IB Community Theme: Sharing our humanity

Dear Worried fabuloussharp,

All of these questions should be addressed by your teachers when you start the new year.  It would be wrong of me to start saying how these questions should be answered because each school and each coordinator may do things slightly differently.  However, you are worried now and it is probably the summer holiday for you so let's try to put your mind at rest. 

Firstly, presumably  you have been given the ‘ok’ to do the IB Diploma and have chosen the courses you are going to start out with.  This probably means that your teachers think you are capable of doing the Diploma!  

 Now as for the specific questions you had:CAS:  Most students can do this quite naturally, without too much pain and actually get a lot out of it.  The school’s CAS Coordinator will be able to advise you about what you have to do, how you have to do it and what opportunities there are in your situation.  There will probably be some CAS ideas generated by teachers but it’s great when CAS students come up with their own projects too.  The big problem many students seem to have is recording what they have done – but your CAS Coordinator will show you how they want that done.  CAS actually offers you a great opportunity to do things that you have always wanted to try but never got round to it.  Creativity: is there anything creative you do already? How could you extend what you do?  How could you apply your creative skills to s different area to learn something new? Remember that creativity isn’t just the arts – it can be about planning too.  Action: the same again – what do you do currently that brings you out in a sweat?  Can you extend what you do or use what you know to try a different activity?  Remember that action is not just about sports but can be any physical pursuit.Service: This is probably where the school will develop its own links to the community (local, national, regional, global) but you could find out what projects are going on that you and your school could get involved in (there are some great ideas on this website for example) and if you are really good, you could even think about the situation in the various communities I mentioned and see if there is a problem or issue that you could create a service project to help with.  Having students identify problems themselves and come up with a response to those problems is great.  Motivated students usually do not find CAS a problem to do and easily go over the minimum ‘requirements’. 

The extended essay comes with a guide and you should be getting a supervisor to help you, so don’t worry about that just yet.  If you have chosen a topic for your EE then why not collect some information about it, find some data, read around the topic, research it and play around with ideas about how you might approach the topic rather than worry about the technicalities of writing an essay?  

TOK is taught in many different ways.  If you have ten TOK teachers then you will have ten different ways to teach TOK.  In my experience, TOK is something kids either tend to respond well to or not understand the point of it.  It offers a chance for you to understand connections between subjects and why and how we learn the stuff we do.  It really puts what you’re learning in other subjects in context.  Some kids sit in the class and go through the motions (writing the essay and doing a presentation) not really understanding why they are there but the students that really benefit from it are those who engage with it, try to understand the significance of what’s being said and use it to understand their other subjects better.  So be open-minded to it and get what you can out of it.   

A lot of what I have said is about transferring skills from one area to another – it’s a great skill to develop. 

Whether the course is difficult or not – well it is one of the best programmes of study in the world you can do so I can’t tell you it will be easy but if you plan instead of worrying, work steadily instead of stressing and ask questions whenever you need to, then you may find as many other students do, that you will survive.  If you do find that it’s too easy then you have to ask yourself if you are really pushing yourself – much of the work you will be asked to do is open-ended and so you set the limits!  The goal at the end of all this is primarily that you become a proactive, life-long, independent, internationally-minded learner and most universities love such students! 

I think it’s great that you are asking these sorts of questions already. Good Luck

Robert Thorn

IB Community Theme Team

Well Ill help u out on the last one..... and ya dude its pretty hard but

I'm Sure ull be able to handle it.... just make sure u get ur homework done

and u should be good!

THE PROGRAM IS HARD..VERY HARD. YOU HAVE 2 DITCH ALL PROCRASTINATION HABITS AND DO ALL OF UR WORK!!!!