Hey guys! Sorry I haven't written in like 7 years, but life has been ruff! This week I lost my macbook air, along with everything in it. You're all in IB so you know that loosing your laptop means loosing your life. It was so hard to get through this week knowing that its not with me, I just want to believe that someone will return it, and I won't believe its gone, I just won't.

On the bright side kinda, I am doing pretty well in English! It's the only class that I have not screwed up in yay! Other than that, I haven't been doing the greatest and it is really stressful. Everything is so stressful and report cards are coming out soon, I really don't know what to do.

Although, what I've realized this week is that stressing doesn't do anything but just make matters worse. Don't stress. Just relax. I know it might seem hard to not stress over things, but when you really sit down and think about it, you realize that stressing makes everything more stressful.

Here are a list of typical IB struggles you will/might have to go through. There will be two responses. One response will be something a typical overly stressed IB student would do and another response is what you should do.

1. You have a math test tomorrow and you do not understand anything, on top of that you have a 10 minute English presentation that you have to prepare for. What do you do?
A. Spend hours stressing, and stress even more when you realize you've been studying for math for 4 hours and you still do not understand anything.
B. Take 10 minutes out of your time to breathe. Make a cup of tea, or a nice quick snack for yourself.(I usually go with tea because I literally have no snacks in my house.)Write down exactly what you do not understand about math instead of freaking out about what you do not know. Take a nap, then try and get your English presentation out of the way.

2. You have a soccer game, and its the game of the season. Though you still haven't found time to start your English essay and its due tomorrow! What do you do?
A. Spend your whole day stressing in school thinking about whether you should go to your game or skip the game and start right on your essay.
B. During lunch or a study block, if you have one, try and format your essay. Trust me essays are a lot easier to write once you know the order of what you will say and you know what to day. You won't get a lot done in the first hour of writing your essay anyways, so go to the game. An hour and a half game won't take up that much time!

You see its a lot easier to get by our IB life problems without stressing. Both of these scenarios happened to me last year, and I figured out ways around them! If you can tell me one thing that stressing helps with, then you can stress. Though as of now, I can't think of any. Keep calm guys, we're all going to survive this.

Peace. Love. IB.

OKAY, so this whole weekend I've spent 99% of my time writing essays or at least trying to write essays and the other 1% eating life cereal, but I just cant do it anymore I CANNOT DO IT. I am lost for words, I have writers block, I dont know I just can't put words together anymore. I finished my second draft of my EE, and I spent most of today trying to write my written assignment for English, which is basically worth my whole life, and yours too if you're writing it right now like me. I honestly cant do it though, I have got nothing written down. I've been reading my rough copy from last year and it is actually a joke I must have wrote it on 30 minutes of sleep or something, but I have no idea how to fix it or turn it around, and its scaring me and ughh whatever. I also have my TOK essay due this friday on the same day of my written assignment, and I have zero idea of how I am actually going to survive that, I honestly have no idea. I am saving my TOK essay for last because I know it'll probably be the easiest to write because I can have personal examples, and actually have fun with it lol, but my English essay, I know it won't be easy. EVERYTHING this month is important, everything counts, EVERYTHING, and I am scared, SOOO scared, this year is moving too fast and I honestly do not know what to do. Well this post is supposed to teach you how to write an IB essay so I might as well try to help you, taking advice from me on this might not be the best idea, but hey why not?

Step 1: Have a good understanding of what you're writing about, do not just jump right into it.
Step 2: Plan out the whole essay, this will make everything 147539834282 times easier, I think the reason why I am having such a a hard time with my written assignment is the fact that i did not plan out any of it. I think I'll try that now lol.
Step 3: Find a quiet place to start writing, PUT AWAY ALL DISTRACTIONS, and play some mellow music in the background(I recommend Radiohead's "Ok Computer" album).
Step 4: GET PAST THE INTRO FAST, once you start everything moves so much quicker, GET PAST THAT WALL.
Step 5: Make sure you are following all of the criteria for the essay, and don't just meet it, EXCEED the criteria, We are all aiming for that A.
Step 6: Once you are done your essay first, throw a parade, feed the homeless,film a movie, star in a movie, change the world, cure cancer, start a campaign to provide education to all children in less developed countries THENNNNN reread your paper, get feedback, and change anything that needs to be changed. But here's a tip, try not to focus to hard on making it "Perfect" alright?

ESSAY SEASON IS HERE AND I WISH ALL OF YOU IB KIDS THE BEST OF LUCK.

Peace. Love. IB.