How to Actually Survive IB

* Following these tips does not guarantee straight 7s, it just guarantees your life.

* This post is a work in progress - send me your IB survival tips in the comments section!

In General:

1. Listen to music. Alot. Especially Stars. 
2. Become extremely familiar with www.sparknotes.com - not as a replacement of reading your assigned English books, but for the "SparkLife" section! 
3. Host an IB Christmas Party in your second year. It is a must. 

CAS hours:

1. Have fun completing CAS hours and don't make it out to be another gruelling part of IB.
2. If you aren't the fittest person out there and are having difficulty completing action hours, take a Zumba class with your friends or attend walkathons in the fall!
3. Do your CAS writeups immediately following completion of your activity! When March rolls around and you've completed all your hours and no writeups you will be hitting your head against a wall asking yourself why you didn't do them earlier.
4. Set CAS goals prior to completing your CAS activities (sounds like common sense but you'd be surprised). 
5. Make a list of activities you are going to complete to earn your CAS hours - have a plan and follow it.
6. Integrate your CAS hours into your everyday schedule... make it routine.  

ToK Tips:

1. Take notes in ToK class. Sounds simple, but among all the debate you may simply forget! Trust me, it will help when you're writing that ToK Essay.
2. On that note, DO NOT procrastinate writing your ToK Essay. The first draft took me about 4 hours to complete so just sit down and DO IT! 
3. Also, do not write about truth in your ToK Essay - it's a slippery subject and my ToK teacher advised us to stay away from it. Unless, of course, truth in ToK is your passion and you would die if you didn't write about it.

TO BE CONTINUED...

CAS Hours! How did you get yours?

I still have a few hours to go, but here's a list of the activities I've done so far for CAS:

• Variety Show 
• Musical Theatre Class
• School Musical - Man of La Mancha
• Senior Jazz Band - Alto Sax
• XC Running Practice
• Alpine Ski Team
• Student Council/Leo Club
• Youth Group at local elementary school
• Heart & Stroke Canvasing 
• Modelling for High School Senior Photo Shoot

As you can tell, I have an uneven amount of hours - too many CREATIVE! Not that it's a bad thing of course :)

What have you guys done for CAS? What is the easiest category to get hours for, in your opinion?

Politics, Religion...and CAS

Does anybody else find it strange that we cannot earn CAS hours for anything related to politics? We study government so closely in History HL...

The reason I ask is because I just got back from a focus group meeting for a man who is campaigning to be mayor in our little town. At this focus group there was great passion in our ideas - brainstorming was fun and stimulating, I've never been so inspired by volunteering until now!

And so I ask, why deter IBers from politics? Politics gets us (or myself, at least) motivated to do something in our own community and more aware of local issues!


I don't want to go on a rant, but I want your input. Do you think the IBO should allow us IBers to do political activities for CAS? What about religious activities? Does it really matter to you?