Studying IB virtually? Here are IB grads and students' best online school tips!🙌
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021
Happy March!
The highlight of our weekend was undoubtedly the IA GVS on Saturday! Massive shoutout to the Deborah and the Events Team for working virtually across the world to organise the event. The icebreakers, led by Maanyav, were a great bonding activity. We are so grateful that you guys are willing to share and support each other!
We’ve also been setting up many more tutoring and mentoring partnerships between students and IB grads. Many thanks to Outreach Leads Ben, Yasmin, and Nisa who are working hard behind the scenes to onboard new teammates and set up compatible pairings!
Have a great week,
Imogen and Katie❤️
🌏 February’s Global Virtual Summit! 💫
In February 2021, we hosted our fifth Global Virtual Summit (GVS)! In this month's virtual GVS, we featured Internal Assessment Overview, Q+A, and Open Hours w/ grads! Thank you to the lovely students who joined us. We really appreciate your awesome feedback and support! 🤩
This is what the students loved about the GVS:
🎬THE Student x IBlieve: Why Study Abroad?
Check out this webinar IBlieve volunteers did with Times Higher Education Student a few weeks ago! You can read a summary of their tips here, and you watch shorter videos from all the IB grads here.
📚Blog Posts!
Whenever you have a question about IB, check out our Blog! With over 120 posts, you’re sure to find super helpful advice from our amazing IB graduates and High School Ambassadors. Here are all our most recent articles!
📚 Study
3 Tips to Tackle IB Stress - Rohit
📝 Test
4 Tips to Beat Exam Nerves - Delfina
Beginner’s Guide to the SAT & ACT - Anoushka
Best SAT Preparation Tips and Resources - Vaibhav
🖼️ CAS
CAS Project Ideas: Podcast! - Anoushka
🎙Community Spotlights
This week, we’re super excited to be spotlighting IBlieve Community members and friends who are launching inspiring projects and initiatives!
1. EconIR Web - Lilly, IB in Germany 🇩🇪
Lilly founded EconIR WEB, a team of high school students aiming to provide more resources and opportunities to students interested in economics, international relations, politics, and business to increase students’ interaction with their interests. They provide short weekly summaries of the most important events that week, recommended books related to economics and international relations/politics, online courses, and so much more!
2. OpenTabs - Brought to us by Tasa, IB in Serbia 🇷🇸
OpenTabs is a non-profit aiming to fight poverty and climate change in innovative ways. Its mission is to be the most affordable and convenient way of having an impact. The free web browser extension that allows you to passively raise funds towards providing microloans and saving rainforests simply by opening new tabs. They place a couple of banner advertisements in the corner and raise about 1/10 of a cent per tab. 10 Tabs Opened = 1 Tree Saved! Tasa and her classmates are working with OpenTabs on their CAS project.
📲Stay updated with IBlieve!
Next week we’ll have Regina, for our grad takeover! She studied the IB in the Philippines, was the May 2020 cohort, received a 41, and now attends University College London. Ask her anything! The Q&A sticker will be up on our Instagram on March 5th, 13pm GMT, so stay tuned! 🇬🇧🇵🇭
Find beautiful illustrations of our best advice on our Instagram and Facebook. Here’s Alysa, our HSA, and her 6 tips to improve your online learning technique!
🌟 Student Spotlight:
As you may know, we’re changing things up by inviting new High School Ambassadors (HSAs) or IB graduates to write messages every week, so we can hear more student voices and IB experiences around the world. Today, we hear from Sancho, our Tech Lead and a Year 1 student from the Philippines! 🇵🇭
“Hey Sancho! What’s a funny IB experience you’ve had?”
Like many IB students, I came into the IB program with a positive mindset and the desire to learn and succeed. However, all students also have at least one certain subject that they view as their Kryptonite—this certain gigantic, impossible-to-defeat, monstrous beast. For me, that was Chinese B.
In one of my first Chinese classes, I vividly recall being put into a breakout room with some classmates to do another mundane group activity. I was so tired and overwhelmed by the amount of work I had to do that day. As drained as I felt, I was just casually spinning around on my swift chair as I exclaimed, "Yo guys I don't know if you feel the same, but Lao Shi (teacher) gives us so much homework! Does she ever run out of ideas because it just never ends, does it?".
Much to my surprise, when I finally turned around and faced my computer screen after spinning, I realized that our teacher had actually been inside the breakout room listening not long before I started ranting. Unfortunately, she clearly heard the entirety of my short rant. Embarrassed, I tried so hard to appear happy, pretend I said nothing, and cover myself up by saying, "Oh— hi Lao Shi... What's up?". Like most of my past Chinese teachers would have probably reacted, I anticipated her to be furious, filled with anger. Unexpectedly, her reaction was quite different. I was in complete shock as I heard her fluently utter full sentences in English for the first time, "Don't worry, I'm actually happy to hear all of your complaints. Thank you for your honesty. In fact, I don't give much homework because as long as you focus, each task will only take 20 minutes."
After she left the breakout, my friends and I all burst out of laughter together. I was so ashamed of what I had said in front of my teacher, but at the same time enjoyed laughing at how foolish and careless I was. Despite how much I wanted to hide and wrap myself up in my blanket, I also learned that although things in the IB may appear impossible at first, the first step to success is to always believe in ourselves no matter how far the goal may seem. Once we start believing, the daylight from the end of the tunnel will gradually become clearer each day.Cheers,
Sancho
👋 Catch you next week!
Thanks so much for reading this week! We believe in you.
Sending virtual hugs,
Celine
High School Ambassador (HSA) from Canada🇨🇦
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