IB. The letters, until fall of last year, were meaningless to me.

But then I heard about a

school program where I could take harder classes and get a fancy diploma. I asked around, and
heard one thing: a single story. IB? Oh, its really difficult you wont have much time to do
anything except study. I assumed this just meant more five-paragraph essays and bigger words,
nothing I couldnt handle. On the first day of school in Ms. Finns English class, however, we
watched a video presentation on the danger of the single story. The realization that even
textbooks were just one (completely subjective) view of something seemed like a slap in the face
by reality. It reminded me of when I was four years old and someone finally told me that people
lived in other countries. I had assumed that America was where people lived, and every other
place was merely for vacation. When I found out, I spent hours imagining these other people
who spoke different and looked different and acted different.
The sense of world and diversity are very strong in the International Baccalaureate
program as well. Just seeing programme spelled the British way makes me feel like a part of a
worldwide organization an organization, not just another step in my compulsory schooling.
Reflecting back on my first semester of IB, I grin at my innocence and ignorance. Its as if I was
standing on the shore of the lake of knowledge, trying to peer into its murky depths. Our in-class
discussions were a strong shove into the waters of inquiry and understanding.
First came Odysseus, and with him came the hero cycle, conventions of the epic, and the
shared values of society. But at this stage, I was still laboring under the delusion that there were
morals to be found, and topic sentences to be written. I was writing my beautiful, uniform,
hamburger essays, yet not getting the grades I was used to and this bothered me greatly. By the
time we started The Tempest though, I was on a roll. Everything was beginning to make sense.
But my final sense of understanding, of victory, came mere days before the end of the semester
(the very day I am writing this reflection, in fact). It was the day that you, Ms. Finn, gave us the
poem pity this busy monster, manunkind by E.E. Cummings. I fell in love with this poem
almost as soon as I read it, and I wanted to analyze it maybe even write down some of my
analysis. The moment it dawned on me that written analysis sounded suspiciously like a
commentary, I saw what IB had done to me.
In this class, Ive delved below the surface of the lake for the first time, discovering the
archetypes of water, sight, and blindness that still resonate through my psyche. I have recently

found myself comparing these archetypes to real life, imagining each raindrop as one persons
mind in the subconscious, and puddles being pools of subconscious, peoples.
More important, though, are the parallels I have drawn with sight and blindness. As my
IB journey continues, I have realized just how ignorant I was before I started it. The tedious
busywork of middle school seems so pointless now, as compared to what I was doing in IB, that
I began to worry for those students who werent able to be in the IB program the poor kids with
scores that could have been right below mine that never made it off the waiting list. They are
chained in the cave, able only to see the shadows on the walls. While I am by no means Plato, I
feel that the International Baccalaureate program is slowly working away at the chains that hold
me from seeing the sunlight.