An IB student's idea of the ideal Fall Break

As of four o'clock today, I'm officially off on fall break. Now for some of you, this "Fall/Autumn Break" might mean sleeping in, warm cups of hot chocolate and fun times with friends and family. However, if you're an IB student, your schedule will most likely not look as relaxed as the average highschool student.

With upcoming IA deadlines, Fall Break for an IB student really just translates to "here you go, a one week break in which you can catch up on all the course work you've been disregarding since the beginning of the year". I see it more as a catching up "week of grace", than an actual vacation. Naturally this doesn't apply for all IB students. You'll soon begin to realize that people tend to generalize the stereotype of the "typical IB student", reinforcing this image of a stressed, over worked, mess of a student. I agree, but only to a certain extent. Speaking of the extent of something...I really should be working on my TOK Oral, but I still have 7 days to get that done so I'll do that tomorrow.

Generally speaking, I would say that the majority of the students in my grade level are going to be spending this one week break doing the following:

1. Science IA
2. Arts IA
3. Extended Essay (ok not even kidding here, but I know a lot of kids who haven't even started writing yet...)
4. TOK Oral
5. CAS (shoutout to all of the slackers who left their CAS to this year. They have to somehow make themselves look like they care about the lives of others, in just one week. I'm praying for y'all)
6. Stress eating, drinking way too much coffee, probably smoking up
7. Rethinking their UCAS uni options because their predicted grades gave them a harsh reality slap

Ideally I think the most of us are hoping to regain our energy in preparation for the long and strenuous sprint ahead until winter break. For those of you who've already graduated and can't quite picture what it feels like, I'll give you an idea.
So imagine running a marathon but only 100m before the finish line, the ground your running is now a treadmill and you keep on running at full speed without getting anywhere. Thats pretty much how the stretch from fall break until winter break feels like.
One could say that this next week will be a recharging exercise in which you try to save your ass from quite literally failing the entire IB, without completely burning out (that is, if you aren't burnt out already)

In complete honesty if you were to ask me what my ideal fall break routine would look like, I would give you a list of the following things;

1. Getting enough sleep (translates to actually getting those 8 hours a night)
2. Finishing my TOK Oral
3. Handing in a decent first draft for my Psych IA
4. Start and finish my Bio IA write up
5. Film and upload at least one youtube video
6. Wash my hair less (ok this might be weird but after a long hard day of IB, a hot shower is pretty much a given. But its come to the stage where I'm showering my hair almost every single day and its definitely not doing my hair any good)
7. Go jogging at least once a day (lmfao, CAS and all. Gotta get that #action in)
8. Write an english written task for 1984
9. Edit my EE
10. Organise folders, bills, papers etc.
11. Study for bio
12. Finish research for Film IA A/V script

This seems like a really long list, but I'm certain that I'll get at least 10 of these done. It is after all an entire week!

Studying for IB Biology HL

I guess you could say that I was highly uneducated about the whole "studying" concept. Don't get me wrong, it was a familiar term. Having heard kids whining about how many hours they had spent studying and that they had gotten not sleep, was something I was not sheltered from. I am, after all, in a school in which roughly 95+% of students do the full IB diploma; which is something not too common apparently.

Having been subjected to an environment with highly stressed teenagers, suffering from anxiety, insomnia and anger issues (especially directed to their teachers who, if you believed what you were told, were either highly incompetent or just lazy). 

Consequently, I had been assuming that the act of studying was simply a thing that people do, and thus something I had been doing but hadn't focused particularly much on. I used to think that studying consisted of sitting on your bed for hours on end, reading a textbook and highlighting the majority of the page in complete concentration. To be fair I hadn't really needed to study before starting the IB. I mean of course I spent a long time re-reading the course Textbooks and spending hours trying to comprehend the books I was assigned for english class; but all the while I had thought that this was merely a time consuming burden placed upon by my dyslexia. 

I'll admit that having dyslexia is one of the prime reasons I spend twice as much time working on something academic than your average student would. Nonetheless, I can now see that my motivation and dedication to my studies was not purely based on my anxiety of being exposed as "stupid" or "dumb". 

Now that I've covered the necessary pre-ramblings I find myself consistently starting my writing with, I can get to the point. IB BIOLOGY HL. Otherwise known as the class people take who need a science as a HL subject, but aren't exactly gifted in terms of mathematics or comprehending the various symbols of the periodic table. Needless to say, my class consisted (more about that later) of the students who needed to take the course but not necessarily wanted to.

I find it quite frustrating how IB Biology has such a bad reputation. It's the class chosen by all the "dumb" people, the "easy" class. To some extent we owe this lovely representation to the conceited pupils of the physics and chemistry classes. As for some odd reason, they believe that because their subject incorporates more numbers, they are for some reason or other working harder than we are. Since when does the amount of numbers present in the syllabus, equate to superiority in the natural sciences? I'm still fascinates by this idea that numbers are harder to decipher than letters, and thus deserve a far superior ranking in the world of academia. 

From very beginning of our academic careers, we are constantly reminded that math and sciences are difficult and require a highly ineffectually gifted individual to master. I call BS. I know plenty gifted mathematics and physics students who couldn't build a birdhouse or direct a film for the life of them. My passionate feminist friend once told me that this is due to the fact that men control the STEM fields, and in an attempt to make up for their "shortcomings" they belittling those who aren't interested or successful in anything regarding mathematics and numbers. Let that sink in. 

Let's revisited the actual purpose of this post, which is to show you guys what I do to study for Bio. Now before I start, quick disclaimer: I am in no way telling you that you will succeed if you do what I do. Seriously though, we are all different and unique so what works for you might not work for me and vice versa. 

I've just posted a new youtube video about how I study for Biology, in which I briefly demonstrate my daily "study" routine. The word study should be taken lightly, I honestly just use the word because I'm not aware of anything that could describe what it is I'm doing. 

So what exactly is it that I'm doing? you ask...well I'm about to get to that now. 

For anyone who isn't familiar with IB Biology HL, I'll let you in on a few basic facts about the course. 

1. The course material itself isn't too challenging to understand (in regards to the SL portion of the syllabus, once you get into the HL stuff shit gets real) 

2. Imagine you had a library filled with only science books, if you were to calculate the material for each course when looking at this hypothetical situation through the lens of the IB syllabi, roughly 75% of the books would be Bio books. Seriously though, the sheer amount of information is what makes the course so challenging.

3. Memorising is inevitable. Theres no way you can answer a "long answer question" without having made up some ridiculous story about cells and replication in order to be able to remember the process of mitosis.

For these reasons alone, I think you can already sense what my studying strategy would consist of.
The main studying methods I utilise are making my own flashcards, re-writing in class notes and making mind maps/summary information posters.
Flashcards
- I rarely go online and use quizlet sets of flashcards because sometimes they aren't too reliable.
That is why I choose to write my own flashcards, but most of the time I manage to compress a couple of different points all on one card.
Re-writing in class notes
- For those of you who are non-dyslexics, this would probably seem quite time consuming and unnecessary. However if you're like me and frantically try to catch up on copying down notes from both verbal and visual information flung at you by your teacher, you would understand why this is a very useful strategy.
Mind maps / summary information poster
- These are essentially what they sound like they are. Large blank sheets of A3, soon to bi filled with all of the information covered on a topic, condensed in a couple of bullet points per objective.

So yeah, thats the gist of it. If you guys want to see how this looks like, check out my youtube video!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJCPEKC4XL0

The Aesthetics of frame composition - IB Film Independent Study

When you ask someone why they "like" something, you sometimes get the response indicating that the person simply likes something because. Because..because what? The question of aesthetics of an object, a film, a person, is something I found myself exploring in more depth in my first year of studying film in the IB.

There are many things that I find myself drawn to because of its aesthetics. With perfectly symmetrical lines and the repetition of minimalistic patterns, comes a rather odd sensation experienced by the viewer. A sense of peaceful tranquility and satisfaction.

Artists, architects and film makers (cinematographers) aim towards communicating this sensation through their works. However, it is not only the visual aesthetics which can sooth the hasty mind of the stressed human. Aesthetics can branch out into all of the five senses, taste, touch, smell, visual; this idea of something being aesthetically pleasing is not owned by the creators of visual content.

The reason for this posts is due to my current IB Film Independent Study topic.

I have chosen to look at a specific aspect of film through the lens of film theory. "Christian Metz and the semiology of film" was the title of a task assigned to me by my film teacher. Upon further investigation into the theory of semiotics in film, I found myself opting to choose this for my IS.

If you aren't familiar with the requirements for this assessment, you probably wondering what on earth I'm on about. Don't worry, the sole focus of this post won't be the assessment, so to those of you who were worried about being throw into some in depth discussion on the Independent Study, don't be :)

The assessment is an A/V script of a documentary written for an audience of 15 year olds (because 15 year olds love watching documentaries about the semiotics of film..right?) The task states that students at higher level (thats me) have to analysis four films, ranging from two different cultures; forming their analysis based on the film history/theory they chose. I'm not 100% set on the four films I have chosen, but thats mainly just because I haven't done too much research into them.

These are the ones I'm planning on using:

1. Battleship Potemkin - (1925)

2. Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson (2012)

3. Amélie - Jean-Pierre Jeunett (2001)

4. Dolls - Takeshi Kitano (2002)

The reasoning behind this film selection was partially due the suggestions my film teacher had given me.

Now to the actually point of all of this. My teacher and I were browsing youtube to find trailers of the films I was not familiar with, and only a few seconds into the trailer of Moonrise Kingdom I was amazed. This sensation of tranquility and satisfaction hit me like a wave of fresh air. My immediate reaction to the carefully composed, aesthetically pleasing mise en scène was genuine pleasure. The symmetry of the frame composition and the colors was just incredible.

I could have taken the majority of the frames in the trailer and individually printed them out as works of art in and of itself. It is exactly this display of meticulously framed shots lined up one after the other, which contributes to the aesthetically pleasing nature of the film.

This is what leads me to the relevance of choosing this film to analyse in my independent study. The idea behind the theory of semiotics in film, is that signs and symbols are communicated through aspects such as composition and framing, color and continuity. In turn, these symbols act as the components which eventually lead to the meaning of the film. Symbols and signs are the building blocks of film language. It just depends on the viewer's interpretation of these signs that make up their understanding of the visual of a scene. Subsequently linking to the meaning of what these signs represent, enabling the viewer to make sense of the visuals in context in relation to its meaning.