Now that @StevenOh and I are both in the second semester of our junior year in high school doing our first year of the IB Diploma, let's take a look to see how high school went for us, and what you can learn from our experiences.
This strategy works on many levels. Within the day, within the week, within your entire life. Would you rather study now and reap the benefits later in your life, or slack off and be stuck with a menial job? Would you rather finish the homework now so that you can watch Netflix later, or would you watch Netflix now and grind the homework late at night? Would you rather spend your £100 on clothes now, or invest it and obtain £300 with compound interest?
Just some food for thought....
Of course, I recommend everyone to study ahead. But here's a catch. Sometimes, as counterintuitive as it may seem, you shouldn't study ahead. This advice applies especially for maths, but I am sure it can apply to other subjects as well.
Let's say you're in 8th grade, and you already excel at maths, so you want to study ahead. You look at the IB DP (grade 11/12) textbook, and you find may interesting topics like calculus, so you decide to study ahead. Sure, that is interesting and a fine thing to do, but 3 years later, when you are in your 11th grade DP class, you already know everything and are not motivated to study, and end up wasting time learning things that you already know. Instead, it would be better for you to study things you will not study in high school, like competitive maths or programming (if you don't have a programming class at your school). You may argue that studying ahead relieves pressure during the stressful IB DP years, but if you're already studying ahead, I trust that you excel in the subject and will have no trouble learning the material as you go along in class
Here, I will list my top advice for each of my IB DP subjects to help you prepare for them in your early secondary years.
I cannot stress the importance of asking questions and inquiring further about your topics. Suppose you learn in chemistry that the enthalpy of hydration is always negative, i.e. exothermic. You have to ask yourself, why?, and if you cannot answer, you must ask your teacher or research about it. This will solidify your understanding greatly, and most importantly, will help you remember.
This advice is particularly relevant for the quantitative subjects like economics, maths, physics and chemistry, but also applies for the humanities and the languages too. Let's say you're analysing a poem in English, and you identified the literary technique of enjambment. You then have to ask yourself, why? First of all, what is the effect on the reader? Perhaps the enjambment made the poem prose-like and made the poem seem to flow well. Well done, you've identified the effect, but you've only scratched the surface. Now you have to ask again, why? Why did the author do this? Perhaps the author was talking about ocean waves and wanted to mimic the rushing effect. Well, whatever the case, analysis in literature is all about pursuing the why in the text.
Asking yourself the why is in my opinion the most important quality of a successful student. As young children we point at everything we see and hear, yet, as we grow older, it is a sad reality that we become less interested and more oblivious to the world around us. It is my belief that curiosity leads to inquiry and problem solving. It determines who you are, and gives excitement to your life. And it certainly did not kill the cat.
