Friday!!!!

Friday is surely the most liberating and exhilarating day of the week. To honor that tradition, I will start a tradition of posting purely hilarious things completely unrelated to IB that make life worth living.

Like whales. Whales make life worth living. Especially orcas.

Study Buddy

One of the truly amazing things as an IB student is that one of my best tutors is my cat. Gus (named after the theatre cat in Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical Cats), takes immense pleasure in lounging wherever I happen to be doing homework. He is one of my best tutors, because cats just make everything better. I'm sure he thinks he's being helpful, because he knows cats are far superior in intellect, and I can somehow absorb some of that through his presence. It probably is true.

Felix Felis (Latin for "Happy Cat")

Cats are the center of everything rational and irrational (including numbers)

Gus can do math with his eyes closed

Mathocalypse Now

One of the rudest awakenings of all time is discovering how dependent I am on my beautiful calculator. Once you take that away from me, I'm practically helpless. This is the case in IB math, which has just the luck to be my hardest class. My teacher opposes extensive calculator use on principle, and I have my first quiz tomorrow, which I will take without the aid of a calculator. When confronted with that bleak scenario, I discovered to my utter shame that I couldn't remember how to multiply on paper (Give me a break, I haven't had to in at least 3 years, if not more). This is when I realized that should humanity ever be robbed of its technology, its computers, its internet, and its calculators, it would be followed with nothing short of apocalypse.

 I can see it now, the horror when all the computers across the world collapse. The desperate hunt for information, only computers and phones aren't working, and news networks must resort to ancient tv broadcasting methods. National governments assume the worst and begin blaming old enemies, starting to go to war, but stopping once they realize they don't have weapons or tactical capabilities. The panicked go to gather supplies, but credit cards don't work and no one can withdraw cash from their accounts. People resort to stealing to stay alive, and violently defend what is theirs. There's nothing anyone can do about this anarchy, though, as hospitals and law enforcement can't function properly without their technology. Cities become battle grounds with tribal territories marked in blood. There may be an exodus of people to the countryside, but all of us have grown accustomed to the luxuries provided by our technology cushioned existence, and cannot survive for long. Fields are plundered, and soon people rely on subsistence farming to eat. Then the harvest is bad, and more bloodshed ensues. Then plague strikes, but we don't have the technology to develop a cure. Those who are left are reduced to nothing more than primitive beings, armed with a rudimentary intellect and thirst for survival. During all this, the paranoid who built underground shelters in the case of nuclear war have the last laugh, but not even they can last long, as they did not prepare nearly enough supplies, and die alone and forgotten in their tomb-like havens.

At this point, the issue of man vs. technology can only have one outcome: destruction of mankind. My calculator is only the beginning of the end. 

IB Inception

As I said, the whole point of IB is global learning. Obviously, there are going to be regional and cultural biases that would skew how we absorb information. So IB has a little thing called Theory of Knowledge. Basically, it explores what we know and believe, and why we know it and believe it. Although I have only had two actual TOK classes, they both have impressed this on me more than anything else: TRUST NOTHING! TOK is like a devious existentialist mind trap. As soon as I walk in the door, I revert to a baseline of questioning everything. It all started when the teacher asked us to name one thing we knew with absolute certainty. Instantly I went from, "La-ti-da. So this is TOK?" to "Do I even exist?" Since then, I treat every question posed in the class like a birthday cake that could have a grenade concealed in its depths. It may seem full of promise, but it could be a trick. After assessing the frail stability of reality in TOK, I have decided that I need to acquire a totem of the Inception variety. Only this will indicate whether what I'm experiencing is real or not. If I used a top like Leonardo DiCaprio, I could see if it stopped spinning after class to tell whether or not I'm back in reality.

Today we discussed what happiness is and why we feel it. Naturally, I was reminded of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies of all time:

This also flashed through my mind when the concept of truth was brought up:

Art really does reflect life. At least how IB sees life.

Cogito Ergo Sum

How big of a nerd do you have to be to choose to blog about school? I prefer to call it Geek Chic. Anyway, I am about to embark on the greatest journey I have ever yet taken. I'm not out to destroy the ring of power or Voldemort's Horcruxes, or even trying to keep the Daleks from taking over the universe. No, my quest shall be even more arduous. I am an International Baccalaureate Full Diploma Candidate. That means I'm participating in one of the most prestigious educational programs humanity has to offer. It's all about building an international mentality through education, and has unique elements that focus on critical thinking and and social awareness. It also means I'll be working my butt off for the next two years, all the while trying to be a high school student.  So IB will take over my life, hence the reworking of Descartes' immortal quote. Here ends "I am," and begins "IB."