I.B. Just Fine

At this time of the year, 11^th grade students are slowly getting used to the new program they’re taking, the International Baccalaureate diploma courses. Recently, I interviewed an 11^th grader, Joyce Feng, about the transition between 10^th and 11^th grades.

Firstly, she thought that the transition was fine, it was not much different from 10^th grade normal courses, but the hard part for her was remembering all the abbreviations such as FOA and IA etc. The transition was fairly smooth for her: her schedule stayed the same; nothing changed much except for the levels of difficulties for all her courses. She recalled that the first week of school, they were given a lot of information on the IB, grueling to hear but extremely helpful. Among all the classes in the IB, Joyce’s favorite course is IB art; they have many assignments and reflections to do, but she finds it interesting because she thinks that taking on challenges is enjoyable, and it will help her improve in terms of her skills in art. Further into the interview, I asked her which subject she thought was the hardest, and she responded, “I think Chinese is the hardest subject for me because we not only have to remember vocabulary words, we also have to do analysis on essays, and also learn about essay writing skills.”

 According to Joyce’s responses, it seems like language related courses are among the hardest courses whereas art related courses (such as band and art) are the most enjoyable ones. Apparently, the transition from 10^th to 11^th grade is fairly smooth, so to the sophomores, there is nothing to worry about in your junior year; things will stay the same as long as you put in your best effort.