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It's no secret to anyone that the IBDP is rigorous. That being said, it was designed by human beings for other younger human beings to get through. It's not supposed to be inhumane and unreasonable. Surviving (and thriving in) the program and keeping my head afloat boiled down to a couple of things for me.
I'll speak about coursework deadlines first, since that's what all of us IB folk need to survive (lest we start getting hunted by our teachers). Yes, there are a lot. For my school they really started to pile up near the beginning of IB2. How did I get through everything? Every morning, I used this super awesome 2 step strategy:
Use paper to write down things to do for that day in a checklist 2. Do those things for that day (one at a time) No, seriously. That's all I did for the entirety of term 1 everyday to keep myself accountable for my IB workload.
And I met all my deadlines. Didn't miss a single one.
Here's an example of a checklist I made:
Write last 2 paragraphs of CAS final reflection (wrote the rest the previous day)
Fix Chem IA Outline according to teacher's feedback
Revise topics 体验 and 身份认同 and prep notes for oral exam
Arrange EE consultation session with teacher
Prepare list of things to ask, clarify or things to take note of going forward with EE supervisor to have a productive session
You may notice that point four (from the top) is really simple. What?! Just arranging an EE consultation session?
That takes like 1 minute! Yeah. It does. But it belongs on my list for a good reason.
Why? Because I use that momentum of getting at least 1 thing done to snowball that into getting more and more things done that day. It worked for me! I usually always include this one super easy task to (literally) get the ball rolling. Try it!
As for your exam seasons, there's another method I used that I came up with myself:
It's called Google Sheets.
Towards finals I made a spreadsheet that documented exactly how many past year papers I did for each subject in the runway from prelims all the way until the first paper. This helped me easily visualize and prioritize the subjects where I could literally see I lacked a bit of practice since prelims.
You don't have to do this for each and every single exam season (I only did this for finals since it was time to try a little harder than usual). For the other exam seasons I kinda just spammed past year papers while adopting the 3 step Oh-I-Made-A-Mistake method.
Step 1: Do paper
Step 2: Mark paper and find mistakes
Step 3: Save the question you got wrong in a folder or something and do them again the next day
Worked for me! Try it when you're revising and all that.
I'm of the opinion that doing past year papers as practice is the single most time efficient way to improve at most subjects. While marking your own work keep in mind that the markscheme is your friend. It literally tells you where certain marks are awarded and which certain keywords warrant a +1 to your score. Once, in biology, there was a question where writing “3n is triploid” and “4n is tetraploid” EACH gave you 1 mark. Thats 2 free marks if this question ever appeared again! (Which, by the way, a similar one did for my finals and guess who was on the receiving end of free points?) These are free and easy marks that you will learn to pick up the more papers you do.
And eventually, when you've done enough papers and have seen all that there is to see…
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles” - Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The papers in the exam hall felt like another routine practice session for me! (Free marks)
P.S: All this keeping up with deadlines and stuff doesn't have to come at the expense of your recreational time. I did all that and still had some time to mess around and do the things I love (my hobbies are very secret and I'm not putting them in this post)
P.S.2: When going for consultation sessions with teachers I highly recommend doing what I did and preparing a list of things to ask. Don't be one of those people who go just for the sake of "checking in", not a good use of everyone's time.
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