IB extended essay pain rambling

for context, I'm a full IB Diploma candidate at my high school, one of about 35 kids who are doing it, and in the IB program in order to receive your diploma, you need to do a set number of things that are beyond an average student.

You need to test in 3 standard level (SL) and 3 higher level (HL) IB courses (for me those are in April and those are IB English A: Language and Literature HL, IB French B HL, IB Math Analysis and Approaches SL, IB Global Politics HL, IB Environmental Systems and Societies SL, and IB Music SL) and get a score of 4 in them, or at least get 24/45 points across all of your exams to get the diploma. You also have to take a special class called IB Theory of Knowledge split between your Junior and Senior years which isn't that bad, it's like a fun philosophy class that my teacher fortunately makes very engaging, and you have to log the activities you do for 18 months straight, so things like my frequent working out, my wrestling stuff, choral stuff that doesn't relate to IB Music stuff, etc. are logged in this thing called CAS. But the worst component is called the Extended Essay, a collegiate-level research paper that's about 4000 words long that you do from about March when you get it introduced and you submit the final draft in December.

Seems easy enough, right? Well, it has to relate to one of my IB subjects, and I heard how easy it was to score well in Language Acquisition, or Language B, aka my French class. So, I, kind of stupidly, picked French. I love French and it's one of my favorite classes. I did a CEFR test after completing 3 years of French and I was in the B2 range of scores, since I had done a bunch of extra work to study, and I had always done well in the class, even joining the French Honors Society in my school and I also wanted to do one analyzing the language! Most people don't do one in that range, but that year, there were two students who chose that as their subject, myself, and this one other student who also was in my French and chose to analyze French literature.

At first, I was sort of stumped on my topic, but then my supervisor, and also my French teacher as she is the only one who teaches French in my school told me about writing on the circumflex, this little accent mark that was super controversial. I thought "sounds fun! this'll be a piece of cake"

HOW WRONG I WAS!

To begin, when I was writing my introduction and gathering sources for my annotated bibliography, I didn't realize that all of my sources had to be in French, and that I had to write it all, in French. So, I had to rewrite everything, and normally, I should've worked over the summer on my extended essay, but I didn't since I had other priorities such as tutoring others for my service hours, and then by the time the deadline for the rough draft came around, I had to churn out 2800 more words on top of my introduction in the span of a few hours! I ended up being so confused I could barely speak English and Russian without inserting French in there every now and then. It had caused me so much stress, I had to ask my other teachers to be on my laptop just so I can get the essay done! And the worst part is, because I was writing it in French, I couldn't speedrun the essay writing process, I had to be diligent since I didn't want to make any mistakes, whatsoever.

Oh, and when I talked to the IB Coordinator? She wanted me to share my essay with my principal, who has a doctorate and also speaks French. And why, you might ask? Well, I did a bit of research and turns out that the topic I was covering was what some people use for their DOCTORAL THESIS. No wonder the topic was fascinating, that was stuff 25-year-olds covered to be masters in the language!

Mind you, I'm a high school student. I'm applying to universities (I really hope the University of North Carolina will let me in), I am NOT a doctoral student trying to get a doctorate over here.

I ended up finishing the essay on-time and submitting it but the amount of stress it gave me was so immense I was questioning all of my life choices, and it felt like my life had dramatically improved the moment I submitted it.

for other IB students out there, understand the risks you're getting into with the EE, be more diligent, use your time wisely, and DONT pick the circumflex as your topic for French if you do choose to cover French for your extended essay. Pick something you love, of course, but not something that secretly turns out to be a doctoral thesis.

Oh also, this was a week where I had to do four concerts in a week, and I had to miss wrestling practices in order to fit it all in, so after this was over, I was under immense pressure and stress more than some of you may face, so just make sure you give this enough time.

anyways that's really it, yasha out.