starting a writing assignment in a course - let’s share the progress

Planning for my piece of writing

The “experiment” I’d like to write about is focused on my experience in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP). I tried the IB mainly due to the fact that it is a well-known 2 year high school curriculum and it is recognized especially for preparing students for critical thinking skills for the future (in university mainly). I think others may try it for that same reason, to associate a level of ‘prestige’ and potentially for the credits that can carry over from IB courses. As an example, I was in the Language and Literature English Higher Level (LLE HL) program and received top marks from this course. Because of this, not only did I grow more prepared into analyzing and understanding literary (and non-literary) works, I was also able to use the marks received to fulfill the WRT104 credit.

Though I have found that a lot of my IB courses have been able to boost my credits and help my university experience so far, the skills and content found in the DP were more far-reaching than I had even known at the time. This is one of the reasons why I look forward to writing more about this curriculum and sharing the information with people - due to the fact that it creates a certain level of calm in one’s mind, to know “Hey! I'm familiar with this!”. I also feel that in examining my experience in hindsight, I am much more proud to have gone through the programme, mainly due to the fact that a lot of the requirements and examinations I took were quite challenging at the time. Most notably, when we were analysing the two texts on the first day of WRT201, my brain went into ‘Paper 1 mode’. From the LLE HL exam, known as the “Paper 1” I practiced for about 3 months straight on how to analyse two unseen texts of two different sources and topics - and then formulate two separate essays on each of these texts in the time cap of 2 hours and 15 minutes. The emotions of anxiety and stress I felt when preparing for my IB examinations, mixed with the worry of completing other necessary components to the IB (the Extended Essay, Internal Assessments and the CAS Portfolio), are all topics I would want to write about to other experimenters, to simply say: “I think it’s worth it”.

To summarize, I think that the main aim I have for this piece I’d like to write about my experience in the IB, is to number one, help potential students of the IB learn more about the process they could go through, number two, explain to them the payoff it had for me and how it helped me as a university and number three, how I feel now that I have taken the DP as a person.

I think that a few things I would want to start my research with are the “principles of the international baccalaureate”, so that I’d be able to evaluate whether I really experienced these values and took away what I was supposed to from the curriculum. Another potential research topic could be “what the IB was like for me”, so that I would be able to read about other people’s accounts and their thoughts on the program. Finally, a third topic I’d want to research is “how does IB help university applications”, so that I’d be able to truly see if being a graduate from the DP makes a difference, and if admissions officers and universities see students differently.