IB "Backstabbing"

[greaterthaninfinity]

OK, this is an issue I've had with IB for a long time. Despite a lot of people's laid back and cheery facades, they are really just pure evil inside ('kay, I'm starting to exaggerate now... haha).

But have you guys ever had any problems with classmates who seemed just a tad bit over-competitive? In my experience, this seems to happen quite a bit. I ask some of my classmates questions and they seem to deliberately withhold information from me. For example, before, I was asking this kid these problems about VSEPR theory, and he just kept on shifting the topic and laughing it off. He said he didn't know how to do the problems but ended up with a 95% on the test the next day?!

I think this is a common occurrence in my school. :\ Besides my friends who are genuinely nice and willing to help, a LOT of my fellow IB students just aren't very helpful. Of course, none of them are directly rude or anything like that - but I'm always getting the impression that it seems like they don't want to help because they don't want to be beaten in terms of grades.

[Sandwich]

We had quite a bit of this sort of thing going on. It was almost childish sometimes, like you'd be sitting next to somebody and they'd purposely put their arms round their answers like you were secretly trying to look over and copy. Or you'd give or tell them something you thought was helpful, ask them a simple question a little later and get a "mmm" in response.

Ironically every time you did something helpful, one of these kids would say "There's no "I" in team" and it was exceedingly tempting to inform them that indeed there was, and it was sitting very nearby talking to you. GGNGHGN!

Anyway, yessss the very competitive people do do the IB, and unless they're competitive but also helpful, they do end up doing all sorts of strange and evil things. Like reserving every single revision guide (including multiple copies) from the library under their name right before the exams. What can I say? I was not amused!!

EDIT: Just thought I'd add that it's the backstabbers who ultimately succeeded most. In the IB it is a very good way of getting yourself ahead After all, it is the ultimate way to rule your society -- to take from it, not participate and never give back. You end up richer, smarter and it's only 2 years of people disliking you after all !

Edited July 25, 2009 by Sandwich

[Abu]

People who are like that are ludicrous anti social freaks who have some sort of mental imbalance that forces them to 'hide their answers'. Why would someone do anything like that!

[MIBO]

OMG yesss!

But I see the competition is mostly between those with good grades, they wont help each other... BUT they do help the ones that have bad grades hahah they dont see them as a threat.

Its quite sad...but I guess its how the world works right? Its a way of natural selection! And our only option is to "join the game"

[sweetnsimple786]

Oh dear...

That does suck!

While 90% of the class is quite competitive when it comes to grades, we always help each other out. My 2 friends and I basically type up history notes and email them to the class. The haughty know-it-all math team brainiacs will help anyone with a math problem. We get graded on 'participation' during discussion, so we help out the two girls who never talk by prompting them all the time. What it comes down to is that we have 20 kids in IB [well less now], and 600 kids total in our grade. We've learned to really get along. There's only one kid I really don't like, and I'd still help him out, as long as he wasn't acting like an arrogant prick. I hope you stay resilient!

[moneyfaery]

At times, yes, but never to that extent (esp what Alice mentioned). That is just ludicrous. I think, generally, people were willing to help or give help if they had time. If they were busy... well, that's another story altogether. Although, what you mentioned, I'm probably guilty of too, but it's not what you think. I remember one vague example where I actually didn't understand anything until the day before the test, and got a decent mark. Maybe the guy studied the night of and understood the concepts as well??

[__inthemaking]

I can only think of one girl who was like that in IB. She was in my grade 9 pre-IB class, and she would ALWAYS compete with me. Every single test/quiz in every class (especially in science though), she would say "so what did YOU get on your test?" She would always do her labs near me so she could point out I was doing something wrong, or when we did presentations in English, she would ask me loads of questions at the end, trying to make me look bad by nitpicking at my analysis. Suffice to say that I won the grade 9 science award AND the grade 9 English award for having the highest marks and she never bothered me again for the rest of the 3 years of high school .