Chronicles of IB
It was my first day of IB English SL class. I always thought English was a subject where there was nothing to study. Throughout my time studying in the Indian Board, I considered English as one of the easiest subjects. But this was about to change. “Ms. Meredith Klein”, my professor’s name was written on the board with the class name “IB English Standard Level” under that with a bunch of other things written around it. As my teacher started describing the syllabus it was becoming my worst nightmare. She divided the two years of the IB program, into 4 parts and called each of the 4 units by a different genre. The funny thing was I just knew two types of genres at that time: fiction and non-fiction. The first one of the four genres she described was Classics. There were two big books I had to read for this, “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Assault” and study both the literary works intensively and at last present a detailed study of one of the book. This was another nightmare for me because throughout my life the only books I had read were a bunch of Famous Five and all in my fifth grade. I felt like it was the worst time of my life. All I did before my 11th grade was read summaries on the Internet and all of a sudden that proved as a waste of time in IB. It was not helpful at all. I knew the reading was extremely important and I still kept on procrastinating and read the books without understanding. The program was called a pre-university course and so it was extremely important for me to learn all the things from the course. I knew I had to learn everything from the course by hook or by crook.
But then, the semester started, the reading started, and well it was a nightmare, reading books for hours and not understanding them was the worst. At that time, Ms. Klein realized I was falling behind and was not able to cope up with the class and thus started my fight with English or rather the fight to learn English, and not only speak but to write and analyze all types of prose and poetry. I started reading everything in detail, understanding each page, understanding each chapter, it’s purpose, what literary devices help them build the author build up the purpose and how they link to the final purpose. I only realized how important those skills were after coming to university. The analyzing skills I learned were so helpful. Now I feel these skills would be just as useful as before, at Northeastern University. At last came the final day of my English class’ first semester and I had to present a presentation on the book “The Assault” by Harry Mulisch. It was one of the proudest moments for me as my presentation was the best among my classmates. I never really thought that it would be so important to me but now it is a milestone for me in my pursuit of confidence in English. I count that presentation, as a milestone in the pursuit of learning English and it will be one of my most cherished memories. It helped me a lot in all the aspects of English. But that was not for long, because with the next semester for English, the difficulty had increased, but I had no longer had any problems coping up. With that out of equation, every new semester brought my confidence level in English up. Next semester was the Works in translation. I had no longer any problem reading books and I absolutely loved each of the books this semester. I had books such as “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”(my favorite) and “The Outsider”. This semester was about writing, where after every discussion class I wrote a reflection and at the end of the term, an essay is written with a common theme between both the books. This semester was particularly an enlightening one as I learned a lot about the classic authors and things like magical realism. When I reflect back on that ordeal, it makes me realize how important this part of class was. It helped me lot in understanding cultures and how the author’s work differ when the culture changes. This is considerably important now because I’m in a different and an even more diverse culture with people and it helps me understand the author’s work better. The place I am at today in respect to English it is thanks to IB. The way it trained me in English in outstanding. I feel that without IB, I would be just more screwed up writing essays such as this. The transition would have been really a big difficulty for me from normal monotonous English to analytic and evaluative English. When I come back to the present, studying at Northeastern university and look at my work, it truly reflects how I spent my last two years of my high school particularly in English class. I know I am not the best writer, but I am able to write well enough. IB trained me a lot in term of being a risk-taker, being principled and so on. I read around ten books throughout the two years and a bunch of Sylvia Plath poems. At last, loving some of them. I reflect on my two years of IB and realize the amount it has helped me overall. I can now write well, at least better than I used to and speak it a lot better as well. Despite cursing it for two years, I feel proud to say I completed the IB successfully and it was actually a program that improved me not only in English but also in a holistic way.