Last minute cramming – is it worth it?

In a word – yes.  An all-nighter is not going to replace 2 years of inattentiveness, and you may even find your mind start to wander in the exam tomorrow if you don’t sleep, but a last-minute study session with some of your favorite classmates might be just what you need tomorrow after the Mathematics exam remind yourself of certain facts.  You just need to make sure that you are using your time effectively, not simply memorizing random facts. If you are preparing for Paper 1 – Communism in Crisis, a game of history jeopardy focused on Chinese leadership may be just what you need to remember who the important players were at the time – and where their actions were most significant.  Once you feel confident about political leadership, the Four Modernizations and the events in Tiananmen Square in both 1976 and 1989, you can move on to another subject.

If you are preparing for Paper 2 – Cold War, a quick review on the different perspectives on the origins of the Cold War might be just what you need to refresh your memory.  You will not have time to memorize the entire Long Telegram, but knowing the main points of Kennan’s note, and its implications for the development of the policy of Containment would be really helpful right now, as would the relationship between the Brussels Pact and the creation of NATO.  While looking at documents, you may wish to watch the Iron Curtain speech and then read Stalin’s response.  Not one of these activities will take more than 10 minutes but it will help you. You should also review the rules for each paper: Paper 1 – answer all the questions; Paper 2 – answer 2 questions from 2 different topic areas; Paper 3 – answer any 3 questions. Paper 3 is not until Thursday morning, and the SL students will be finished with history at that point, but the HL students will have one last evening to review.  One important reminder – it is the regional option, so your answers must focus on your region.  Many students walk out of the Americas paper and suddenly realize they discussed the impact of the Great Depression on Germany.  No matter how compelling the response may be, this is a rubric error and it would be difficult to get more than 2 points out of 20 since the response would not be relevant to the question. By noon on Thursday, May 15, somewhere around Hawaii, the history exams will be done, and many of you will be done with all of your IB exams, so now is not the time to slack off – give it your all for another 48 hours, and good luck!