h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I take the IB, and think your article is a bit too positive really. The breadth of subjects you can take is good, but it makes the course really hard work. The IB is quite elitist really, and it doesn't help that you're in competition with some very good private international schools. It's also annoying that you often don't know how well you're doing until you get the results and you've failed. The TOK part is just massively frustrating, as it pretends to be open philosophy but turns out to be restrictive and imposes dogmatic 'rules of thought'.

hmm...yes the article did seem too positive, but perhaps the IB school the author went to is different from your IB school. The IB school I go to isn't elitist, but I'm sure with more than a thousand schools there would be schools that are. Also, the expirience of each course is drastically different with each different teacher and teaching style. My TOK class is mostly open ended discussion about articles on morality, truth ect. I'm curious about how it works at your school. Do you have homework in TOK? We rarely have lectures, but we do talk alot.

I think it's a great article... there are downsides to all academic courses just because they're academic courses, but that doesn't mean the IB isn't great - because it is! Well, it was at my school anyway.

its awesome to finally find other people that enjoy the IB program. We've got about 35 people and they fall into the catagories of hating it and passing or hating it and failing. I enjoy the work and the results i see from it. The workload is rough, but if you're really determined to succeed its an awesome path to take. ToK is more like a real-world reminder than anything else. The teacher professes to expand knowledge, but in reality only does so within her limited sphere of beliefs. Honestly, its how the real world works and its idealistic and immature to expect anything else from a class about theories run by an opinionated individual. I would disagree with the article in one respect though, the EE wasn't the hardest part of the program, the Internal Assessments were...there are 6, abeit shorter, but still difficult papers all due around the same time and all of which require the same amount of quality research as the EE. Possible this arises from the fact i'm working on 3 of them right now. Failure is always possible, but its a risk everyone takes, besides the opportunites available far, far outweight the fear of failure.

The EE isn't the hardest part, this is true - it's rather valuable preparation for degree-level dissertations though, in that it's a self-researched and chosen project thingy whatsit. However, mine was a total flop and I got a C for it And they didn't like my ToK essays much either, my teacher reckoned I didn't offer enough argument for my 'insane' points of view regarding the nature of knowledge and belief. Welcome to the world of one bonus point.

I'm trying to write my extended essay right now actually . It's about Bismarck and Machiavelli if anyone has any wonderfully insightful thing to offer in assistance. Yes, I know I've left it rather late...
I think my college is worse than many - I understand frustrations with TOK teachers very well. But yeah, its benefits probably do outweigh the problems and I wouldn't want to be doing A-levels right now.

Good luck on your EE. I'm so glad mine's finally done! (I did it on Mathematics) Now I have to finish my World Lits. Our school chose terrible books. I hate Madame Bovary!! I do like IB though. In the US, we don't have anything like A-levels really (I guess AP is kind of close, but they're not as good really as IB (at least in my opinion).
TOK at my school is actually pretty decent. Our teacher is really laid-back--no tests or anything like that. And if we have assignments to turn in, he's really understanding if they're late. (Now my Spanish class on the other hand...)
Now is the time of year when it's really nice to get things done. Just today I turned in my final copy of my History of the Americas Internal Assessment, and the first copy of my TOK paper, and it's kind of relieving....in an odd way. Anyways, good luck with everything!

Ok, yeah, I just looked at the date of the last post before mine, and noticed that it was like two years ago. (In other words you've moved on from IB So I guess I'll just say good luck to anyone else who happens to be coming to this amazing site and reading this post!

I can relate to this. It seems like a great idea at first to be able to choose six subjects but if you aren't good at one it can pull your total mark down... Especially since at this age most people have an idea of what they want to do at university, and the IB means you cannot specialise - you end up wanting to spend more time on certain subjects but not being able to because you also have to focus on subject that will probable play no significant role in the rest of your life.