A young expat

Though school started almost three months ago, it is only now that I feel I am truly settling in.

After a long and lazy summer, it was back to the books in early September. Starting Grade 12 was a shock to the system, to say the least. During my first few weeks of IB (the diploma progam followed by my school for the last two years of high school), there was no time for relaxing - it was work, work and more work. By the end of September, I was wondering if I was going to be able to make it to graduation alive.

I managed to get into it, though. During moments of panic, I simply told myself: "I'll get through this, I'll get through this." And, somehow, I did. Despite the English commentaries, the History essays, the lab reports, the French oral presenatations, I managed to move forward.

Maybe it was just sheer determination, maybe it was the knowledge that others before had succeeded. But really, I think it was the knowledge that all my peers were going through the same trials and tribulations. To know that we're all together in what we are doing lends you the only things that can bring you to the day when you are handed that diploma: strength and reassurance.

During some of the sleepless nights and panic attacks I'm sure are inevitable during the next two years, I will have to tell myself what I have written here today.  

   

Like, I’m sure, many others did, I spent my Saturday watching the festivities that occurred around the world thanks to the eleven Live Earth concerts.

 

For those of you not familiar with the concept of Live Earth, it was a series of concerts held around the world (in London, New York City, Washington DC, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Kyoto, Shanghai, Sydney, Hamburg, Lisbon, Viminacijum (Serbia) and even the Rothera Research station in Antarctica) that raised awareness for climate change. There were performances from all the world’s most well-known artists: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Genesis, Metallica, The Police, Kanye West … I could go on and on. Still, all the artists had a common goal: to bring solving global warming to the top of people’s “To do” lists.

 

Though the performances themselves had little to do with climate change (apart from the artists playing songs loosely connected with saving the world, being wasteful, etc.), the theme of the day was indisputably that of “let’s get our act together”. While the artists played, lists of small things that could be done to help stop climate change ran across the backdrop of the stage. In between performances, experts on global warming were interviewed by the TV presenter. And the event was, supposedly, carbon neutral.

 

Supposedly. In fact, a total of 31,500 tons of Carbon Dioxide were released into the atmosphere in preparation for the event. Although the actual concerts themselves were carbon neutral, it took the same amount of Carbon Dioxide that the average Briton produces in 3,000 years to fly the artists to their respective venues. It raises the question: how much good did Live Earth do? It produced an amount of Carbon Dioxide that will take an immense amount of money and time to neutralize. The people that attended the concerts live left behind an immense amount of trash. But most worrying of all is that all of this creates lethargy and doubt. When people will hear about how they should help to stop climate change, many willl say “Yeah, well, these are the same people that got artists to fly a total of nine times around the world to play at Live Earth”. As a result, nothing will get done, and before we know it, it will be too late.   

 

Still, like Live Aid (1985) and Live 8 (2005) before it, I’m sure Live Earth will change the way we look at things. Maybe it’s wrong to think this, but when we are constantly bombarded with facts and statistics from people we’ve never heard of, it’s difficult to take action. But when people we hear about and see every day make a stand, it is an inspiration. Think about it. Most people didn’t think that global warning was a serious issue until Al Gore’s movie, An inconvenient truth, came out. Two years ago, you would never see a hybrid car or solar panels. Now it’s almost commonplace. So when not only former US Vice Presidents, but rock stars, actors and stand-up comedians rally to stop global warming, in front of a worldwide audience of some 2 billion people, something will surely change.

 

  Summer vacation began only very recently, but the looming prospect of what awaits me in September is already starting to ruin my time away from school.   

 

  For anyone, starting the International Baccalaureate (IB), a programme similar to the Swiss Maturité or the British A-levels, is not easy. Evenings taken over by two to three hours of homework, sleepless nights spent fretting over the lack of time you have, and weekends spent hurriedly trying to get CAS hours (credits for extra-curricular activities) make the final two years of high school, in the words of members my school's staff, "The worst two years of your life". I am, of course, not speaking from experience, but from the knowledge imparted to me by survivors.

 

  Still, people often come out of the IB feeling that it was the best possible preparation not only for university, but for life in the real world. A new relationship is developed with teachers, one that encourages independence and self-learning. Unlike in previous years, where most of what is required of you is the regurgitation of information given to you by the teacher, students are given a starting point from which to work, and then have to figure out the next steps themselves. Of course, in later life, you would be hard-pressed to find a job in which you are given information and told to apply it, as is the case for the school’s younger students. Most employers want people who take new, creative approaches, who think outside the box, who not only use the information imparted to them correctly, but also come up with their own ideas. This, I believe, is what the IB wants its students to become.

 

  But no prospective IB student can help but worry. It seems as though this programme steals the freedom we so enjoyed during our childhood, and turns us into adults. Of course, this has its upsides, but there is something so frightening about knowing that, come this fall, myself and my friends and classmates will become entirely different people. I cannot bring myself to imagine what it would be like to no longer enjoy that light-heartedness, to be forced to sleep only when I can find the time, to not be able to laugh without looking at my watch, thinking about how much time I have left before I have to get back to the books.

   On September 3^rd, a new era will begin for me and the rest of the class of 2009. We will suffer disappointments, fitful sleeps and physical and mental exhaustion. Still, we will take on the challenge and come out, for better or for worse, changed people.  

 

          

                                               

The infamous IB hexagon: the list of required fields of study.