Disclaimer: I’m a big fan of the IB program’s teaching philosophy and curriculum. But as with all TAS students, I have moments where it’s 4am and I’m still doing homework and I can’t, for the life of me, remember why I decided to get a high school education. This was one of them.

1. Exams that test two years’ worth of material: Summer is a time where I like to relax and slowly empty my mind of any and all knowledge acquired over the past year(don’t lie, you do it too). Unfortunately for me, the IB external exams cover the curriculum of both junior and senior year. Trigonometric functions??? Photosynthesis??? Time to recruit all my favorite 2016’ers to reteach me everything.
2. Trying to sound intelligent in TOK class and just coming across as confused: How do we know if I’m passing the IB Diploma? Can we ever truly know? Emotion tells me that feeling like Satan vacuumed out all of my brain matter means I’m not passing. But how reliable is emotion??? There’s a knowledge issue or something in here somewhere, but in the name of being as vague as the TOK textbook, I’m not going to point it out.
3. Watching my Internal Assessments tank my grades like the iceberg hitting the Titanic: Oh you forgot to include the unit on your biology lab? HERE TAKE A TWENTY FIVE PERCENT GRADE DECREASE!!!!! Why so harsh IB? I don’t remember the last time I got a 16/20 and was happy with it….wait. It was in Psych class.
4. When the difference between Standard Level and Higher Level is as wide as the Grand Canyon: I just want somewhere where I can be perfectly and happily average, which unfortunately isn’t possible in the eyes of the IB. They claim SL and HL aren’t that different but it’s ALL A BIG FAT LIE!! Either I take SL math and basically repeat Honors Pre-calculus or I can take HL math and then watch my GPA turn into the number of hours of sleep I get per night: 2.0