FINISHED...sort of.

Finished!

I have finished two of the most laborious, tiring assessments for the IB in the last week. YAY.

On Wednesday I had my ‘Viva Voce’ meeting with Nick, we read the whole essay through together, corrected some of the punctuation and then chatted about the overall EE. I then went to the librarian, Rachel, who put it through Turnitin. What an amazing piece of technology. The EE had 10% other people’s work, but some of the things it picked up were ‘United World College of the Atlantic’ and ‘North of Rhode Island’. So overall I only had to add about 3 more references and reword one sentence which was fine. Since the majority of my EE was from internet sources, which is information from other sources, the actual sources Turnitin found were ones I’d never heard of. Fascinating technology…
Anyways I e-mailed the final to Nick, 4 weeks ahead of the deadline. He made a joke about me going to celebrate with some ‘Lionfish and Chips’. It’s weird to imagine not looking back at it again, but at least I don’t have to worry about it while I’m doing my other work.


Interestingly enough I was more satisfied today with printing off my History IA. Maybe it was holding it in my hands, which I didn’t do with the EE. I truly did enjoy working on it...hopefully it’s worth it.

But as with the IB, when one thing ends another starts. ToK, (which is worth just as much as the EE in points), essay topics came out a week ago. The essay first draft will be due the first week in January, so most students do it over Christmas break. Here is the list to choose from:

1. In what ways may disagreement aid the pursuit of knowledge in the natural and human sciences?
2. “Only seeing patterns can give us knowledge. Only seeing particular examples can give us understanding.” To what extent do you agree with these assertions?
3. “The possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility” Evaluate this claim.
4. The traditional ToK diagram indicates four ways of knowing. Propose the inclusion of a fifth way of knowing selected from intuition, memory or imagination, and explore the knowledge isses it may raise in two areas of knowledge.
5. “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” (Christopher Hitchens). Do you agree?
6. Can we know when to trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge? Consider history and one other area of knowledge.

The essay is meant to be between 1200-1600 words. My presentation will be the week after half-term break. I’m working on something to do with women wearing bikinis in Arab countries and women wearing Burqas in Western countries. Hopefully my class mates, and Chris will find it interesting.

Dinner last night [Friday], with Gabi her mum, husband to be , Shana and Dan. We went to Jaipur which was the restaurant that Dad and I went to the first night we came to Llantwit, a lovely time.

Activities:

Children’s Charities – our second activity is going to be spent baking in the Sunley dayroom so that we can sell goodies at Tuesday break time. Should be a fun session 

Ethical Felt Design- Basically making things from the sheep wool we get from the farm. Very excited. I would love to make a scarf, but not sure if I’ll have enough time as there are only four more sessions left. Maybe I’ll go next cycle as an unofficial activity. The person who runs the activity is a professional felter, called Claire Cawte- pretty cool life!


Lots of love,
Abi