It was a tough day. I entered home and went straight to my room. Swinging in my chair, contemplating my whole life, scrolling through my newsfeed I read a post and it said,” 16 to 33 year olds are the most stressed out people on earth.” And this post hit me right on spot and left me like,” Oh yes! And I am one of them too.” College had really got me hard and when you are doing the IB, you don’t see sunlight for two years and the only tan you are going to get is from sine and cosine.

If you don’t get it, go and ask an IB student. I had gone crazy after completing the assignments of all six subjects, two essays, one test, one presentation and still it wasn’t enough. I had to study! After spending half of my day in school and completing all those stuffs I thought is that even humanly possible? I was figuratively tired of calculating “How much sleep am I not going to get tonight?” and “How many mugs of caffeine I needed to finish before I get my beauty sleep?”

And even when I did go to bed I could never actually sleep because I always thought I was forgetting something.

Being a part of the only IB school in Nepal, people often asked me, “Which stream are you taking? Science or management?” Well answering that I am currently studying both was not very much a good option but you surely had to reply. And every time someone asked me this question, we both had to take a seat, give that person a glass full of water, take a deep breath myself and start first by explaining what IB was! I am sure that very few might have been able to actually comprehend my talk.

However, as stressful and maybe unflattering as I make IB life sound, it is not that bad. Yes there are those sleepless nights, avalanche of works, flood of university visits, the moments in the bathroom where you ask yourself about the meaning of life, think if the only way to get an ‘A’ in TOK is to prove it doesn’t exist – the experience is so joyful and fulfilling. Every time I read a book or watch a TV commercial, I use the same kind of investigative analysis that I learned in Business. Proudly go in front of my mates telling them I can make a nuclear bomb because you are a Physics HL student.

When your friend outside college invites you to go on a hike, you’re not interested because IB has taken you to uncountable number of hikes and you’re probably tired of climbing upstairs. IB has become oddly essential to the way I live, and despite the procrastination, it has become a centre of learning for me (takes a sip of coffee and mentally visualizes the day I’ll be passing out).