History & Business and Management

Happy New Year!

   I hope you enjoyed your vacation, because there is a lot of work ahead of you now.. Soon we will start on our first IAs (Internal Assesment) so we will be talking from experience in the next few weeks or months. Now, we will dicuss the enriching world of History and Business&Management, the more relaxing subjects if you will.

   We are starting our first IAs with History, which is a good subject to ease into the IB world of research. However, even though we are just starting on our History, we are already researching our Business and Management Research Questions and forming a plan which we are going to use to gather all the necessary information to write up our research which is due in just less than a year. History is good to round out all the science in your selection of subjects and a great way to gain some perspective on the grand scheme of humanity and our recent history like the World War 1,2 and for Higher Level, the French Revolution. Basically just the significant wars of the 20th century.
    In test conditions, Heidi and I, us Standard Level students have two papers: Paper 1, which consists of a Source Study (we have been practising plenty for it, we will issue this on a separate post later) and Paper 2, a long answer question. Higher Level students, like SusanMoreen, have Paper 3 in addition to the previous two, an honor to do another long answer question.
   To adress the issue that turns most poeple off history, is remebering all the dates, years and times when the smallest issues happen that you couldn't care less about. Well, in IB History we don't have to remember all those dates! At least not in the final exams, it depends how nice your teacher is to you during those two years in between.
   According to the only Higher Level History student, SusanMoreen, in our group of Musketeers, Higher Level History is exciting, because you get to learn about France, its history and Napeoleon. They have to write loads and loads of essays including the most recent one on Napoleon and his rulings. By being in Higher Level, you get a deeper understanding on the issues that are studied in Standard Level classes, which is a good benefit to have even though its more time consuming. And when we say time consuming, we mean it. In HL history you will be reading a lot of books and extracts so it's good to have a profound interest in the subjects that are being delt with.

    As for Business and Management, it's a good subject where you can survive with common sense, of course only if you have any. It's a good course to understand the business side of things and learn to cope with it in the future. For this class, you won't need HL or SL mathematics, Mathematical Studies will also do just fine in HL and SL Business and Management. Right now we are just finishing Marketing and have talked about Organizations and starting up a business. Our next topic will be financing, which is very benefitial when thinking about our futures to come as consumers.
   When we begin on our B&M IAs, for HL students primary research (surveys, interviews) and secondary research (internet, books) are required but SL students get away with just secondary research. Your research question must deal with a company that is facing a problem, and you will have to provide a solution to it. Us three Musketeers have Higher Level Business and one Musketeer who doesn't have it at all, so we cannot tell much about SL classes but we are sure you will get the idea.
   In test conditions, us HL&SL students have two papers: Paper 1 consists of a case study which we will get a few months before hand to get prepared. Paper 2 consists of structured questions based on stimulus material. Doesn't sound too hard does it? The case study in the final exams will also be used in the MOCK exams (to be issued later) so you will be quite familiar with the text and dealing with it in exam conditions.

See ya next week!

Four Musketeers