I think, therefore IB

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to attend a reunion for former Garland High School students who had participated in the International Baccalaureate Program, which has now been offered for twenty years at GHS. What's that, you ask? Well, imagine the Advanced Placement program on steroids...and with the British spelling of words like programme and colour. That's not exactly accurate, because the goal of AP is to earn college credit, while the goal of IB is to produce a certain kind of thinker, as best I can understand, with the added bonus of possible college credit. If you're really interested or have nothing better to do, you can check out the program at www.ibo.org/diploma.

I loved being an IB student, even though the curriculum was so rigorous and time-consuming that I look back on the last two years of high school as the most stressful and draining time of my life. Even now, I blame the IB folks for the fact that no matter if I'm dog tired, I can't fall asleep before 11:30 p.m. All those midnight biology lab study groups have irreversibly altered my circadian rhythm, it seems. As one responder to the IB survey quipped: You know you're in IB when your heart beats in 7/8 time.

So today I trotted on back to Garland to attend the little reception, wondering who I might see and how much things have changed. Several of my favorite teachers had moved on to other schools, several had retired, and some had even found other careers--for example, the Theory of Knowledge teacher has heeded her own famous admonishment to "follow your bliss." She has found bliss as a public defender somwhere in Oklahoma, I think. She had a big heart, so I can see how this is a good fit. There are those who could argue, on the basis of personal experience, that teaching high school is ideal preparation for a career dealing with criminals. But as usual, I digress...

I discovered within five minutes that the vast majority of attendees were very recent graduates. I was one of only three who graduated in the 1990s, and I'm guessing that most of the other attendees are still college students. There are several possible reasons for this:

A. The reunion project was organized by students who needed CAS (service) hours for their IB diploma, and they sent the invites to our old high school addresses, so most people had never recieved them.

B. Most of the other I.B. diploma recipients are high-powered D.C. attorneys or doctoral candidates or brain surgeons or poker players (I saw online that one guy I graduated with has won over 28 grand) who couldn 't forsake their previous commitments in order to dine on cheese cubes and cafeteria cookies in the GHS library.

C. I'm the only person in her thirties who is still seeking the approval of teachers who have long-since graded their last test (I pulled out pictures of my children so they could evaluate them).

Even with the changes in personnel, the IB ethos (sorry, Audra) feels the same today as it did way back when. The kids are telling the same jokes about sleep deprivation, caffeine dependency, and rabid overachievement that characterized my two years in IB. Against that backdrop, the changes in myself were glaringly obvious.

Since I didn't know anybody but a few teachers, I milled around eavesdropping, just for funsies. The room was filled with little clusters of kids commiserating over college classes, degree plan requirements, and what they really want to do with their lives. I passed a group of scruffy-faced boys engaged in an earnest discussion of utilitarianism, each sporting the goatee that advertises, "I'm a sophist." It reminded me of a scene from La Boheme except instead of featuring starving artists, the main characters had their fill of free cookies, and nobody died of consumption or belted out Italian arias. (Aside: Did anyone ever buy the idea of a man of Pavarotti's gerth living on crumbs?)

I remember those discussions and how much I wanted to make an articulate contribution. Today, twelve years later, I just had to laugh. I think I have reached the point in my life where, for the most part, theoretical banter must give way to practical action. It was always understood in my family that I would go to college. Looking back now, I realize that what I perceived as merely a prescribed stage in life was actually a great luxury. Five years (Music ed + English) of extended adolescence, when my only jobs were to study and perform.

I don't know what I would've contributed to that conversation were I still a career student living on scholarships and the charity of my parents and grants provided by you, the taxpayer, but the older I get the more "utilitarian" doesn't seem like such a negative word. Sometimes the usefulness of something must necessarily trump everything. If you don't believe me, head on down to Babies R Us and check out the strollers. You'll find out that the eye-catching designer models, which at first glance seem to exclaim "Buy me! I'm adorable! I'm like a giant purse!" will in fact take you ten minutes--with some deep breathing exercises and the assistance of a spotter--to collapse. In this instance, I'll take drab but functional. It'll be covered in graham cracker/slobber crust within a few months, anyway.

I think the human mind can reflect this phenomenon, as well. Let me put it this way: if everyone spent all their time filling their pockets with all the "isms" there are to contemplate in the world, who would take the trash out? (Fact: Back at the GHS library, I snapped out of a dissociative trance, realizing I had collected a stack of dirty plates that had been left lying around and was looking for somewhere to deposit them. Because I am a mom? Because I am thirty? Who knows?) Hopefully, I am finding a balance in my own life of common sense and academia. Of course, it's also entirely possible that a man in a giant purple dinosaur outfit wiped my slate clean of all intellect 4 years and two children ago, and everyone has been kind enough not to point this out to me.