<p>@purplesweater best of luck applying!</p>
<p>Thanks @luna, and best of luck to you to. Atleast I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that i’m not competing with all of you, or much people for that matter.</p>
<p>@purplesweater I don’t think you’ve mentioned this yet - where are you from?</p>
<p>Speaking of classes, is anyone else already in full IB Diploma?</p>
<p>@knoxandonyx nope, my school doesn’t offer it (though I recently heard that they had considered it a few years ago, but didn’t end up committing to all the teacher training and such).</p>
<p>Mmm, good question! Favorite class- AP Psych. It’s so easy and so much fun. My hardest class is probably Chem.</p>
<p>@lunascreatures AP world covers pretty much everything, haha. We start from the beginning of man and go to modern day, spanning the entire world. It’s kinda crazy. For example, we covered the Holocaust in 2 days but were supposed to know more than the kids in college prep who covered it in 2 weeks, so thats the pace we’re set at. Good news is, it’s touted to be the hardest AP our school offers (by a long shot, most say) so I’ve survived the worst! 2 weeks left and I’m out of there 
It probably is worth it, but too stressed to care.
Also, ASL is awesome, but I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you can teach yourself. You have to learn to see signs as well as sign them, and the sentence structure is pretty whack. I’m not sure how that would work… but I LOVE the class!</p>
<p>@lindzmm Yeah, that’s why I gave up (also, I really was young - something like second grade)! And wow, that sounds stressful. I love Euro - it’s spread out a lot more than that and rather in-depth. I’m awful at history though (because I remember concepts, not facts), so the in-depth stuff gets really hard at times.</p>
<p>@Lunascreatures I want to say our class isn’t in depth, but I guess it can go either way. We learn a little of everything so some things are while others aren’t. Sometimes I feel like this class is 100% memorizing facts because its all “this happened on this day”, “this person did this”, and so on. I’m with you though, not the best at history! It also frustrates me because history is pretty biased. I mean, I’m learning from a US book and I bet the people from other countries have different opinions on all the things we’re learning. It’s imposible not to have a bias, but it bothers me nonetheless.</p>
<p>@lindzmm Luckily, the amazing euro teachers at my school both avoid making us learn dates - the only ones we have to know are “hubdates”, or significant years, like 1492, 1517, 1555. I don’t know if this is my teacher, my textbook, or something ese, but I feel like this class has actually been presented in a pretty rounded and unbiased manner - maybe it’s because we’ve only gotten up to the Industrial Revolution, and it’s not recent enough to still have lingering prejudice. I actually wrote my prejudice/bias/tolerance essay about how AP Euro helped me change how I perceived religion in others because it gave me a greater understanding of where some religions came from/how they were shaped by history and how they shaped history. I’m not really looking forward to WWI and II, though, because I definitely think that those units will be way more Americanized.</p>
<p>@lunascreatures Thats awesome! Yeah, we just finished WWII and are getting into the cold war and it’s becoming more apparent. It’s not necessarily an obvious bias, it’s just there. Sorry if that makes no sense, I’m falling asleep trying to finish my homework :P</p>
<p>@lindzmm No, I get it! And urgh…I’m not looking forward to sitting in class during the Cold War unit. My parents left the USSR basically as it was collapsing, so on one hand I’ve got the Russian heritage and connection to that culture but on the other hand, my parents and I understand just how messed up Russia was (and is now starting to be again). I’m anticipating sitting in class with people expecting me to have an opinion (especially with the slightly biased lessons) and me just going “umm, I don’t know?”</p>
<p>@lunascreatures aww, I’m sure it wont be too bad! By the way, I forgot to mention, your essay on overcoming biases sounds great. Thats a perfect way to bring in your academics and such more. I did that one on religion too. I would say I’m pretty cultured as far as my friends go, but religiously, not so much. I wrote about the jump from attending a Jewish Day School to a huge (800 kids in my grade) middle school where I, for the first time, was closely exposed to people of all different religions, and how it was really different becoming friends with people when I felt like we were so different, but by the end of the year, I was, and still am, friends with people from practically every religion. I’m really into diversity, so I mentioned how I’m now part of the diversity club at my school which is great because I not only get to learn about other religions and cultures more in depth, but get to teach about mine. It’s funny because I’m not that religious, but I am a proud Jew :)</p>
<p>@lindzmm it took me forever to think of a topic for that one 
And yay, Diversity Club! Our school doesn’t really have one this year, but I think one is starting to form, and I’m planning on going to check it out.
A lot of my friends are like that - they are culturally Jewish, but aren’t really religious. My family’s basically the same way but with Russian Orthodox (except me…I wasn’t really exposed to it enough to associate with it. My siblings weren’t, either, I guess. So it’s really mainly my parents).</p>
<p>@lunascreatures wow, what are the cultural things surrounding Russian orthodox beliefs? I don’t know anything about it</p>
<p>@applesauce21 not many things that I know about, actually, but for example my family used to celebrate two new years, easters, and christmases (the Russian orthodox one and the “American” one - january 1st, december 25th). We didn’t go all-out for russian new years and christmas but only celebrated the russian easter. Easter’s kinda an example of religious vs. cultural practice - I never really knew what easter was about and my family didn’t really try to do the religious things, we just ate the foods and made the russian-style eggs and hung out with other russian families in the area.
Really, I guess it boils down to food :)</p>
<p>Ah! The email from Tim Smith actually says that we’re going to know about the interview on February 20th! Even if it gets delayed, at least we have a specific date!</p>
<p>Wow! Best of luck guys!!!
@lunascreatures well tbh for me life boils down to food :D</p>
<p>@applesauce21 mm, food I share your appreciation!</p>
<p>@lunascreatures @applesauce21 I think every religions culture boils down to food Mmm… I love me some latkes! (…and hamentashen, and brisket, and matzo ball soup, and… I should probably stop, I’m getting hungry 
)</p>