The IB Student Experience

What is the IB Diploma Programme really like from a student perspective? How are IB DP students navigating CAS, the Extended Essay, TOK—and now AI in education?

Twin sisters Avantika and Anantika Nair, rising seniors at Washtenaw International High School in Michigan, share an unusually thoughtful look at their IB student experience. They discuss their transition from the MYP to DP, challenging HL courses, Extended Essays in physics, and how IB has encouraged them to think creatively and become more open-minded learners. 

We also explore their CAS-inspired community leadership and their evolving relationship with artificial intelligence. Their perspective on AI in IB education is especially compelling: use AI to generate practice, review concepts, and improve efficiency—but not as a substitute for thinking, creativity, or doing the learning yourself.

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LinkedIn - Anantika, Avantika

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Transcript

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Anantika 0:00

The IB experience gives you like the cognitive skill of going in with an open-minded perspective and finding these intricate complex solutions that can bring about multiple benefits. Yeah, and it's I really agree. I think the IB really changed my mindset, like the way I thought about things. And then I think the biggest trait I got from the IB is this idea of being like open-minded. But I think being open-minded, just opening up a little bit, can really get you through a lot of difficult situations. It can get you to try new things. I think that's probably the reason why we were able to do so much in high school.

Jon Peterson 0:33

Hi folks, welcome back to IB Matters. And I have got two guests with me today. They're from Michigan, the state of Michigan in the United States, and they are twin sisters, the Nyer sisters. And let me see if I can get these names right. Okay. Avantica and Anantica. And they are both here to talk about their experience. They're juniors in or about to be seniors in high school. And why don't you guys go ahead and introduce yourselves and then we'll get going on some of the things we wanted to talk about?

Avantika 1:01

Yeah, sure. I'm Avantica. I'm a rising senior at Washington International High School, which is a high school in Islani, Michigan. And yeah, we've been in the IB for two years now, and it's become a really big and important part of our lives because it shaped a lot of the work that we do, both in school and outside of school. And like my sister, obviously we're twins. So I'm an Anthika, also rising senior at Washington International High School. It's a pretty small school, like my sister mentioned. We only have like 500 students total in our high school. But just to give some context about our IB experience, for middle school, both my sister and I we attended a charter middle school. So we only really got introduced to the IB experience when we joined high school in ninth grade. And then in our ninth and sophomore year, we had a complete MYP curriculum. As our school is only an IB school, we don't have any A opportunities or honors. It's just completely IB. And during those years, we went through the personal project, all our MYP requirements, and then that all of that was before we finally transitioned to our diploma program in our upper for our upperclassman years. In general, my thoughts on the IB curriculum. I'm really glad they got experience it. I know a lot of people in Michigan especially typically choose schools with APs or honors instead. Our school is a little bit different, like I mentioned before, it's completely IB. But the fact I really like experiencing the curriculum overall and completing these steps that I need to do for my diploma. Requirements like the extended essay and CAS projects, there's something all of these students have to go through, and they're pretty challenging a lot, like a lot of times. But I feel like they do truly like allow us students to explore our personal interests and also dive deeper into things that we're like really fascinated with instead of just stuff that we would already learn in classes. And then other than your typical classes like math or physics or literature, the fact that we have the opportunity to experience classes like T OK, theory of knowledge, is something that I never knew I'd actually take in high school, like a philosophy class. I never thought that that's something I would be interested in or something that I would need to do because we haven't mentioned this, but both my sister and I are a lot engineering-oriented. So philosophy isn't something that I actually thought I would enjoy. But the fact that we have the opportunity to do classes like this, I feel like it's really beneficial and engaging because not only do we get to learn about these different cultures and ways of learning, the IB lets us question philosophies, debate on opinions, and I feel like that really allows us to grow as students and IB learners ourselves because it gives us an open mind to ideas that we never would have learned about or questioned about before that. Yeah, and also just to echo that and talk a little bit more about kind of the things that IB has really taught us. But since we're about to be like riding seniors, we haven't to taken any IB exams yet, they're gonna be like at the end of our senior year. But the tests we already have in our classes are really hard and really challenging, especially for things like HL math or HL physics. But the things that I like about the IB style of exams and the classes is that it really combines each question, combines so many different concepts, and you gotta really think out of the box, especially for physics questions where it's a bunch of different units just in one simple question. And I feel like the IB itself just really forces your brain to think creatively and out of the box, which is like the whole theme of just every single IB class I've ever taken. So I think that's one of the biggest things with my IB experience, that idea of being like creative and really getting everything you've learned and uh applying it to single questions or single experiences that you've had in or outside of school.

Jon Peterson 4:19

That's cool.

Speaker 1 4:19

But yeah.

Jon Peterson 4:20

Yeah, thanks for that. And you guys, it sounds like I'm gonna get to the DP questions in just a minute, but I want to I since you mentioned I didn't realize that you had been full MYP students for a couple of years. Can you tell me about your personal projects? I think people always kind of like to hear if there's any kind of thread that continues or where are you coming from with your MYP personal project?

Avantika 4:40

Yeah, so we had different personal projects. Mine was specifically about astronomy. So a bit more context on that, but something that me and my sister do a lot of volunteering with teaching with younger students. And when we were in elementary and middle school, we did Science Olympia at our school. And now we tutor that side of science kids at our own middle school. It's just like a hobby that we do over the week. But one of the classes I tutor, and I also I took the event, that's the event I did when I was in middle school was the astronomy event. So it's just a hobby of mine. While like we like engineering, that's probably what we're gonna do in college. Astronomy is just a side thing. We like stargazing and learning about things like that, so it's a side hobby. But when we decide to do the personal project and they were telling us to think about ideas or things you want to do, I was like, oh, it is a great time for me to just explore my other interests apart from normal classes and engineering and things like that. So I built this website where science and students like middle schoolers and elementary schoolers could get a lot of content for the astronomy event. I know a lot, especially when I was in middle school, a lot of people don't have coaches. A lot of times you gotta learn the event material yourself, especially if you're a smaller school like I was in middle school. So sometimes it's really hard, especially when a lot of the really good content is like you gotta pay for it to get the practice tests and things like that to study for the science of the events. So I made this little website where it's a bunch of different things about classification or the types of stars or all the all the topics that the middle school event covers. And yeah, so that's basically what I did. And I thought it was really cool because I could give it to the students I taught, and they thought it was like they thought it was pretty helpful. Yeah, but yeah, so that's what I worked on. My sister also worked on a bit something a bit different. So I'll let her talk about that. Yeah. So for the personal project, I took mine was a little bit less subject-based. I'm sure you'll talk about it later on nonprofit too. But we do a lot of community volunteering and stuff. And in that community that I was a part of in my middle school years, after I transitioned to high school, a lot of parents or students would ask me about like high school experience in general and be like, what do I need to do to make sure I'm successful? Or do I need to study for the essay? The ACT, so many questions, right? And I was since I kept getting these questions from like all these middle schoolers and parents and students who were like concerned about what they're actually supposed to be doing in high school, I decided maybe I should make a resource that could be potentially like a one place, one place where everyone can access so they can get their questions answered. And like my sister, I also made a website, but it was more based on the overall high school experience. And I wrote about my experience in general, and then also I explained details about testing, extracurriculars, all of these um opportunities and options that are available for these high schoolers. I talked about the distinction between AP and IB courses and honors courses and taking dual degrees and stuff like that. So students can understand what they need to know before they go into high school so they don't come in with a stressed environment and not knowing a feeling like they don't know what to do or just being like concerned overall. But yeah, that was I really like doing that project because it kind of made me reflect on what I thought was really important to my experience back then. What I would like. I had to kind of think about if I back when I was a freshman, what would I think was would be really useful and stuff like that. But yeah, it was a really I really like projects like the personal project. Also, since we're in a DP, we're doing extended essay now. These projects kind of help us really think about what we're passionate about and what we're interested in, and then we can either get give back to community or just research more about that topic and yeah.

Jon Peterson 7:54

Yeah, the reason I wanted to ask you about that is because for a lot of the students that I've interviewed and known, there is a thread that connects your personal interest from the personal project all the way through maybe your choice of CAS activities, your extended essay, those kind of things. They end up being they're not always connected, but they often are. Great. Thanks for introducing yourselves and giving us a little understanding of who you are and your school and so on. Do you want to each take do you did you take since you're twins, did you take the same courses? Are you what are your courses that you're enrolled in for the diploma program?

Avantika 8:25

So we basically take like all the same classes. The only one that's different is I do orchestra, my school and my sister takes band, but it's not really IB. But since we were really interested in engineering, we take IB physics HL and chemistry HL. And then we both take Spanish. That's the language that we took in middle school. So we wanted to kind of expand our knowledge on that.

Jon Peterson 8:44

Yeah.

Anantika 8:44

And then we take econ. That's something that me and my sister both didn't realize we would like. And then we had an econ elective in a sophomore year, and we both really liked it, and we were like, oh, it's actually fun. So then we decided to opt for an IB econ class, so we're doing that currently, and it's one of my favorite classes. And then we also take IB literature, and then yeah, and then we do T OK, of course, because it's mandated, and yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think my sister forgot a mention, but we also do math ALHL too.

Jon Peterson 9:12

Analysis and approaches, and that's so the HLs are your physics, your chemistry, and math. Okay, cool. Yeah, I was a high school, I was a DP physics teacher and T OK teacher when and the coordinator. You guys are speaking my language. Plus, I also taught astronomy as a non-IB course. Yeah, I was into that. Okay, so that's cool to know your background and and what courses you're taking. And you said you didn't take any one-year version, so all of your exams are coming next year.

Avantika 9:38

Yeah, all of that.

Jon Peterson 9:39

Have you started it on your extended essays?

Anantika 9:41

Yeah, so we were working on that a little bit over summer, and then we started it before too. And yeah, you're right about how the personal project connects to mine. My extended essays on physics and astronomy. Mine is on exoplanets and characterizing how the how they are within their own system, like how close they are to the sun, how big they are, how big the stars can really classify how habitable they are. So I'm using data sets from NASA and things like that to answer that question. But yeah, I wanted to do something that's physics-oriented because I feel like physics is probably one of my more challenging IB classes. So basically getting a little bit better with that, but also like bringing in astronomy because it's one of my favorite hobbies I like to learn about. So yeah. Yeah, and then mine is a little bit different, also physics, too, because I wanted to increase my knowledge on aerodynamics because it was like something I found myself really interested in the past couple of years. So for me, I'm investigating how for aerodynamics, how the angle of attack affects the lift to drag ratio of certain aircrafts, and just to give like some context on what that is the angle of attack is basically just the angle between the wing of an airplane, like the airfoil, and then the incoming airflow, and then how that affects the lift and the drag of an airplane, which are all really important concepts to reduce or to increase the efficiency of the aircraft itself. But um, yeah, physics, like my sister mentioned, we both really like physics, and it is a pretty challenging course. In my opinion, it's probably one of my hardest class, it probably is my hardest class currently at uh at our school. Like expanding on physics in our extended essay, I feel it'll give me the confidence that I need to end up taking the HL Physics IB exam in my senior year, which I know is pretty hard, but yeah.

Jon Peterson 11:13

How did you guys decide that you liked engineering? Is that just did it just kind of start as an early age, or do you have a family member involved?

Avantika 11:20

Or yeah, we do both my parents actually are software engineers, so we kind of kind of we kind of got that experience from an early age. And then math is kind of something that was always with us too. Since ever since I was in fourth grade, we were a part of this advanced math community that had classes on Saturday. And since we both like pretty we really liked math and we had that experience from our parents being software engineers, we kind of transitioned into the engineering path in and of itself. I do remember my dad wanted me to be a doctor. I took some biology classes, but I didn't really like them that much, so I kind of stuck with engineering. But another thing that my sister mentioned is we both really like econ and we're kind of thinking of minoring business or economics when we go to college because it's a side hobby or passion that we're really interested in. And we also do the model UN, which is that same thinking of debating with others and talking through solutions and stuff, which we kind of feel like is really important in the business business aspect as well. And I feel like engineering and business kind of intersect a lot in the real world, especially when you have all of these young engineers creating their own startups to identify solutions and problems, and they have to market those as well. But yeah.

Jon Peterson 12:22

Yeah. I recently did a uh podcast about with actually with an IB teacher from Michigan who was an economics teacher, and it was fun for me to kind of learn the economics course a little bit and how it's connected to so many things. Just the idea that if you think about the IB mission to create a better, more peaceful world, a lot of what economics is about is limited to resources and how those are distributed and how the problem solving that goes into getting those out. And so when you think about your future in economics and or your future in engineering, there's a lot of economics problems that need to be solved. And so when you think about a mission-driven career, it's I think it's really cool that you're finding yourself interested in the different different layers of how your career might look. It's not just about can you actually figure out the the angle of attack or the the exoplanet that's livable, those kind of things, it's a lot more going on. So that's I love that. I'm glad we're getting to know a little bit more about kind of how you're looking at the whole thing. And I I'll let just jump, I'll save this question about college later. So remind me, I have to get back to that. So one of the reasons you reached out to me in the first place is that through your CAS experience, you've actually developed some great connections to the community. Do you want to talk about that CAS experience and what you wanted to share about that?

Anantika 13:37

Yeah, definitely. Basically, we mentioned this too, but my sister and I run a youth-led nonprofit organization and it's called Wellness for Washness. So, kind of like what the name suggests, it focuses on empowering students' mental health and their well-being. And we educate them about mental health and like all of these resources that are important to know, and we create spaces for open conversations and we work with the community so that we can connect these youth youth populations with the resources that they need to support lifelong healthy habits that they can keep with them forever. And kind of like the name suggests, we primarily do our work in Washnah County, which is where we live, where our school is, and it is one of the most like diverse counties in Michigan itself, has a lot of different populations and have a lot of different experiences, especially with mental health itself. And we feel like a lot of the resources that are already available for mental health, they might not be as adapted to different organizations, different identity groups. And that's something that kind of was one of our is one of our main goals and values at Wellness for Washna to make sure these different identities from BIPOC or low-income people or these underserved minorities get the resources that can actually make an impact on their wellness and their lives. And a bit more about our journey with Wellness for Washna. In our freshman year of high school, there was a senior that we knew that founded it. That time it wasn't like a nonprofit, it was just a seven-person, like use-led organization. And it was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation because it was like a community change project. So at that time, it was just a club at our school. And then basically, like my sister said, is the founder she identified that students of low income, minority groups, they don't have this access to tailored mental health resources. And this is something that we see really prominent in what like Washtenar County, the county that our school is in and that we live in Michigan. Today, due to this unequal access and also further stigma, they don't really reach out to get help when they need it. And especially since mental health is getting so much prominent, people are actually talking about it now. It's so important that everyone has these resources. So after my sister and I gained leadership and now we run it, we got ones for Washington to really grow a lot. We are trying to fix these inequalities. We do things like host workshops for middle and high schoolers about the prominent mental health topics in the community. I know last year we did two workshops specifically on anxiety. When we did some research, that was the thing that a lot of students in Washington County and really around the world too is really deal with because it's such a prominent factor of school. And then we also do things like a mental health fairs where we reach out to a lot of different local community organizations that provide either free or really low-cost resources. And we have them come and table at our fairs, and we invite a lot of people from school, student support teams to come and learn about the resources and bring their families. Another really important thing that we do is we interview student identity groups at schools. A lot of schools have clubs like Black Student Union or Indian American Student Association, where it's like you have you have like a club based on your identity. So we interview those groups and ask them, oh, how does mental health really affect your experience? And how does your experience in that comp like commun community really affect how you view mental health, the stigmas around it, how you get access to resources and things like that. And with the data that we collect, we train student support teams because most schools have counselors or therapists, and we talk to them about the data and tell them about the things that we found and things like that. And also using what we find, we also provide our own resources. Since we're fully used to that, it's a pretty it's a smaller project, but we've done custom 3D printed fidgets. We did one of the bigger projects that we did is we wrote this entire mental health activity book where we researched it and contacted experts in our field and stuff like that, and student support stuff before we finished it, and we're gonna have them send out to schools. And then we've also presented to mental health professionals about our findings. So we've done a lot of work since we've started as a smaller organization. But yeah, that's we've done a lot now. So I'm glad. Yeah, I think in total we've impacted over 800 students, and currently we're also expanding to other schools, so making different wells for Washna chapters and other schools in Washna County so that we can expand a bigger population. And recently, this summer, we became a registered nonprofit after completing all of the documentation and the legal work. Yeah. And we even create we've even had 14 established partnerships with the local mental health organizations that we believe can truly support these underserved communities, organizations like Naomi Washna or the Corner Health or Safe House Center, which all like they all focus on different aspects and different populations, which we found extremely useful when we brought them in for our mental health fair and workshops.

Jon Peterson 17:58

When you were talking, I was thinking you talked about underserved groups, which sometimes you think of identity populations, but oftentimes, even within those, the the youth are ignored or the youth, it's hard to reach youth. And so having coming from youth, do you have a transition plan? Is that something where I know you took over leadership from someone who established this group? Do you have a a group coming up, or do you think that you'll stick with this and keep the leadership yourself?

Avantika 18:21

So well, we're definitely gonna stick with it, but instead of continuing like to be like president, vice president, once we go to college, we're thinking of taking like an advisory role. So like providing support or connections to like university professors or like university groups when they need it. Because I know there's a lot of like local organizations there that they can talk to, but we also have the Washington International Branch. We have a lot of sophomores and younger students too that are coming into our school. So we're we have a lot of people already in our club, and we're also looking to get more of the underclassmen to come and learn about us so that way like leadership can continue going in cycles, and like the next leaders cannot come up and be like president, vice president, the rest of like the whole like board and like help run that. We can just stay. We're more we're still gonna stick with it because it's been so like important in our lives. So we've been with it for four years, but we'll still like we'll stick with more of like an advisory role. So we can give them the support they need while also letting them like grow leadership.

Jon Peterson 19:10

Yeah, I know a lot of times with cast things there's projects that are done and then they kind of they die out, which is nothing wrong with that. They make great positive impacts while they're in in action, but sometimes they just kind of leave with the person who started it. So it's cool that you took over from someone and you have a plan to continue with that. By the way, for the listeners in the show notes, we'll have links to the website for the wellness for Washington, and and also you have an Instagram, which will also be linked in there. And both of you have LinkedIn profiles, it looks like. So I'll make sure that those are in the show notes so you can continue a conversation with people and follow up and maybe give some ideas of how they could do this in their own school. One of the things that let's just go ahead and ask the college question now. I meant to talk about it again or at some point. Do you guys have plans for college? I suppose you're looking for colleges. Have you narrowed it down yet?

Anantika 19:59

Yeah, the common app actually opened up a couple of weeks ago. So college applications like fully underway right now. We're st we are applying to both in-state and out-of-state colleges, but since we live in Michigan, we have the amazing University of Michigan, it's super close to us. I think it's only 10 minutes away from our house. Oh, really? So that's one of yeah, that's one of our big ones. And then we're applying to a couple of other ones out of state as well. Yeah, it is a little bit like intimidating, the whole common app and college application situation that we're in right now. Because it's like you're expected to put your entire life, all of the work you did in high school, your academic achievements, but also with how you've grown as a person as well. So it's a little bit intimidating and stressful. But I'm glad that in Washington International High School, like our school, there's a lot of alumni that we're so connected with that offer a lot of support and they're like really helpful if we ever have any questions about this experience. Yeah, it's intimidating, but we have the help we need, so it's it's a nice process. Yeah, just to echo that, especially since a lot of people from our school go to University of Michigan because it's so close. A lot of us have grown up going to downtown over like the and upper downtown where it's located over the weekends, or we've done like events like Science Lippe, or a lot of competitions, you have like mass competitions UMish hosts. So we like a lot of students here have gone there, lived, grown up with UMish. So with so many of our alumni going to UMish, we have a sort of network connection. So it's been really great to get like support. So we don't feel completely alone in the college process because we know a lot of people who've done it and also gone into these colleges that we want to go to.

Jon Peterson 21:24

Yeah, yeah. Do you want to name a couple of the others besides you University of Michigan?

Avantika 21:29

Yeah, so we're doing some other in-state ones, things like Michigan State and Eastern Michigan. And then out of state, I know there's the things like Georgia Tech, which is also really nice, really good for engineering. And I'm applying to U Chicago because I really like they're a really creative school. I like their writing. I like writing is like a side hobby of mine, like writing like stories and a lot of educational essays and things like that. So I really their the community and the way that the values, but a lot of engineering schools, things like that, those are the out of state ones.

Jon Peterson 21:56

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Just I'm located in the state of Minnesota. And I'm about ten minutes from the U of M also, but my U of M is University of Minnesota. And that's where I went. Yeah, so it's I'm a gopher, which is a funny name for a nickname. All right. So let's see. What else? Oh, I know. So what are some of the you guys in fact you talked about the fact that you did a website on Antica, you talked about a website you did for uprising high schoolers. What what advice do you have for those rising IB students around the world who might be listening? And both of you can suggest this. What are some things that you would say like to share about this experience?

Anantika 22:33

It's definitely hard. It's definitely challenging and difficult, this whole IB experience. It sometimes it feels like a lot, but the biggest like thing that I feel like someone who's you should tell someone who's thinking of choosing the IB is that you leave with not just knowledge on subjects like math or literature, but knowledge on the whole world in of itself, right? It's an international baccalaureate. You change your way of thinking, how you look at things, but also like how you approach a problem or work with others. And I feel like it's definitely worth the difficulties and the challenges if you put into effort and even if it is hard. But a specific piece of advice that I would give when it gets difficult is don't isolate yourself. It's really important to build transparent communicative relationships with IB teachers and counselors because they're here to help you, right? They can do so much for you and they want to see you grow and succeed in your IB journey. They have so much, so many resources and support that they can provide you as well. And in my school especially, I always ask questions to my teachers and sometimes go for office hours and stuff like that. And it's a really beneficial advantage that everyone should definitely take advantage of a beneficial opportunity that everyone should definitely take advantage of. Reaching out building relationships, strong relationships with your teachers so that you can ensure that you truly get the most out of your IB journey in of itself. Yeah.

Avantika 23:47

And also I have my advice is a little bit more on the lines of the projects, say the bigger projects that we do in the IB. Because things like personal project or accident essay, like my sister mentioned earlier, you really get that opportunity to dive into like topics that you're interested in. So my advice is don't pick something easy or simple. I know a lot of people sometimes just do something simple just to get out of the way because it's so big and they have a lot of other things going on. But I think it's great if you could take advantage of that opportunity, pick an IA or an EE or a CAS topic that you're like really obsessed with, something that maybe outside of school, like you can connect to the things you learn in school. And if you care really deeply about that subject matter that you chose, then the workload doesn't really feel like a chore. And it's more like something that you now you have time dedicated to just explore your hobbies, and you can also see how it connects to the classes that you took within the IB. And sometimes maybe you like it so much that you'll decide to stick with it for further studies in college or other hobbies that you have, things like that. So I think that was probably one of my favorite parts of the IB, like the projects that we could dive deeper in. But yeah.

Jon Peterson 24:44

So it's hard for me as an educator to avoid the elephant in the room with education these days. Can you speak a little bit about how AI has been involved in your education? And you're part of the first generation to really be fully like you have that as an as a possible asset. What how has that played a role in the learning this last few years?

Anantika 25:07

I feel like, especially since we were there when it started developing, when the first original models came out when we were like Chad GPT when we were kid when we were in middle school, and everyone was super excited to try it on. And I remember even my dad was like, oh, next thing you have like you're stuck on your homework, you can just add AI because it's so cool. And then I remember a lot of people, especially the younger generations I'm seeing people get dependent on it now, which is something that's not definitely not the best. I feel like the good thing with DIB though is the idea that you want to be really creative. A lot of times, especially when I'm seeing the younger generations, AI removes the creativity that you have, you become super overly dependent on it. I remember when I was in, I think seventh grade, I would use AI so much because I'm like, oh, it's so cool. I'm just being like a physician, technology advanced. And then later, once I got into high school, I also read a lot of articles about oh, AI can eliminate brain development or it's ruining your creativity. I was like, dang, it's not as good. There's it's not as everything people were saying. Yeah, while you can use it as a tool, it's not something you should oh tell me the answer to the math question or write my EE for me and things like that. So I feel like since the IB is so hard and there's so many things where you really had to do things yourself, or else you're gonna completely fail. You have to do like homework to get understand a test, or you have to pay attention in class if you want to like write do the IAs and things like that. And the EEs are so big, you could I feel like at that point it's kind of hard to use AI for these projects, so it forces you to stop becoming dependent and actually use your creativity. So I'm glad I went to library school and actually realize I've realized that AI wasn't everything. I feel like if I did go to a different school, like from the way I used to be like dependent on in middle school, I I don't know what would have happened, but hopefully I wouldn't have been like super dependent. Yeah, but yeah, I've seen a lot of the younger students, like 10th graders and freshmen, although I see like a lot of them will like use AI a lot. But I feel that especially as you get into the IB junior year and senior year, I've noticed that people usually tend to use it less for things. But yeah, and just to say my thoughts, echoing my what my sister mentioned, there are a lot of controversy with AI. But I feel like sometimes people sometimes also just focus on the negative aspects as well. Students often take advantage of the AI and it ends up with like huge consequences with not actually understanding topics and just rushing through things just to get them done. But I feel like it also has great benefits in and of itself, right? The technology that our generation has produced is something that we're still in a we're still in the developing era, right? There's still things that we have to figure out and kinks in like how it works. But the fact that we're able to do we're able to use artificial intelligence is still something that's to me is really amazing. And I use it, and the way that I as a student use AI, not really for homework and stuff like that, because I know that I need to make sure the topics are fully ingrained into my minds, especially because our tests are pretty difficult, and it's not like you're gonna be able to use AI for that. But I use it a lot to after my homeworks, and if I want to review a concept or study, I s I would input my notes into an AI and ask it to give me practice problems or something similar or an overview overview of what concepts I'm struggling with, and then use that for targeted practice and stuff like that. I do encourage students to take advantage of the good uses of AI because it overall it helps your it helps make your world more efficient, but in general, it's you still have to be wary of the consequences and not becoming over-dependent, like my sister mentioned. And from a teacher perspective, too, because we did mention we do tutor for Science Olympiad. I feel like AI and education has so many possibilities. We there's a lot of different AIs out there that you can use for concept building or making lesson plants and something similar. And I feel like that's something that's really useful, especially for teachers themselves, because sometimes they're not able to make more interactive lessons or something that truly targets like different how different people think or how different people learn. And I feel like AI is kind of really beneficial for making these more targeted, targeted approaches, especially if someone doesn't have enough time or doesn't really understand how to explain something as well as they thought they would. But yeah, kind of still the overall theme is make sure you're not over too dependent or make sure you're like wary of the consequences because there are obviously there are obviously negative effects that can come from be using it too much, but still I wouldn't completely forget about the positives as well. Yeah, that's true. Cause I do remember last year, the previous junior year for my final, I think it was chemistry. There, because with the IB you would have remember everything from your entire two years. So last year was just one year, but there were so many different concepts. So I think a useful thing I did with an AI model is I inputted like my teacher gave us all the like the lesson overviews, so we knew what to review, and I put inputted that, and it just gave me like dozens of practice problems. I remember I think when I did like 50 chemistry problems, I feel like that really helped me remember everything because there was just so much in the chemistry class, like every single question was from a different lesson. So there are a lot of good uses, but it's important to use them carefully. I think that's what I really learned over my high school experience. But yeah, yeah, and like in this, oh sorry, in this day and era, I know I'm speaking a lot about this question, but like in this day and era, it's really important to maximize your efficiency, right? Students these days they're like doing extracurricular, sports, academics, research, so many things, right? And then instead of spending like too much time on one single concept that you might be stuck with, turning to like all of these resources that we all have access to can like help with the efficiency, right? Can make sure that you don't waste too much time, but you still understand the concepts as well. But yeah, I just wanted to add.

Jon Peterson 30:06

Yeah. No, that's great. I I just started asking that question of young people, uh, just and some teachers, but that's a great set of answers, both of you, because I think that's one of those I was just at an IBE global conference in Denver this last summer, and it AI really took center stage in many of the presentations. And so it was interesting to hear your perspective. And I think what you just said echoes what IB teachers and leaders are hoping AI will become. It's we're not certainly going to be competing with it, we're gonna have to ride it. And you guys sounded just gave some good descriptions of how to handle it. And for young people and for teachers that are listening to this, I think rem remember what these young ladies said, because I think it's gonna be a good way for us to look at it moving forward, at least at this point. So, do you guys have any final thoughts? I am so happy that you came on and reached out to me to talk about these things. You are great examples of students who are in the middle of the IB program. You've had three years already, you're gonna have another year. Maybe like I just did with Gianna Shaw from India, maybe we can check in next year when you've got all the exams done. Let's try to remember to get together. Do you have any final thoughts for people or for yourselves or kind of the overall experience?

Avantika 31:13

Yeah, definitely. I would love to connect after a year and talk about like how the final IB exam uh IB experience is finally over and what we gained out of it. But I guess I just want to end it with what kind of real I think will really stick the most with me out of the IB experience. There's so many things that we touched upon, like with the subjects, the projects, the coursework in the classes. But I feel like I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I just want to come back to it and um emphasize it. But I feel like the fact that the IB experience gives you like the cognitive skill of kind of looking at massive like global problems and then finding not just the most simplest or easy or the most polarized solutions, but going in with an open-minded perspective and finding these intricate complex solutions that can bring about multiple benefits. I feel like that's something that the IB kind of teaches you to do. This mindset is something that they teach you to learn and have. And I feel like that's something that's always gonna benefit you lifelong, no matter what career path or whatever lifestyle you choose and you're gonna end up having. This is something that just always sticks with you. And I feel like the IB in of itself is something that in general I was really intimidated when I first started with it. But over these past couple of years, it's grown on to me, and I feel like it's affected me in so many different ways that I might not have even realized so far. But yeah, good. Yeah, and it's I really agree. I think the IB really changed my mindset, like the way I thought about things. And then I think the biggest trait I got from IB is this idea of being like open-minded. I know, especially when in middle school, a lot of times people think in a smaller shell or the way you view the world is really narrow. But I think being open-minded, just opening up a little bit, can really get you through a lot of difficult situations, it can get you to try new things. I think that's probably the reason why we were able to do so much in high school. Because we really were like super open to being doing anything. I think I remember in freshman year, I joined so many clubs because I wanted to try out which ones I liked. And I didn't end up not staying with all of them because I figured out what are what were my passions or what things I wanted to stick with or what I wanted to do in college. But yeah, I think that's the final thing. But yeah, thank you for having us. Yeah, it was really great to share our opinions.

Jon Peterson 33:18

Again, uh wish you so much luck for getting started for the senior year. You you said you told me that uh you're starting next week already, so summer's almost there. I hope that you have a great year and let's do that. Let's check back in a year.

Anantika 33:32

Okay, perfect. Thank you again. I really appreciate it. Yeah.

Jon Peterson 33:35

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