An Incomplete Guide to Science IAs

IA: acronym. Stands for Internal Assignment. Is a feature of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme where students research and write a mini-paper.

Dude, science IAs are not what the IB says they are. They can be confusing and tiring, and require way more time than the IB's prescribed "10 hours". No. I scrapped two chemistry IAs, a physics one, and had to rework some last-minute ethical concerns into my biology one. It is not a cakewalk. That stuff is 20% of your grade, but it's as stressful as 50%.

If you have actual lab experience, man, I'm happy for you, but for those of us who just kind of vaguely know how to use a pipette, a science IA is HARD. If you don't know how to work in a lab, the challenge of designing and conducting a laboratory experiment and then writing a report is terrifying.

Now, I take three science subjects. It's unusual in IB, but I did it. And so I had to do, naturally, three science IAs.
Yaaaay.
I got pretty lucky, actually. I'm not a particularly patient person, so I knew I wasn't going to be picking an IA topic I didn't care or wasn't even mildly curious about. I also knew that I was restricted by three things: my own experience/knowledge, my school's labs, and ethical considerations by IB guidelines.

Look, you're going to have to do an IA. It's an IB thing. And if you're going to be doing a science one, or two, or three, here are some things my friends and I figured out, and you need to know.


1. There are three major stages of doing an IA.

If you break down the process, there are three stages: finding and researching a topic, doing the experiment, and writing up the report.
These stages can sometimes blur together, or one can make a faint appearance in the middle of another one, but this is broadly the way it goes.
My science teachers made each of us write an actual proposal before we started lab work. We had to show a bit of background and a solid method to be approved. Then we could begin experimenting. We majorly griped about it but it's honestly really helpful, because you figure out how viable your idea is so you don't blunder through your labwork too aimlessly, and you know what your physical restrictions are (in terms of lab equipment available).
My point in elaborating this is: finding and researching a topic has to go together, or your idea won't get into the lab and onto the page. Once you know what you're doing, you can go about doing it. Then writing about it.

The Doctor doesn't know what he's doing. Don't be like that.

2. When choosing a topic, take into account restrictions.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was restricted in my IA choices by my experience and knowledge, the labs in my school, and IB ethical concerns. Working those considerations into my search for topics IMMEDIATELY narrowed my options, but in doing so, let me discard ones - however interesting - that I knew would not work out. With chemistry, for instance, I knew I couldn't use chloroform as a solvent. With biology, I knew I'm bad with plants, and that I didn't want to source expensive enzymes. With physics, which is my only science SL, I knew I didn't have the experience or material to build a complex circuit. Naturally, topics involving the things I couldn't do were ruled out before I could invest unnecessary time in them.

3. Starting early allows you time if you make mistakes or need to redo something.
Self explanatory, really. And yet we all love to procrastinate. Pro tip: don't. I started my second chem IA (the first died in draft stage) at the beginning of IB2. Which gave me time to do my third - and thankfully final - one when the second one failed.

4. Ask your teachers for help.
If you don't know something, ASK YOUR TEACHERS. "Ma'am, I found this method, but we don't have the material. I was thinking I could modify it like this...would that work?" Most of the time, they. Will. Help. You have to prove you're actually working on it and you just need confirmation or a little guidance. In my class, the kids who showed their progress, asked questions, and had an answer to "How is your IA going?" were the ones who got help. They were proving their sincerity and determination. The kids who evaded? Got way less help. Stay on your teacher's good side, get some help to boost your IA, and go do your labwork.

5. Don't be too meh or too creative.
So IAs are supposed to be unique, or something. News flash: you guys are like 15-18, you don't need to create an invention. My teacher, introducing IAs to us, said something along the lines of "It doesn't have to be completely new. You can take an existing experiment, and give your own unique addition or twist."
"Like what?" I asked.
"You can investigate a different variable...add something new."
"Like glitter?" I suggested.
Apparently not glitter. I'd suggest using something in the textbook that isn't explained in much detail as a starting point. That makes it a little more unique, but also not too much of a wildcard.

6. Graphs are good, but they need to make sense.
If you can show your data as a graph, great! (Without being redundant, that is. Don't unnecessarily repeat stuff. Talk to your teachers to figure out what qualifies as unnecessary.) But make sure the graph makes sense. I'm talking trendlines, axes labels with units, keys, error bars. Explain your graph in the text if you want. It needs to make sense, or else you're just filling up space.

The accuracy of this chart is undeniable, but its relevance? Kind of contentious. Don't do it.

7. Explanations are important.
So, on the subject of things making sense, I was asked in my IAs to clarify things that I thought were obvious. To stay on the safe side, write out your procedure so that it is crystal clear. Don't say "20 ml of the solution is measured" say "20 ml of <whatever solution> is measured using a measuring cylinder". When in doubt, give an explanation. It doesn't have to be long, but it's good to give a little context to your data, or mention your apparatus, or explicitly state the implications of your results. If the examiner's expectations change or something, your teachers can always tell you to remove your clarification.


With that being said, IAs are really about research, work, and luck. Know what you're getting into, in terms of what the IB wants and how you plan to execute your work. Keep your teachers in the loop. You don't have to give them hour-by-hour updates, but regularly checking in with them can help you: a) catch mistakes - whether procedural, calculation, or formatting - before they get too bad
b) stay on your teacher's good side, which makes them happier to help you, and
c) improve your IA as best as you can so you get a decent grade.

I hope this helps you with your IAs, and good luck!

How To Buy Time In Lit Class

If my literature teacher finds this post, I'm in so much trouble.

Seriously, have you ever heard of this?

I take English A Literature HL. What that means is I have to read quite a few essays, poems, novels, and plays. A bunch of these, I have literally never heard of (before I got my list of works, I had absolutely no idea who JM Coetzee or Saul Bellow were). Others are just hard to find. I mean, it's really easy to get yourself a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, especially living in India, and ditto to Shakespeare's Hamlet, but where the heck do you get Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children without trawling through Flipkart? It's a German play set during a European war like four centuries ago, what are the chances of it being in your local JustBooks?


Also, some of these are...dull. (I don't want to put you off, but you are incredibly likely to be forced to read at least one very boring text you struggle to finish during IB, whether you take Literature or Language and Literature)

Basically, sometimes class discussion and analysis of a text starts before you actually read it, whether that's because you haven't gotten a copy or it's slow to the point of being soporific or you have more pressing assignments. I get it. I do. You're going to have to eventually read it (I can say with the authority of experience that reading the book tends to majorly improve your scores) but here are some ways you can buy time to do so.


SECRET #1: Google Zindabad

You're gonna have to do the research. Google the text. Stuff like Wikipedia and Sparknotes will get you through several classes while you read the book. Get a basic understanding of the plot - even if sometimes you feel as if there is none - and some of the main characters.

Don't go into class with the vague knowledge that The Namesake is about a dude named after a Russian author. Go in knowing that it's set in the Indian diaspora in New England, spanning several decades and following the story of Gogol Ganguli, a whiny ABCD kid traumatised by the fact that his parents named him after depressed Russian author Nikolai Gogol. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of the book?)

SECRET #2: Pay Attention in Class

What, you thought I'd give you an easy way to sleep in class? Pay attention, kid, and you'll pull through IB.
This one's fairly self-explanatory. Pay attention. You'll learn stuff. It'll help you understand what on earth is going on when you do read the text.

SECRET #3: Sound Intelligent

I mean, I'm sure you're smart. But when I say "sound intelligent", I'm talking about asking smart questions in class. Stuff like "Could you give an example of the use of irony?" or "Does <character name> exemplify <philosophy that the author subscribed to>?" instead of "Who is this random character who came in during chapter 5?"

SECRET #4: Know Literary Terminology

You don't really need to know obscure literary terms like "lipogram" (which, by the way, is kind of random), but make sure you understand the difference between metaphors and similes, and know stuff like irony, personification, allusions, euphemisms, and hyperbole. This helps you with #3, sounding intelligent.

And finally, once you've bought your time, there's one more thing to do: read the text. To do this, keep one thing in mind-

SECRET #5: Persevere

Okay, so you finally access a copy of the work, and you don't have any immediate assignments, and you start to read...
...and it's boring.
Not every literature text is interesting. And with all the work you have, you might want to just relax and coast off your Sparknotes.
Don't. Give. Up.
My classmates were surprised when I read one of our texts in about an hour because, although it was barely over a hundred pages, there was so little plot that they had struggled for a few weeks.
Do you really want to spend weeks on a text when you can read it in a few hours? I didn't much like that text either, but I had no intention of prolonging that boredom. I refused to get up until I finished, and I read the book faster than anyone else.

My point? Persevere. Push through unwillingness or boredom when you read a text. You'll save yourself time, and you'll get it done with. It's a weight off your shoulders.


Good luck!

To My Fellow Fans

For the past few years, I've been posting on the 31st of July, writing open letters to Harry Potter and his creator, and an excited rant about how much I was looking forward to Cursed Child.

This year is kinda more special. I mean, sure, last year we had a NEW CANON BOOK (that half the fandom subsequently rejected but still) starting from the last scene of Deathly Hallows, but this year marks twenty years since the publication of Philosopher's Stone.

To be honest, I was kind of stumped about what to write. I mean, I did use up a lot of good material in three years. Then I found this collection of emotional tributes that genuinely gave me goosebumps, and it nearly sent me down a rabbit hole (oops, wrong fictional universe) of Harry Potter content calculated to make me tear up.

Which got me thinking not about the wizarding world and its inhabitants, but the people of our world who are so invested in it. My fellow fans, in other words. And this letter is to them.


Dear fellow Potterheads,

It's the 31st of July! Harry's birthday, JK Rowling's birthday, pretty much OUR day. It's been twenty years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out, twenty years since the fandom was born, twenty years since the doors of the wizarding world were thrown open to our world, twenty years since someone opened a book on a shelf to read of how proud Mr and Mrs Dursley of Number Four, Privet Drive were to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

Can I just say what a massive community we are? There must be Potterheads on every continent- except maybe Antarctica, unless a scientist studying weather patterns and penguins there turns out to be one.

I have seen strange and wonderful things in my years as a member of this fandom. I've seen fanart, Tumblr posts, fanfiction, homemade merch, cosplay, edits, GIFsets, quizzes and more. I've dedicated an entire folder on my computer to fanfiction I write, most of which is set in the Potterverse. As I type this, I'm wearing a T-shirt I painted with "DRACO DORMIENS NUNQUAM TITILLANDUS", and the initials of some of my favourite characters (I had so much trouble choosing them!) are written on my fingernails.

I've encountered fanfiction from the enthusiatically but confusedly written to the beautifully crafted. I've read POVs and AUs and things in between. I've seen casual sketches and intricately coloured paintings. I've come across ships I never would've thought of - ranging from the somehow perfect to the slightly weird to the downright strange - and theories that answered questions I never realised I had. I've become emotional at heartbreaking headcanons, I've laughed at hilarious posts and compilations of overlooked Potter-sass, I've scrolled through DIYs for a Tonks cosplay, I've watched amazing fan videos, listened to medleys of the movie score, taken all kinds of how-well-do-you-know or which-character-are-you quizzes, whistled Hedwig's theme anywhere and everywhere and had people turn around to smile or join in. I've quoted characters in class, in random conversations, even in speeches - just today I ended an official speech with the words "mischief managed".

This is a fandom that has consistently captured my attention. I may go through phases of other series or TV shows, but the Potterverse and this fandom has been there the longest for me. When I'm stressed or tired or having a bad day, it's often a single Harry Potter post or image or video, sent by a friend or popping up on my YouTube suggestions, that can cheer me up.

It's you who cheer me up.

We may have ship wars, disagree on choices of AUs, fight over characters' motivation and portrayal, argue over whether Snape was a "good guy" or not, have passive-aggressive exchanges online about random aspects of this incredibly detailed universe. But there's a reason we're a community.

We're people who were drawn to the adventures of a young wizard named Harry James Potter and his incredible friends (who deserve appreciation posts of their own) as they fought for equality and goodness against a heartless villain.
We're people who were charmed by the detail and intricacy of this world.
We're people who almost unanimously hate Dolores Jane Umbridge.
We're people who still sometimes feel annoyed by CALMLY.
We're people who understand each other's immersion in the Potterverse, who know there are others who feel as strongly, to whom it means as much or more.
We're people who love the Wizarding World. People who question it, marvel at it, but ultimately, feel like we're a part of it.
We're people who believe in magic. Maybe not the kind that allows someone to regrow bones overnight, make a broomstick fly, or teleport groups of people. We believe in the magic of a story, in the power of words to evoke emotions. Words are, after all, the most inexhaustible source of magic at Hogwarts.

So thank you, my fellow Potterheads. Thank you for sharing this universe with me, for opening up unprecedented parts of it for me to explore with you. This has been a fantastic five years for me, a fantastic twenty years for the fandom, and I look forward to many more.

Happy Potterverse Day!
-Purple Dragonfly

A Guide to MUN Jargon

A teacher walks into your class and announces that there's a Model United Nations conference being held somewhere or other and is anyone interested. You've heard about these MUNs. People dressing up fancy and going and debating about international issues. You raise your hand. It'll be your first MUN and you're excited.
You walk in to the venue and you're surrounded by other delegates. A lot of them are far more experienced than you and are talking, quickly and loudly, about all sorts of things. They mention UnMods, RoP, reso, blocs- it's as if they're speaking a foreign language. You didn't know that there would be a whole new dialect of English you have to know.

This situation sound familiar? To put it mildly, it's not fun. Luckily, I, with my *cough* staggering *cough* wealth of experience in MUNs, bring to you a crash course on the basics of this strange language.

(Before you go for any MUNs, though, I recommend you go to some introductory sessions where they explain everything and you can ask questions.)

Agenda: the issue you'll be discussing in committee

Allocation: this is what committee and country or body you have been assigned; for example, you could be Mozambique in the UN General Assembly, or the UNHCR (the Office for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) in the UN Human Rights Committee

Bloc: this is a group of delegates who have decided they have similar goals and want to work together to produce a resolution; they are bros...for the time being

Chair: the group of people sitting at a table in the front of the room, directing the debate, and trying not to cringe when a delegate makes the same procedural mistake multiple times

Chits: notes; you're allowed to send notes to other delegates in committee or the Chair; you can discuss possible alliances, ask about procedure, say something you didn't get a chance to say in formal session (if you have good points, these can boost your chances of getting an award if you send it to a delegate via the Chair or directly to the Chair), complain about boredom, or flirt; however, if you plan to do one of those last two things, keep in mind that someone will read your chits and derive great enjoyment from them

Crisis: the bane or saviour of committee, depending on when it comes (dull time in committee? nearly close to resolution?), a crisis is exactly what it sounds like, a sudden high-stakes emergency the committee must immediately address; there is an entire panel of people who make up crises and I kid you not they are out to make your next couple of hours as stressful as they possibly can, and if you are a P5 country or some nation important to the agenda you my friend are going to be their running targets and let me tell you, in this metaphor they are snipers

GSL: an acronym for General Speakers List, this is your chance to give a 90-second speech about your (country's) foreign policy and stance on the agenda and show the Chair you're participating; if you make sure to put yourself on this list, you are far less likely to be called upon without warning to say something when you're unprepared to do so because you're not active enough (the Chair will do this to you); there is also something called the SSL or Special Speaker's List, which is basically a GSL during a crisis

Motion: almost anything you want to do in committee must be raised as a motion; motion to start a debate, to open the GSL, to move into a caucus and so on; the most fun one is the Motion for Entertainment, where you can have confessions, dares, and crazy things to appeal to the senses of immature and hormonal delegates

Pre-ambs: short for "preambulatory clause", the kind of words you use in the beginning of a resolution to outline the problem you're trying to solve and how much you hate the existence of the problem; one of those fancy abbreviations experienced delegates use

Reso: this is a shortened form of "resolution", the big document of solutions for your committee's agenda that some delegate puts forward and everyone votes on; this term can be used by anyone, but I first came across it when some fancy kind-of-arrogant delegate with a bunch of awards casually threw it out while talking to me, probably hoping that I'd get intimidated (I didn't and yes, it is possible I'm being paranoid about that guy trying to intimidate me, but it's normal to find delegates showing off, for example me)

RoP: this stands for "rules of procedure" and is basically the list of rules for how MUNs work and how everyone behaves (hint: formally)

UnMod: short for "unmoderated caucus", this is considered informal debate; basically you can get up and walk around and talk to people and write drafts of working papers or resolutions to be presented in formal committee session; more importantly this is an opportunity to suspend formality and use slang and words like "legit" (which is, for some reason, frowned upon in formal session)


And there you have it! A non-exhaustive but hopefully useful guide to MUN jargon. To those of you about to go for your first MUN, I hope this helps you and that you have fun! And to those of you who have been to MUNs before, let me know in the comments if I missed any important terminology calculated to mess with the mind of a nervous delegate.

IB Without Hashtags

"Sooo much work 😢😢 #IBLyf"
The number of variants on this that I've heard from my classmates deserves a sarcastic #noreally because I've heard/seen it on Snapchat screenshots far too much. (Snapchat...captions? What do the social-media-savvy people call the text they carefully put over photos?)

And even though my FB news feed largely consists of fandom posts, photos of acquaintances who have social lives, and feminist articles, every once in a while there'll be an IB meme like:

This one is probably true, tbh

Welcome to the community of IB students. So far what I've seen of it is dire warnings and complaints about the amount of work we have. Literally the only positive things I've seen about it is on ibsurvival.com - which is proving to be helpful in figuring out the many odd things IB requires you to do - by people who've graduated IB already (yes, such people exist) saying "It'll help you in college, just get through this!"


I'm...hopefully going to do neither. Since I'm not an IB graduate but a current student, I will not be the encouraging "I got through it so can you" kind of person, but nor will I be the "IB IS DEATH" kind of person (in my personal experience, the people - at least in my class - who complain the most tend to do the least work).

I'm starting now, at the end of IB-1, and if you're graduating with me, good luck, folks. If you're not, sit back with some popcorn. It's going to be a rollercoaster ride.

...and even if it's not a rollercoaster, it's not like you need an excuse to eat popcorn.

AQB: The Red Tent

One kind of story I really enjoy is when an author takes a classic tale- a fairy tale, folk tale, mythological epic- and puts their own spin on it or writes it from a new point of view. In fact, two of my favourite books are this kind- Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner, a new spin on the classic story of the One Thousand and One Nights, and Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, a retelling of the Cinderella story.

Anita Diamant's The Red Tent kind of fits into this category: it is based on a section of the Bible. Now, I know very little about the narratives of the Bible (so I'm not sure how the plot of the book matches with the Biblical narratives), but I did some research - because I believe in understanding at least some of the context - and here's what I understand from my Googling.
The Book of Genesis narrates the story of several generations. The last two of these individuals (representing their generations) are Jacob, also called Israel, and his son Joseph. Jacob is said to have had twelve sons - of which Joseph was the eleventh and fated to be the supreme - and one daughter, Dinah. Dinah is a minor character in Genesis - there is one story about her called "the rape of Dinah", a violent episode which ends in her brothers committing a massacre/genocide - but The Red Tent is her story.

The red tent is a sacred spot to the women of Jacob's family - it is where they must spend their periods and when they are in labour, a place where they give each other support. It's symbolic of the bond between women, and of the stories kept alive by the womenfolk. The Red Tent is the story of a woman in a man's world, an account of the sweeping stories of Jacob and Joseph but also of the small stories of forgotten characters.
 "...It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing..." says Dinah.

I decided to read The Red Tent for multiple reasons- it was on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, I had a copy at home, it was a suggestion when Emma Watson's feminist reading club (Our Shared Shelf) on Goodreads was voting for a book of the month, AND my mom recommended it (I trust my mom's recommendations).
I'm really, really glad these factors came together and I read it because it is one of THE best books I've ever read. And that's even though I didn't know anything about the Book of Genesis until my research. Seriously. It's fantastic.

P.S: If you read The Red Tent (and I hope you do, because it is REALLY good), I'd recommend knowing at least a little about the stories of Jacob and Joseph, just to provide context.

Of A Cursed Child

Disclaimer: This post contains no spoilers. This is largely due to the fact that I haven't finished the book yet, but also because #keepthesecret, guys, it's only been a few hours.

Before I begin, allow me to say something in a language popularized by the vast community of excited fans of anything:
ASDFGHJKL;ICANTEVENWSDJKAJFAHLJ

Unless you have been living under a rock, with no internet connection, by now you would have heard about Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, the much-publicized script of the (again) much-publicized play of the same name set immediately after "Nineteen Years Later", and dubbed the "eighth Harry Potter book.

Let me repeat that. THE EIGHTH HARRY POTTER BOOK.
*sigh of pleasure*
Since I was too young to have actually followed the entire series as it came out, I cannot paraphrase Sirius and scream- I DID MY WAITING! NINE YEARS OF IT!
But certainly, as a Harry Potter fan, I can hold the book and (changing fictional worlds here) whisper myyyy preeeecioussss.
(My classmates would trip over themselves running away from me, despite the allure of the "precious". I do a creepy Gollum impression. Thanks, Andy Serkis, for teaching me too well.)

Some people have said that this is a year when the Harry Potter fandom has risen again, what with Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them coming to theatres in a few months. This is my response:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHANO.

JK Rowling invites you to return to the wizarding world-
IT'S NOT LIKE WE LEFT IT.

So no, this book is not a return to the wizarding world, and no, the Harry Potter fandom has not "risen again" because we STILL talk about Harry Potter. We still argue about our favourite characters, we still write fanfic, we still draw fanart, we still defend our Hogwarts houses, we still complain about calmly (it's been like eleven years and we're still angry), we still pore through all the extra info on Pottermore and Twitter that JK Rowling releases. 

It's just that now we're seeing what happened after that scene on Platform 9 3/4, with Harry watching his sons leave on the train, a hand to the scar that had not pained in nineteen years, thinking that all was well.
(Apparently all is not well, since there's a story immediately after that thought.)

So now, on Harry's thirty-sixth birthday, and JK Rowling's fifty-first birthday (happy birthday, by the way), we catch the train with Albus and ride to Hogwarts for his first year and the story of the Cursed Child.

Because whether by page or by the big screen (or now the stage), Hogwarts will be there to welcome us home.