I got my semester results back… now what?

Congratulations, you survived Exam Handback Day! Whether you’re satisfied or disappointed with your results, know that mistakes are lessons to be learned and that they by no means reflect your capabilities.

I find that the school year is far more supportive of new beginnings than the actual year: two semesters means two official “resets”. So coming into this new semester (and New Year), it’s crucial that you reflect on last semester’s results and devise a plan of attack for this one. Here’s what to do.

Be honest with yourself.

Don’t play yourself. If you know you could have managed your time better, tell yourself. If you know you could have been more focused in class, tell yourself. If you could have looked after your mental, emotional and physical health, tell yourself. The first step to improvement is to be aware of what needs to be improved. You’ll feel uncomfortable and perhaps a bit guilty at first, but guilt isn’t going to get you better grades, sweetie. So forgive yourself and promise to make some changes this semester.

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Contrary to popular belief, no one is born with the IB syllabus in his or her head. All the content, concepts and skills in this course must be learned – and that is something that requires you to be uncomfortable. If your brain is a sponge then I truly envy you, but for everyone else, there will be a gazillion times where you won’t understand the content when it’s first presented. And that’s okay! What’s important is you accept the challenge and do whatever it takes to master that concept (asking your teacher, referring to textbooks, watching videos, doing practice questions, reviewing markschemes etc.) before you move onto the next one. Sure, it’s easy to throw your hands up in defeat because the French subjunctive mood makes absolutely no sense, but it’ll come back to bite you come assessment time. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable because IB is about improvement and improvement only happens when you can accept a challenge.

Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

Refuse to believe that your weaknesses will always be weaknesses. Every subject has different content, which means that every subject requires different strategies. Firstly, you need to figure out what which areas need improvement, whether that be skills or content. For example, perhaps you’re having trouble solving quadratics or your essay writing skills could be improved. Either way, make a list of skills and/or content that needs work for each subject, as per your previous semester results.

As IB is a two year course, you want to be able to master each stepping stone along the way so that you don’t have to re-learn it before your final exams (trust me, you don’t get as much revision time as you think you do). Once you’ve made this list, find ways to incorporate it into your homework schedule in bite-size chunks. For example in French, I realised that I needed to improve my listening skills, so I listen to a 5 minute podcast in French each night. It’s only five minutes a day, but the short burst keeps me motivated and the frequency ensures that the skill is improving at a constant rate. Or in previous maths exam, I got 0% for questions on binomial expansion so I watched videos and did practice questions until I was confident with it. It’s about consistency and resilience. Sometimes it feels like you’ll never get it, but if you keep working at it, you WILL get there. Don’t give up!

I guess the main theme of today’s post is resilience. I know how easy it is to feel discouraged after getting a bad exam score, but know that it does not define you. I don’t know if this is a good mindset to have, but I find that seeing exams as a “temperature check” of sorts to see what needs to be refined before the next exams relieves a lot of pressure and keeps me motivated. All in all, it’s inevitable that you’ll make mistakes, but it’s the extent to which you’re willing to correct them that counts!

You got this!

Haleena xx