The IB Glossary

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Originally from wicked-ib.winter-flower.net with additions.

Aaarg!:

A very common cry among IB students. Typically indicates anger, despair, sleep deprivation, depression.

Acute:

1. Mathematical term, Acute Angle: an angle less than 90 degrees

2. Used to describe unpleasant conditions that the IB student is suffering from, such as acute stress (extreme stress)

All-nighter:

A common expression used by procrastinating IB students. It's a means (by staying awake all night) of finishing assignments that are usually due the next day.

Anton LaVey:

Founder of the Church of Satan and silent partner in the International Baccalaureate Organization. Although he died in 1997, the IBO secretly still follows his writings and teachings.

Bed time:

A common terminology used by parents of IB students which is not comprehensible in the mind of the IB student themselves.

Biology lab:

A room from which comes a weird smell - something like boiling liver, rotten food, dead bodies, and stuff you don't really want to know about.

Blood:

That red fluid that can be found in students' caffeine system

Book burning:

One of the first rituals carried out by recent IB graduate, where a huge bon fire is fed the mountains of papers and notes that have accummulated in the graduate's room over the two years of IB. The amount of smoke produced from these burning at the end of each exam session is enough to make people nearby think they're being caught in a forest fire. But then again, the amount of paper being burnt probably came from enough trees to make a small forest.

CAA:

Also credited as CAFAA: Caffeine-Addicts Anonymous. A non-profit organization aimed to help IB graduates who are addicted to caffeine.

Caffeine:

1. Addictive, legal drug of choice for IB students. Found in coffee, tea, chocolate, coke, Red-Bull and caffeine pills.

2. Sleep substitute.

3. Means of survival.

Warning: Can cause nervous breakdown, but don't worry, being an IB student alone will do that anyway.

Captain Angry and the Bad Mood:

Band who sings the infamous song: "I hate TOK"

CAS:

1. Creativity, Action, Service. 150 hours of CAS are required from IB students.

2. Creativity: Being creative: Trying to imagine the best way to collect 150 hours without actually doing anything. Also finding a way to convince your CAS coordinator that drinking vodka on a Friday night is actually good for the community and you deserve at least 20 hours.

3. Action: Completing the CAS portfolio is an action. So does sleeping. {Yes, your body fully functions when you are asleep. You can provide evidence for that. - That will be 15 hours.} Additionally, walking up 5 minutes before the bell rings and yet manage to be in class only ten minutes late is an intense action that should count for CAS.

4. Service: Throwing your trash on the ground is a service to the community, since more trash cleaners are needed and thus you help people find a job. At least 100 hours should be rewarded for that.

CAS portfolio:

A dossier of sheets given to the student by the CAS coordinator listing activities the student never did, but think it would be nice if he/she had; signed by the student and his/her best-friend(s).

Chemistry Lab:

A place where experiments that require the mixing of unlabelled, rarely harmless, chemicals are held. If you see smoke, RUN. Class: "I came, I saw, I got bored, I left and went for coffee" or "I came, I heard, I fell asleep" etc

Deadline:

Time to start working on that assignment...

Devil:

1. Where people who achieve 45 points have sold their souls to

2. The deity the people involved in the IBO worship

Extra Candidate:

1. An individual who selects 7 instead of 6 subjects, but later he/she realizes what they have done and drop the extra subject (extra subject: the one that requires the most work to be done)

2. A masochist

FIBs:

Friends of IB - students who, while not undertaking the diploma program, sympathise with or display characteristics of IB students.

Geneva:

1. A place in Switzerland where the IBO plots for the suffering of millions of students

Graphic calculator:

1. A machine that a math teacher uses to calculate 12+2=?

2. A tool used for writing text messages to the person sitting next you, while pretending you are explaining to your friend how to make the graph.

3. A way to cheat on tests and exams. Especially multiple choice tests.

4. Just another way not to pay attention to what a math teacher says.

Group-4-Project:

A nice, big, colourful poster with images and text - that the students copied and pasted from the web - written in a very small font - so no one can read anything - with the title of the project and the names of the students, who "worked" on it, written with a large font on the top of the paper. Only a photograph of the individuals holding the project is sent, so the smaller the font used for the content, the less work for the students, since no one will ever be able to read anything. And no one will bother. Just wear clean clothes and smile. Looking innocent is encouraged. But don't overdo it.

Group study:

Three or more students sitting together watching TV while one of them does all the work and then distributes it to the rest, who whine for being interrupted during the good part of the movie. See also Team work.

Homework:

1. Work a student does at home

2. Useless work that absorbs all creativity and aims in ensuring that the student has no free time

3. Exercises given to a student by a math teacher to be solved later by a private teacher, since the mathematician has no idea how to solve them or is too bored to solve them

4. An excuse to get a computer and spend hours in front of the screen (probably playing Tetris, Warcraft or Worms 3D) and pretending you are writing that history essay (which was probably due yesterday)

IBlicious: Adjective used to positively denote qualities of an IB candidate. Example:

Paul and Rufus are at a bar. They see a girl across the room.

Paul: Dude! Check out that chick!

Rufus: Right on! My TOK sense is telling me that she's totally IBlicious!

Paul: Dude! Let's challenge her to a game of chess!

etc.

IBO:

International Baccalaureate Organization aka the International Baccalaureate Mafia

IBS:

IB therefore I bull****

IBSHC:

IB Student Help and Counseling - An organization that helps IB graduates to become again a part of the real world and get over the fact that they wasted two years of their lives for no particular reason.

Imaginary numbers:

Invention of mathematicians (√i = -1) Such think doesn't exist. When mathematicians cannot find a solution to a problem they just make up one. However, a made up solution given by a student is by no means accepted.

Institution:

The IB student's destination. Can either be an Institution of Higher Education (college or university) or a mental institution.

Lab Coat:

A white robe to wear before a chemistry or biology lab. You wouldn't want thick smelly green stuff on your clothes, would you?

Lab equipment:

Two cheap microscopes, an expensive broken one, a box with rulers and pencils {donated by the "Lost-Found-But never asked for" section of the school}, unlabelled tubes containing green, blue and orange bubbling liquids, dirty kitchen knives, a slide-projector, a blackboard and a locked closet where the bodi... tools are kept.

Lab report:

A description of what you did in the lab. Usually, the experiment is a complete failure or you were too bored to do it, so you start the lab report by writing the results you would like to have and then you imagine what you could have done to get those results.

Miracle:

What a student relies on before a test/examination.

Moderation:

An evil mechanism to ensure that the IB student will never get a high mark (even if they bribe or sleep with the teacher).

Participant:

Politically correct for Experimental Subject, Guinea-Pig, Commonly used in IB Psychology: An individual who takes part in an experiment. Someone who is intentionally being deceived by the experimenters and has all kinds of weird and usually dangerous tests done on him/her

Peace and Love:

What all our teachers came back from training saying the IBO was full of

Predicted grades:

Grades you are never going to get

Procrastination:

See 'I.B. Dodgy. (2000), Survival Techniques of the Modern International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate, Stress Less Press, Timbuktu.'

Sleep:

Sleep ≠ IB. There is no sleep. Only coffee and caffeine pills.

Social life:

Huh?

Ranking:

A way to develop among students mistrust, jealously, suspicion, extreme antagonism and aggression. Individual feelings may include depression, hopelessness and frustration. Other than that, it serves no actual purpose.

Rational:

1. R. number: A number that can be expressed as the ratio of two integers.

2. R. student: A non-IB student

Teacher:

1. Satan's agent or minion

2. A sadist

3. An individual who makes no money

4. An individual who doesn't explain anything in class, but is willing to explain everything after school for a large amount of money.

5. Someone who couldn't make it as college professor

6. {rarely used} An individual who helps the student

Teachers Conventions:

1. Teachers of the same subject gather from all around the world to talk about that subject

2. An excuse for a teacher to go on a holiday on Switzerland and eat chocolates and have a nice time while you are at school studying (or pretending to at least).

3. A meeting of teachers where no one agrees with anyone else and everyone is fighting and cursing. No one has been killed yet. There is still hope.

Team Work:

If everything goes ok it allows you to do nothing and yet have all the worked ready and done. If things go wrong, it allows you to blame someone else.

Theory of Knowledge:

An IB instituted device used as a means of belittling students who thought they could outsmart the IB. Oh, how wrong we were.

TOKish:

1. From Theory of Knowledge (TOK), a well known component of the International Baccalaureate.

2. Having characteristics of TOK

3. Sounding philosophical or profound or containing depth

4. Questions the nature of knowledge, the ways of knowing information and raises the problems within that knowledge

5. BS that sounds intellectual

Virus:

The reason a student did no homework. Either he/she was sick or the computer crashed and the whole hard-disk was erased (and of course the backup was stolen by two aliens on a flying sheep).

From here.

Agenda: record of homework, study group and club meetings, tests, exams, and the rare social event; completely full on each day's allotted space

Alarm clock: annoying buzzing or singing machine that goes off at an unholy hour of the morning so that a student can make it to an activity such as school, extension courses, study groups, club meetings, or just to finish the homework that was impossible to complete at midnight the previous night

Biology: the memorization of facts about the human body that come to mind at the most inconvenient times (like the process of digestion while eating chocolate), and which are instantly forgotten after the exam

Calculus: mathematical system with no practical purpose

CAS portfolio: collection of items detailing the vague and inaccurate hours used for CAS, as well as sheets signed by an individual stating that the activity was actually true

Chemistry: the study of unproven theories which are necessary to learn but which will become obsolete within the next fifteen years, requiring that the student retake an entire chemistry course to learn all the new unproven theories which continues in the same cycle

Class: period of time which is entirely too long used for schoolwork, note-taking, and brief periods of sleep classroom: detention cell; torture chamber

Computer: machine used as much as possible to write essays, do lab reports, and finish homework because the amount of typing needed in IB winds up giving students an extremely fast typing speed that approaches the speed at which they speak, as well as carpal tunnel syndrome cramming: studying in an extremely short period of time (from the morning of the test to the moment when the teacher forces the notes from your hands); more common than studying

Curriculum: detailed description of the useless and unpragmatic information that an adult with no knowledge of the real world arbitrarily decided was relevant and necessary to learn data booklet: packet used in chemistry containing formulas, periodic tables, and constants which would otherwise take up valuable space in the brain which will be devoted to remembering where the data booklet was last seen

Document analysis: form of essay written in social studies that is practically impossible to do properly because of the assumption by teachers that allstudents know what to do

Due date: date on which an assignment must be handed in, often altered by the pleading of a harried student or group of students for an extension; date during the early hours of which the assignment is typically completed

Empty set: an extremely frustrating answer to a math problem which has no actual answer but still requires two pages of work and twenty minutes to complete

Encyclopedia: primary source of information for essays

English: class involving an in-depth discussion dominated by those who have read the Coles Notes or actually understand the complex and psychologically disturbing work being studied (rare, but occasionally seen), as well as essays and commentaries

Essay: written ramble ranging in length from 500 to 4000 words (in the case of the Extended essay), and generally needing to have useless adjectives, adverbs, and in many cases entire sentences added so that it gets up to the minimum length

Exam: extremely large test requiring the complete renunciation of any activity which does not include studying or a discussion of the subject of the exam exercise: movement from class to class

Extended Essay: essay written only by those dropped only by those dropped on their heads as babies enough times to become full IB students, supposedly researched thoroughly over the final year of high school, but truly completed the night before using the CD-ROM encyclopedia

Extension: a reprieve on a due date allowing a few precious hours to complete an assignment which is barely started anyway but is due the next day

External assessment: assignment sent to Europe for evaluation because apparently the student's actual teachers are biased liars who aren't giving the IBO the correct marks

Fees: large amounts of money (reaching $580 in the case of a full IB student)given by a student's perfectionist parents to the IBO so that the student may be permitted to actually complete the IB exams, the Extended Essay, and the various externally-assessed projects.

FLA: class identical to English but in French, as well as including grammar and conjugation of various irregular verbs which are never used in everyday life

Franglais (French?): the official language of French Immersion students which is a mixture of French and English terms but is always completely understandable to other Immersion students

Goggle eyes: imprints on the face resulting from the wearing of lab goggles for an experiment, which are eliminated only after school

Graphic calculator: calculator designed so that there is no need to learn to make graphs by hand and so that it is possible to play Tetris instead of paying attention in class

Homework: the natural state of existence of IB students while not in class

IB (International Baccalaureate): a program for the especially intelligent student who is still stupid enough to do extra work, take more classes, and write extremely difficult exams instead of slacking off in regular classes and finishing high school with a 99% average; method of separating the insane from the rest of the student body

IB exam: horridly complicated exam taking place over two days and at least four hours, involving any and every single thing taught over the course of the last three years and resulting in complete and utter despair upon the realization that there is no possible way that no human could remember all this material under pressure

IB student: intelligent yet insane teenager with nothing better to do than excess homework; often mentally deranged and permanently seconds away from a nervous breakdown

IB oral: IB exam requiring quick thought, a high caffeine-blood ratio, and divine intervention for a passing grade

IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization): organization of pure evil determining the future of all IB students through evaluation of the abilities (synthesis, studying, application, higher thought, insight, memorization, and development, among others) supposedly taught them during high school rather than the ones actually learned (procrastination, cramming, bull-****ting, and caffeine-dependency)ideal gases: substances that don't exist but are forcibly taught to students for the hell of it

Imaginary numbers: numbers which are the square roots of negative numbers and serve no purpose other than to permit the solving of a greater amount of complicated equations, each of which takes a minimum of a page and fifteen minutes to solve

In-class essay: a completely bull****ted piece of writing, accompanied by the prayer that, on some fluke, the student actually made some form of clever and/or correct insight

Lab: hands-on experience in a science class, which involves a large amount of recording precise information, guessing, and hoping that the notes written are correct, and which ends with a lab report

Lab report: write-up which is longer than an essay, including calculations and many other complicated time-intensive activities, that has no true purpose other than being able to give homework after the potentially-interesting activity of a lab

Logic: a quality absent from IB students which results in behaviour (such as sleep) that would make them unsuitable for the program lunch hour: hour-long break at approximately noon used to attend various club meetings, cram for tests, and finish undone homework math: a collection of random formulas and variables positioned to confuse the casual observer and the semi-dedicated student alike, with each calculation taking approximately forever and an entire tree worth of paper to complete

Memoire (French): essay written for social studies which is supposedly worked on throughout the semester but is instead completed the night before the due date at midnight

Normal: antonym for IB

Notes: written copy of information discussed/taught in class, usually illegibly scrawled and written on crumpled paper

Oral commentary: essay made up on the spot, and spoken

Outdoors: that place outside the windows of the classroom where it's often too windy, rainy, snowy, or distractingly sunny to do work of any kind

Party: gathering of individuals for a social reason, not to study together; antonym for class

Periodic table: list of the elements and their quantitative properties that is often partially memorized through extreme usage by IB students

Physics: calculations and graphs which, at first glance, appear to discuss the study of motion, but, in truth, are totally made-up to look like the student knows what they are talking about

Principal: individual leading the entire school who is seen only rarely (once a year is typical)

Procrastination: leaving any form of work for a future date, typically so that other procrastinated but more urgent work can be completed either before the teacher threatens death unless the assignment is handed in or before the test is written

Recreation: activity not involving schoolwork or homework; rare phenomenon among IB students

Rest: milder form of sleep; experienced only during the breaks between classes and the rides to and from school during which it is almost impossible to do work

Schedule: description of the order of torture undergone during a school day

School day: eight-hour period of the day during which schoolwork is done, as the other sixteen hours are used for homework and occasionally sleep

School work: the natural state of existence of IB students while in class semester break: time after semester one exams but before semester two classes which is used for completion of grade twelve Social Studies memoire

Sleep: a state of unconsciousness typically required for full functioning of the human body, with the exception of any student in at least one IB class at any point in time; rare substitute for caffeine

Social life: form of recreation involving other people and not involving any discussions of schoolwork; not usually seen in IB students

Social studies: the study of history and interactions between people; generally not including any of the latter

Spare period: uncommon period during the school day without a class, used in theory to do homework, but in practice to either rest, return the bloodstream to the reference level of caffeine, or write useless tests made up by other IB students for the purpose of proving that competition is stupid

Standardization: system of mark equalization sent as a divine gift to raise the low marks caused by the lack of comprehension of the twisted IB curriculum

Stoichiometry: a portion of chemistry which is identical to math and requires no actual intelligence other than the ability to type numbers into a calculator and then copy whatever comes out onto the page, hoping that the units guessed are the correct ones

Studying: revision of old notes in preparation for a test (see definition) well in advance; not typically seen

Sunrise: the beginning of the first class in the winter, or the moment the alarm clock rings in the morning at all other times

Sunset: the end of the last class in the winter

Supervisor: teacher whose entire purpose when it comes to a full IB student is to scream and threaten them so that they complete the Extended Essay at some point before the due date

Teacher's Convention: teachers' excuse for taking a five-day weekend in February, used by full IB students to complete the Extended Essay

Television: a glowing box emitting two different types of shows, recreational ones and educational ones; recreational ones are the ones requiring free time, and educational shows are the only ones seen by IB students, during class time and only every so often

Test (or quiz): form of evaluation undergone at least once every 24 hours by any IB student

Textbook: torture device weighing at the very least ten kilograms, with one or more per class, which is extremely boring with long, incomprehensible words

Theory of Knowledge: the only class the typical IB students always enjoys, which involves intense arguments about irrelevant subjects

Thesis statement: very long, detailed sentence explaining in big words what your essay was supposed to be about, but often having absolutely nothing to do with the actual essay

World Literature assignment: essay involving the detailed analysis in English of a piece of literature originally written in another language, which the original author could likely never understand

[Caitlin]

FIBs: Friends of IB - students who, while not undertaking the diploma program, sympathise with or display characteristics of IB students.

I saw this on a website, but we were actually using it at our school first.

[Survivor Rob]

Peace and Love:

What all our teachers came back from training saying the IBO was full of

[~Lc~]

bed time: a common terminology used by parents of IB students which is not comprehensible in the mind of the IB student themselves.

[Caitlin]

Theory of Knowledge: an IB instituted device used as a means of belittling students who thought they could outsmart the IB. Oh, how wrong we were.

Procrastination: See 'I.B. Dodgy. (2000), Survival Techniques of the Modern International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate, Stress Less Press, Timbuktu.'

[Abu]

Allnighter: A common expression used by procrastinating IB students. It's a means (by staying awake all night) of finishing assignments that are usually due the next day.

[Caitlin]

Allnighter: A common expression used by procrastinating IB students. It's a means (by staying awake all night) of finishing assignments that are usually due the next day.

Allnighter (2): What Caitlin will be doing tonight.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

Theory of Knowledge: an IB instituted device used as a means of belittling students who thought they could outsmart the IB. Oh, how wrong we were.

Procrastination: See 'I.B. Dodgy. (2000), Survival Techniques of the Modern International Baccalaureate Diploma Candidate, Stress Less Press, Timbuktu.'

Love it.

Allnighter (2): What Caitlin will be doing tonight.

Why? What do you have to finish?

[Caitlin]

TOK Essay and EE. EE just needs fine tuning, but TOK is killing me. *cries*

[Bandev]

When are they due?

[Caitlin]

Tomorrow. I had my TOK essay all written up and everything, and my mum's friend who teaches TOK at another school came over to check it before I handed it in. She told me it was all wrong, so now I have to rewrite it. Ahhhh!!

[Abu]

Aww, poor you Caitlin *consoles*. Hope you get it done

[Caitlin]

Aww, poor you Caitlin *consoles*. Hope you get it done

I'd better, or I'm pretty sure I fail IB. :0

[/off topic]

[~Lc~]

you won't hun! why don't you let ur mom's friend check it for you again or help you through it?

[Survivor Rob]

Good site for funny definitions: http://www.urbandictionary.com/

Definitions of IB:

"The IB is the ultimate academic path to sleep deprivation"

"A program entered by smart people, thinking they will get smarter by using words and textbooks that only the British use. This program eventually transforms a normal student into a stress-seeping, school-leeching vegetable, abandoning other supposed forms of life.

An inside all-purpose joke used by "candidates" of the IB program as a means of escaping said illusioned smartness."

"A program meant to prepare one for college. The causer of much pain." :0

[Dcool]

Good site for funny definitions: http://www.urbandictionary.com/

Definitions of IB:

"The IB is the ultimate academic path to sleep deprivation"

"A program entered by smart people, thinking they will get smarter by using words and textbooks that only the British use. This program eventually transforms a normal student into a stress-seeping, school-leeching vegetable, abandoning other supposed forms of life.

An inside all-purpose joke used by "candidates" of the IB program as a means of escaping said illusioned smartness."

"A program meant to prepare one for college. The causer of much pain." :0

That last part

'Causer of much pain' - i like that =)

I'm doing Psychology HL

Economics HL

Literature HL

I'm a new IB student

Any tips here for me?

[cixelsyD]

Wow, "sleep" wasn't even in my vocabulary until now

[Caitlin]

IBlicious: adjective used to positively denote qualities of an IB candidate. Example:

Paul and Rufus are at a bar. They see a girl across the room.

Paul: Dude! Check out that chick!

Rufus: Right on! My TOK sense is telling me that she's totally IBlicious!

Paul: Dude! Let's challenge her to a game of chess!

etc.

[Guest Swallowedtoilet]

HAHA, wow, i have never seen anything that's more true! That is real knowledge!

[Lil]

hahahaha this is soooo trueee ahahahha