Around a year ago, I was in the middle of making a decision: do the International Baccalaureate or take Innovation Academy. At that time, I was also making the decision of which classes to take. Over the past years, I had been really into medicine and thought that that was what I was going to study so I based my classes on what I thought I needed in order to prepare for college, pre-med and med school and not based my choices on what I really wanted and what I enjoyed the most. Because of this, I decided to take the IB simply because I felt the need to take more than the three classes that the IA allows us to take, not really because I wanted to.
The past year, I took Junior year of the IB Diploma Program and I must say that it was one of my worst years academically and emotionally. I did not feel passionate about the classes I was taking, I was not very motivated to do my best and I got to a point where I felt like I was doing work because it was assigned and not because I was learning. I also felt like I was saturated in work and did not have time to take part in any activities that I was interested in. This is when I really started to regret the decision of taking the IB and not IA. I asked the DP coordinator at my school what my options were in order to change classes to ones which would motivate me more. They basically were to either do the Certificate Program instead of the whole DP or drop out of IB altogether. At this point, I was almost sure that I was going to do the Certificate Program but not to my happiest decision because I was thinking that it was not going to be worth losing my IB Diploma because I wanted to change 1 class. If only there was a way that I could join the IA... Towards the end of the semester when I felt I couldn't be in the IB any longer, my mom talked with Mr. Topf about how much I regretted not being in the IA and low and behold he offered a place in the IA next year as an IB to IA guinea pig. This offer made Senior year look a lot brighter. I first thought it through and talked with my friends who also take IA and I decided that I would accept the offer. Over vacations, I had a meeting with Mr. Topf, as per any other IA candidate, and was officially welcomed into the IA. I am now looking forward to a more exciting and motivated Senior year instead of one full of dread and apathy.
3 Comments
Corey Topf
7/23/2014 05:07:31 am
Powerful blog entry. Thank you for being so candid, and I can't wait to have you join the IA.
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Corey Topf
7/23/2014 05:08:24 am
*Join us in person that is. :)
Reply
F
5/21/2015 11:07:52 pm
Thanks Corey!
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Author"Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." Archives
June 2015
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