I don't care! Do you? by Raymond

°∞I don°Øt care the grades.°±, "It's so easy.", "Everybody can get A's", "Let's Rock N' roll", says students, with striking scorns on their face. However, really? Is the first year, the Pre-IB, a piece of cake with barely any pressure? Well, literally, may be. But, substantially, NO!

To begin with, remember one thing that it's PRE-IB, therefore the all the things you do is for the IBDP stage, which is really a horrible giant, in order to get better performance, as an eternal truth, the more you do now, the easier live in the future. Personally speaking, I strongly recommend freshmen use your free time to do everything you can to improve their English -what I mean here is not only TOEFL which I will mention later- which includes reading, listening, speaking and writing. So, I divide these into two parts, input (reading&listening) and output (writing&speaking). There is no doubt that the output is based on the input; That is why you should spend your pre-IB, the relatively leisure time, on reading more books and listening some materials you are interested in, like TED, BBC News, VOA or television series. Anyway, to come to the point, English skill is the foundation and the basic tool you have to master since what you choose is an international diploma and the rest of the subjects are pretty easy for you guys.

What's more, oh, the balance between standard examinations (TOEFL and SAT) and schoolwork. You see, the standard exams are important but they are at most thresholds, and the GPA you get in school is supreme and the lessons in school is something, from which you can actually learn. So, be smart at time management and obey the codes school make.

Yeah, there is some experience I want to share with you and if you have any questions, feel free to ask us, cos we are all willing to learn mutually with you all.

Raymond Wu