Long Wait

Wow, no post in ages. I've been really caught up the past couple weeks. We've got two major IB projects, our Can Drive has started, I need to get going with the Science Fair, and Semi-Formal was yesterday.

Our first major project is our Historical Investigation. It's really exciting actually, we get to choose any topic, narrow it down to a specific question, then "investigate" to find the answer. My topic is "To what extent did the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics maintain the ideals of Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels?" so I'm basically comparing the Communist Manifesto to how communism turned out in Russia (and the other Soviet countries). My Plan of Investigation is below, as an example of what is expected.

I'm reading the Communist Manifesto, because obviously I need to know what's in it, and I've been asked a few times if it's really dry. It isn't dry, but it is sort of rambling in the first part. Still, it's not bad to read.

Our other big project is our IOP (Individual Oral Presentation) for English. We had to choose one of the books from this year - Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, Feila's Child by Dalene Matthee, 1984 by George Orwell, or Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - the first two which we have already read and the third which we are reading currently. The deadlines are corresponding to reading order as well: Fifth Business is this Friday, Feila's Child is the week after, and 1984 is the week after that. Frankenstein is somewhere in January. We can do any of: an oral essay, and oral persuasive essay, an oral commentary, a role play/monologue, and more. I chose to do a monologue as Leisl from Fifth Business, discussing Faustus Legrand's transformation. I've been writing almost all afternoon and I've got a good 4 minutes of monologue done. It still needs some editing, but I'm not in the right mood right now to do that properly. we also need, if we're doing a monologue, justification for it, why we chose to do what we did, etc.

I won't talk much about Can Drive or Science Fair, since all they have to do with IB is being potential earners of CAS hours. Semi was fun, though a lot of people decided not to or for other reasons could not go. Fun night, though I hear there was some major drama behind some of the occurrences. In any case, it was a good night.