During the IB program I had studied in the English language instead of my native language which was french. Personally, I feel that even though English was my second language I was still able to cope with the high level that was necessary to tackle the program. This was due to the fact that I lived abroad for 14 years and so while studying in French I still managed to ameliorate my English level as the years went by. Throughout the 2 year program I managed to learn and acquire certain soft skills that I never thought would be useful till this present day. These skills include leadership, problem solving and critical thinking which were applied in the whole program by our lecturers.
What is an IB Program?
The IB is a very prestigious program that allowed me as a student to enhance my problem-solving skills. An example would be that in the IB program for my Extended Essay I had done research with the title being “Does temperature affect an athlete’s Cardiovascular Endurance». One of the many problems that I came across in this research was that I did not have access to proper people that we could call athletes, therefore this forced me to think outside the box and ask students with an athletic background to help me perform my experiment. During this process, many of my Sports Science classmates had thought the same which made us use the same people throughout the testing weeks meaning we would have a problem with time management. What that experience taught us was to have clear communication with one another and work as a team to help one another complete the tests so the others could start on their tests. In a way IB always manages to make students display a numerous amount of the IB Learner Profile attributes even without us realizing and as we progress through this program we are constantly improving as people, which one only tends to understand when nearing the end of the course.
What did I learn?
In terms of analytical abilities, I believe that most of that content was mainly acquired in the languages which in my case were French A SL and English A HL. These subjects were where I grew my analytical skills the most as every class we would be given a text type that the professor would highlight and underline the most relevant information to the question asked. And as the months went by with more practice each text type felt less demanding due to us having sharper skills leading us to taking less time to analyze certain texts.
Based on my experience with the IB program, I feel that most of our skill development grew and was tested in the 2nd year of the program. What I mean by this is that during that year all of our deadlines came so fast all at once which made us have to prioritize certain subjects over others. The program was the perfect way to introduce the academic demands of university life, as the course is very demanding and teaches an individual self-management, time management and how to cope with stress taking into account the fact that the workload is quite similar with the university’s one.
Lastly, concerning study habits, I would say that based on my experience, the IB program taught me to come to classes more prepared and not expect to just come with a book in hand to take notes. This means that as a student I would inquire myself on the topics of the next class beforehand so as to have an idea of what will be discussed in class which helped me greatly in terms of revision. Furthermore, it is of great aid in my current university life as I learned that making notes after classes and going over them. In the long run it will help a student better their revision when close to exam dates instead of waiting until the night before the exam to study.
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