All of us want to do well in the IB. We’re all driven to be successful students and want to get extra points. But is this desire for success helping us or could it be holding us back? And what has all this got to do with pottery?
(I’m going to tell you a story now, but there aren’t any wizards)
One story that has become famous is quoted in the book Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland. This story is about a pottery teacher and is incredibly helpful in thinking about how to get the most IB points possible.
The story goes like this…
The ceramics teacher announced that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!
It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Practice, not perfection
One of the biggest difficulties I had when I did the IB was that I wanted to get things right. I wanted to produce a great essay or score really well in the homework. Because of this I would spend ages procrastinating or planning and never actually start work. Just like the pottery students who spent a term planning I never actually got around to doing the work.
The best thing you can do to gain IB success is to start working right away. Do not get stuck trying to come up with the perfect piece of work, just aim for good enough. Then, make your work better afterwards if you have time.
If you’re struggling with perfectionism, just remember that most of the time your work doesn’t have to be perfect for you to do well. Even if you’re aiming for a 7 in your essay, you don’t need to revolutionise your field. Remember that even the best authors, mathematicians or scientists were once children who picked up pencil and had to learn to write their names. Everyone has to start somewhere, and so do you, so start!
(‘Good enough’ is a hard thing for some people to believe in!)
Repetition, not preparation
One of the biggest dangers in the IB is that you spend so long learning to do things that you never actually practise doing them – and there is a huge difference. One thing I have noticed about successful students is that they spend some time learning a skill, like solving a certain kind of equation, and then they spend a lot more time practising that skill than reading about it.
This means that once you basically know something, don’t spend ages and ages reading that same thing again and again. Instead, get to workusing your new knowledge – this is the most important habit. Don’t just think about the perfect essay, start writing essays and write them again and again until they improve. Let go of perfection and aim for improvement.
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