing time, but the earlier you can practice self-regulation and independence, you'll be well prepared for university!

[sameera95]

The biggest struggle for me was getting my head around the IB. It was a HUGE jump from GCSEs (secondary school), so it came as a kind of shock. Don't worry, you'll be up and running soon, some people may just take longer than others to get used to the IB's rigorous program

[yii yann]

Hello everyone,

So I started my first year of IB in September and I am really struggling with it .. So I was wondering if anyone struggled with IB at the start? what did you do to get yourself together?

The best part about this is that you recognize that you are struggling.

Lots of students don't get around to this realization (or choose to ignore it) till about 3 months before the exams, and by then a high score is impossible due to the bad IAs, terrible EEs and rather blasphemous ToK work.

Many of us had trouble with IB at the start - its not the easiest program to excel in constantly.

It's important to make a conscious decision to do well in the IB. As in, tell yourself "okay I am going to achieve 45 points".

Then, tell yourself why. Why do you want to get a good score? Is it to show off to your friends? To get into a good university? Mine was that I wanted to walk between the dreaming spires of Oxford. To feel the place in slightly chilly air, at night, strolling through what is one of the prettiest places ever. Yes, of course to a Singaporean kid like me, all I knew about Oxford was from TV, youtube and some online forums. I'd never experienced anything even close to it, but it's the inspiration I drew from it that counts.

Once you've got that core inside you, every time you feel like faltering in your IB journey, refer back to it. It helps if you've got a few songs that you associate with that feeling. Jamiroquai's "High Times" does it for me

Now onto the gritty bits. I will answer this with Math HL and econs.

1) Hopefully, your holidays are coming up. This is your chance. For each of your subject, catch up on work you're behind on. You haven't said what subjects you're doing, so I'll use Math HL as an example. Let's say you've done the first 7 chapters so far, and you've got about negative six percentage knowledge in them. Now's the time to start from chapter 1 example 1.1. Work through each and every example, and then each and every practice question. They serve three purposes: to "Internalize" basic processes in that topic, to make you expand your knowledge by forcing you to think with slightly interesting questions, and to draw links to other topics. Do this for every chapter you're behind on.

The process will be slightly different for each subject - econs, for example, make notes. Draw up lists. etc.

Once you are up to date (and this will take up most of your holidays), you can now have a fresh start. No more procrastination, handing in terrible work, falling asleep in class, etc.

Here's what you do with your fresh start.

2) Stay awake in class. Listen to your teacher. He or she may be the most boring person in the world, but they are still a teacher. There will be some gold nuggets in that mountain of crap. This is assuming that your teacher is terrible. If you have even a halfway decent teacher, hang on to their words like your life depends on it. There will be some very useful things they will have to say, and this will reduce your own workload by at least 50%.

3) Go home and review what you learned in class. Do this everyday after school. Did you learn about elasticities in econs today? Good. Go home and read the chapter again (you just learned it so re-reading will be super quick). Do some of the practice questions in the book. I don't mean write full-blown essays, but just jot down the important points of your answer. These questions often make you actually think about the content which you have learned, which is always a good thing. For math, practice the questions in that topic or sub topic. Do the harder ones and really stretch yourself. Its okay to be terrible at it - put some effort, and if you still really can't get it, go to your teacher the next day. Take the effort to google the content a bit. Lots of times it can be very interesting stuff - Mandelbrot fractals for example, when studying calculus/complex numbers.

This really helps to understand the content. You will find that understanding something is about ten times more valuable than just memorising it.

4) Review at the end of the week, and again at the end of the month. I know this seems like overkill, but this is just to make sure you've constantly got it in your mind. This way, you'll get more and more used to it, so that by the end of a few months, you'll be shocked at the amount of stuff you can talk about with authority and style. Honestly. Foreign concepts like Theory of Firm, with its odd graphs and downright strange curves, start to make sense when you constantly try to compare that to real life scenarios, and see how they fit. At the end of each week and month, just read through your stuff again, and attempt exam questions. That's the real test of any IB subject - the exam questions. Especially the trickier math stuff - they really make you think.

I don't mean spend all your weekends burning through exercises and exam papers and books. Just do a few questions, keep yourself "warmed up" to the content, if you know what I mean.

Constantly do this, and when you do eventually get to the exam period, you'll find revision to be a breeze - after all, you've been doing it for a year and a half already!

5) IAs are a gift - get 25/20. Yes, get beyond full marks. IAs are IB's consolation prize to students. Sympathy marks. However, do not take them lightly. They can make or break your 7. Get every possible mark in your IA to reduce the pressure on yourself for exams. Start your IAs the day you receive them.

With each IA, do the content first. Then, agonize over the details. Make sure everything is perfect. Get all the presentation marks. You should be shot if you don't get them. Grab a copy of the marking scheme (this goes for every bit of work done in the IB), and make sure you hit each and every point. Bang bang bang. They should be like a red flag to a bull (your teacher). Wave each mark/point in front of their face. There's loads of help here on IBS, for all of your IAs. Ask questions here, contribute loads yourself, perhaps even sign up for a VIP membership (the files section is pretty good). Just ensure that your IA is as perfect as you can make it.

6) Get your EE and ToK done ASAP. Once again, you should get all three points here. ToK is the smaller of the two tasks. Get it out of the way as soon as you can. Work hard at both the presentation and the essay. The presentation is especially easy to score well in if you can use the ToK terminology (however contrived it may be) well.

EE is a different animal altogether, but choose the right subject/topic and it can be a dream come true. From what my friends have said, economics is the best subject to do an EE in, followed by the sciences. Last in the list are the Arts subjects. Do whichever you want, but keep in mind the end goal.

There's loads of advice here on EE and ToK, so I will not go further.

7) T-minus 3 months. Google and find every exam paper for your subject. Ask your teachers if you need. Get it all the way to the session just before yours. Get 10 years worth of papers if you can, but know which ones are your syllabus.

You should have been revising using the day/week/month technique, so your subject content should be second nature to you. Really internalized. Spend a week perhaps really hammering home everything. You are ready. More ready than you've ever been in the past one and a half years. Take a math HL paper. Look at the annoying cover sheet and think to yourself, You don't scare me, IB. Now, do the paper.

39/120?

Of course you failed. IB papers are notoriously weird/eccentric/drunk.

This is when you begin the process of checking each question. Where did you go wrong? Why did you not get this or that. How could you fail so terribly?

The answer is that the topics are all linked. Every question is on like three topics, minimum. There's a catch though - lots of questions repeat.

Do the same paper, understanding the methods used to solve. Often, you'd have never done questions on that topic in this particular way. Add it to your vocabulary in that topic. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Do another paper. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

By the end of it all, you should be ready to do any question, any paper, any subject. Under a time limit. Possibly with your hands tied behind your back, and blindfolded. You are Tony Montana, your pen is your little friend, and the paper is going to say hello to it (I am sorry if you do not get this reference).

8) Exam technique. You shouldn't have to think about supplies. Have pens, pencils, erasers, rulers, GDC, etc all ready. No brainpower should be wasted on trying to find a ****ing sharpener 2 minutes before the exam.

Spend reading time, well, reading. Do not let your mind dawdle, as is likely to happen when you tell it to focus.

Grab all the low hanging fruit. Get all the easy marks. About 60% of the Math HL papers should be familiar questions - routine hand movements that you barely even think about anymore. Get all these marks. Do not lose out on even one. Work quickly, but always check your work, after each line. Better to spend a few extra minutes being careful than to lose lots of marks owing to a stupid mistake. Return back to the hard questions, and really think through them. Remember, most of the time a very hard question is simply hard because the trick is hard to spot. But there is a trick. Think of all your basic math rules. Really basic, TOA CAH SOH stuff, for example.

If you'd followed my method of revising and practice, you'll have no trouble whatsoever scoring at least 100/120 for your math papers.

For econs, lists. Really. Spit the lists back at the examiners, and give them a healthy dose of evaluation. Really dig into the evaluation, give some original ideas, and use examples.

Follow the methods outlined above, and you will get your grades, I guarantee you.

9) Crap your pants waiting for your result.

10) Change pants, and collect result.

11) Go have a beer and celebrate. You have completed the IB.

On the 8th of December 2013, I landed in London. At 4:15 PM, from Paddington station, I took a train to Oxford. By the time I reached, it was getting dark. At about 6 PM, I got out of the cab near a Sainsbury's. Trolley-bag a-rolling (I'm cool), with Jamiroquai playing on my earphones, I walked in a quaint little town, with the most amazing buildings. Alone, in a new country, with the chilly wind blowing, christmas lights glowing, I found the college I applied to. That walk was everything I'd imagined Oxford to be, and more than I could have ever imagined. For a person who'd grown up in tall narrow buildings, in a sterilized environment, this was beyond words.

You will have to put in tons of hard work. There will be doubt, questions, fun photos on facebook that you could've been in, etc. If you have a goal though, and you really believe its worth it, take it from me, stick to it. You will thank yourself a million times over.

I hope I've been of help to you, and perhaps just a little bit of inspiration

Edited February 1, 2014 by yii yann

[m.k.2015]

Man I swear you could never imagine how helpful this was .. I could not thank you enough .. thank you for putting the time and effort to write this because you sir have just changed my life

My subjects actually are Math Hl, Physics HL, Chem Hl, English B Hl .. Arabic SL and business SL

I know the mixture is quite hard and many would call me crazy, but I have already asked help on whether I should drop a subject

Btw, Oxford has been my dream college ever since I was six years old

Thank you man

[heyerdahl.luisa]

Since this thread seems to be really sensible I think I will ask for advice here I'm currently taking HL English, History and Chemistry and SL Math, Czech and Biology. I struggle a lot with Chemistry to that point that I actually think it would be wiser to drop it. We are the first class ever to take IB in our school and the teachers are rather unprepared (going to preparatory courses now, during the first year and not before etc.) and it will be better not to speak about our coordinator. I still have the chance to do normal Czech exams (from Czech, Math, English, Biology, Chemistry) and three certificates (Eng, History and Bio) in which I can achieve better marks but I'm afraid it will look badly on my uni application. Any words of advice?

[yii yann]

Man I swear you could never imagine how helpful this was .. I could not thank you enough .. thank you for putting the time and effort to write this because you sir have just changed my life

My subjects actually are Math Hl, Physics HL, Chem Hl, English B Hl .. Arabic SL and business SL

I know the mixture is quite hard and many would call me crazy, but I have already asked help on whether I should drop a subject

Btw, Oxford has been my dream college ever since I was six years old

Thank you man

You're very welcome Sometimes people just need to hear that it's do-able, that its still within their sights, you know?

You can pay forward by contributing on this site as you progress through the IB, as well as gaining from it! Helped me a lot for sure.

[yii yann]

Since this thread seems to be really sensible I think I will ask for advice here I'm currently taking HL English, History and Chemistry and SL Math, Czech and Biology. I struggle a lot with Chemistry to that point that I actually think it would be wiser to drop it. We are the first class ever to take IB in our school and the teachers are rather unprepared (going to preparatory courses now, during the first year and not before etc.) and it will be better not to speak about our coordinator. I still have the chance to do normal Czech exams (from Czech, Math, English, Biology, Chemistry) and three certificates (Eng, History and Bio) in which I can achieve better marks but I'm afraid it will look badly on my uni application. Any words of advice?

Hi there,

I replied your PM on the same topic

[-._._.-]

Hello everyone,

So I started my first year of IB in September and I am really struggling with it .. So I was wondering if anyone struggled with IB at the start? what did you do to get yourself together?

The best part about this is that you recognize that you are struggling.

Lots of students don't get around to this realization (or choose to ignore it) till about 3 months before the exams, and by then a high score is impossible due to the bad IAs, terrible EEs and rather blasphemous ToK work.

Many of us had trouble with IB at the start - its not the easiest program to excel in constantly.

It's important to make a conscious decision to do well in the IB. As in, tell yourself "okay I am going to achieve 45 points".

Then, tell yourself why. Why do you want to get a good score? Is it to show off to your friends? To get into a good university? Mine was that I wanted to walk between the dreaming spires of Oxford. To feel the place in slightly chilly air, at night, strolling through what is one of the prettiest places ever. Yes, of course to a Singaporean kid like me, all I knew about Oxford was from TV, youtube and some online forums. I'd never experienced anything even close to it, but it's the inspiration I drew from it that counts.

Once you've got that core inside you, every time you feel like faltering in your IB journey, refer back to it. It helps if you've got a few songs that you associate with that feeling. Jamiroquai's "High Times" does it for me

Now onto the gritty bits. I will answer this with Math HL and econs.

1) Hopefully, your holidays are coming up. This is your chance. For each of your subject, catch up on work you're behind on. You haven't said what subjects you're doing, so I'll use Math HL as an example. Let's say you've done the first 7 chapters so far, and you've got about negative six percentage knowledge in them. Now's the time to start from chapter 1 example 1.1. Work through each and every example, and then each and every practice question. They serve three purposes: to "Internalize" basic processes in that topic, to make you expand your knowledge by forcing you to think with slightly interesting questions, and to draw links to other topics. Do this for every chapter you're behind on.

The process will be slightly different for each subject - econs, for example, make notes. Draw up lists. etc.

Once you are up to date (and this will take up most of your holidays), you can now have a fresh start. No more procrastination, handing in terrible work, falling asleep in class, etc.

Here's what you do with your fresh start.

2) Stay awake in class. Listen to your teacher. He or she may be the most boring person in the world, but they are still a teacher. There will be some gold nuggets in that mountain of crap. This is assuming that your teacher is terrible. If you have even a halfway decent teacher, hang on to their words like your life depends on it. There will be some very useful things they will have to say, and this will reduce your own workload by at least 50%.

3) Go home and review what you learned in class. Do this everyday after school. Did you learn about elasticities in econs today? Good. Go home and read the chapter again (you just learned it so re-reading will be super quick). Do some of the practice questions in the book. I don't mean write full-blown essays, but just jot down the important points of your answer. These questions often make you actually think about the content which you have learned, which is always a good thing. For math, practice the questions in that topic or sub topic. Do the harder ones and really stretch yourself. Its okay to be terrible at it - put some effort, and if you still really can't get it, go to your teacher the next day. Take the effort to google the content a bit. Lots of times it can be very interesting stuff - Mandelbrot fractals for example, when studying calculus/complex numbers.

This really helps to understand the content. You will find that understanding something is about ten times more valuable than just memorising it.

4) Review at the end of the week, and again at the end of the month. I know this seems like overkill, but this is just to make sure you've constantly got it in your mind. This way, you'll get more and more used to it, so that by the end of a few months, you'll be shocked at the amount of stuff you can talk about with authority and style. Honestly. Foreign concepts like Theory of Firm, with its odd graphs and downright strange curves, start to make sense when you constantly try to compare that to real life scenarios, and see how they fit. At the end of each week and month, just read through your stuff again, and attempt exam questions. That's the real test of any IB subject - the exam questions. Especially the trickier math stuff - they really make you think.

I don't mean spend all your weekends burning through exercises and exam papers and books. Just do a few questions, keep yourself "warmed up" to the content, if you know what I mean.

Constantly do this, and when you do eventually get to the exam period, you'll find revision to be a breeze - after all, you've been doing it for a year and a half already!

5) IAs are a gift - get 25/20. Yes, get beyond full marks. IAs are IB's consolation prize to students. Sympathy marks. However, do not take them lightly. They can make or break your 7. Get every possible mark in your IA to reduce the pressure on yourself for exams. Start your IAs the day you receive them.

With each IA, do the content first. Then, agonize over the details. Make sure everything is perfect. Get all the presentation marks. You should be shot if you don't get them. Grab a copy of the marking scheme (this goes for every bit of work done in the IB), and make sure you hit each and every point. Bang bang bang. They should be like a red flag to a bull (your teacher). Wave each mark/point in front of their face. There's loads of help here on IBS, for all of your IAs. Ask questions here, contribute loads yourself, perhaps even sign up for a VIP membership (the files section is pretty good). Just ensure that your IA is as perfect as you can make it.

6) Get your EE and ToK done ASAP. Once again, you should get all three points here. ToK is the smaller of the two tasks. Get it out of the way as soon as you can. Work hard at both the presentation and the essay. The presentation is especially easy to score well in if you can use the ToK terminology (however contrived it may be) well.

EE is a different animal altogether, but choose the right subject/topic and it can be a dream come true. From what my friends have said, economics is the best subject to do an EE in, followed by the sciences. Last in the list are the Arts subjects. Do whichever you want, but keep in mind the end goal.

There's loads of advice here on EE and ToK, so I will not go further.

7) T-minus 3 months. Google and find every exam paper for your subject. Ask your teachers if you need. Get it all the way to the session just before yours. Get 10 years worth of papers if you can, but know which ones are your syllabus.

You should have been revising using the day/week/month technique, so your subject content should be second nature to you. Really internalized. Spend a week perhaps really hammering home everything. You are ready. More ready than you've ever been in the past one and a half years. Take a math HL paper. Look at the annoying cover sheet and think to yourself, You don't scare me, IB. Now, do the paper.

39/120?

Of course you failed. IB papers are notoriously weird/eccentric/drunk.

This is when you begin the process of checking each question. Where did you go wrong? Why did you not get this or that. How could you fail so terribly?

The answer is that the topics are all linked. Every question is on like three topics, minimum. There's a catch though - lots of questions repeat.

Do the same paper, understanding the methods used to solve. Often, you'd have never done questions on that topic in this particular way. Add it to your vocabulary in that topic. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Do another paper. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

By the end of it all, you should be ready to do any question, any paper, any subject. Under a time limit. Possibly with your hands tied behind your back, and blindfolded. You are Tony Montana, your pen is your little friend, and the paper is going to say hello to it (I am sorry if you do not get this reference).

8) Exam technique. You shouldn't have to think about supplies. Have pens, pencils, erasers, rulers, GDC, etc all ready. No brainpower should be wasted on trying to find a ****ing sharpener 2 minutes before the exam.

Spend reading time, well, reading. Do not let your mind dawdle, as is likely to happen when you tell it to focus.

Grab all the low hanging fruit. Get all the easy marks. About 60% of the Math HL papers should be familiar questions - routine hand movements that you barely even think about anymore. Get all these marks. Do not lose out on even one. Work quickly, but always check your work, after each line. Better to spend a few extra minutes being careful than to lose lots of marks owing to a stupid mistake. Return back to the hard questions, and really think through them. Remember, most of the time a very hard question is simply hard because the trick is hard to spot. But there is a trick. Think of all your basic math rules. Really basic, TOA CAH SOH stuff, for example.

If you'd followed my method of revising and practice, you'll have no trouble whatsoever scoring at least 100/120 for your math papers.

For econs, lists. Really. Spit the lists back at the examiners, and give them a healthy dose of evaluation. Really dig into the evaluation, give some original ideas, and use examples.

Follow the methods outlined above, and you will get your grades, I guarantee you.

9) Crap your pants waiting for your result.

10) Change pants, and collect result.

11) Go have a beer and celebrate. You have completed the IB.

On the 8th of December 2013, I landed in London. At 4:15 PM, from Paddington station, I took a train to Oxford. By the time I reached, it was getting dark. At about 6 PM, I got out of the cab near a Sainsbury's. Trolley-bag a-rolling (I'm cool), with Jamiroquai playing on my earphones, I walked in a quaint little town, with the most amazing buildings. Alone, in a new country, with the chilly wind blowing, christmas lights glowing, I found the college I applied to. That walk was everything I'd imagined Oxford to be, and more than I could have ever imagined. For a person who'd grown up in tall narrow buildings, in a sterilized environment, this was beyond words.

You will have to put in tons of hard work. There will be doubt, questions, fun photos on facebook that you could've been in, etc. If you have a goal though, and you really believe its worth it, take it from me, stick to it. You will thank yourself a million times over.

I hope I've been of help to you, and perhaps just a little bit of inspiration

Gee it's no wonder you got a 44 for IB.

Congrats on getting into your dream university!

[yii yann]

Gee it's no wonder you got a 44 for IB.

Congrats on getting into your dream university!

Aww shucks, thanks