If you got baited into clicking this blog entry from the title, you’re probably either about to start the Diploma Programme in the IB or in the thick of it, wondering what possessed you to try it in the first place. No need to worry, you’ve come to the right place to learn one weird trick that teachers hate! Organization. 

Now, don’t leave yet, I realize that there’s nothing revolutionary about it; memes aside, your teachers have probably mentioned this to you several times over. Contrary to what it may seem sometimes, your teachers want you to succeed! No matter which subjects you decide to go for, from Visual Arts SL to Math AA HL, there are some common things you can do to improve in all of them, and none is as important as organization!

Is it really that important?

It is easy to dismiss organization as just a given, but it is precisely because it is usually implied that I think it should be brought to the forefront. I’ve been an IB Math teacher for about a decade and I can tell you that the most successful candidates managed to achieve high scores not just because of strong academics, but also due to successfully juggling all the requirements by organizing themselves.

A concrete example that I personally witnessed: Some of the best IAs I’ve ever supervised were actually written by students who were neither particularly gifted at math, nor liked the subject too much. What they did excel at was at managing their schedule: they knew when the deadline for finding a topic was and worked on finding a concrete one by that date, they had a set amount of time to work on it at home to match the given time at school, etc… 

And for parents reading this: I can tell you from experience that the biggest source of stress you’ll notice at home isn’t usually the content itself, but the constant juggling of tasks. Organization is what separates students who burn out from those who manage to thrive.

I’m convinced, but what to do exactly?

This is likely the step that stumps most students. You get told to be more organized, but never quite what this entails in practice. You may have even heard stuff like  “You should know by now!”. Let’s not presume anything of the sort; here are some concrete steps you can start doing as soon as you finish reading this post:

• Make a calendar with the big events: Electronic or otherwise, having a place where you can refer to for big events and deadlines will free brain power to focus on other things. The DP is a two year ordeal and schools plan for it carefully (in general), so chances are that from the very start you can have the dates of IAs, ToK presentations, EEs, CAS deadlines, etc… available to you. Your coordinator will be more than happy to help if you can’t find them!

• Have an agenda: Same idea as the calendar, but for a smaller timescale. Do you have chemistry homework due next Tuesday? Write it down. A speaking formative assessment for French? Write it down. For the agenda I would actually suggest a physical one: Not only do you free your mind, but it’s been proven that the simple act of writing stuff down embeds it into your memory more than just trying to remember it.

• Make a study schedule: The life of a student is busy, but also predictable in general; this means you can section your time at home for review and homework. This should be device-free time where you focus completely on your work. You’ll be surprised how much you can actually get done by sticking to such a plan, and as a consequence just how much juice you can squeeze out of your time off.

Once these are set up they feed on each other and become even stronger. As in the IA example I mentioned, the yearly schedule will let you know when to properly write stuff for your agenda in a given month, which in turn will allow you to schedule time for that specific IA as necessary.

If organization is this powerful, how come you don’t hear about it?

Organization being this effective is no secret, but it usually gets overshadowed by subject-specific concerns or by looking for shortcuts. If you have the chance, I would encourage you to ask a former IBDP student about what’s the most useful thing they learned in the DP. What do you think they would say?

1. How to do integration by parts.

2. The definition of a polypeptide.

3. The economic circumstances that led to the rise of authoritarian states in the 20th century.

4. Organization.

Being as clever as you probably are, you may have deduced that the answer is 4, well done!

This is not a thought experiment by the way: I have asked this question to many of my former students of across different generations. Almost everyone forgets how to compute a derivative as soon as they throw their graduation cap, but they all tell me they’re grateful for the organization skills they developed. This is one of the universally agreed upon benefits of the DP beyond the knowledge acquired.

This is great and all, but it still seems a bit daunting

Getting organized may feel daunting at first, but once you try, you’ll quickly see what works for you. Take it step by step and start trying things to see what works best for you. Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it all out on your own, this is what LightHouse Global is here for too! We focus on subject specific support, but inside this service we also help you develop an organizational style to go along with it. The skills you’ll learn are transferable to any other subject you’ll be taking. So why not reach out today and let’s make your IB journey smoother, one step at a time?