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Smiling, Zeren Johnson ’25 and Nina Jovanovic ’25 socialize and reminisce on their EE experience while eating dinner. The dinner was catered by Chick-fil-A and there was a wide array of other food such as fruit, chips, and sheet cake.
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Staring up at the Kahoot question in front of him, Tarun Kallur ’25 contemplates what to answer for his group. Each IB EE subject group competed against each other to answer IB and Westwood trivia on Kahoot.
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Balancing a plastic egg on a spoon, Avaneesh Ramesh ’25 hurries from one end of the cafeteria to the other in hopes of garnering points for his team. Ramesh wrote his EE on a computer science topic about convolutional neural networks and artificial neural networks in image classification tasks.
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Energetically pulling the rope towards them, IB students play a game of tug of war. Only moments later the rope snapped in half, causing all students to fall on the ground, laughing.
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Painting their hands in different colors, five IB seniors prepare to stamp their handprint on the EE banner. Afterwards, the students signed their names next to their handprints; the banner will be hung up near the IB colony to celebrate their big achievement.
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With intent focus, IB juniors and seniors hold a plastic egg on their spoon and hurriedly race the other groups to the end of the cafeteria and back, a slideshow behind them aglow with Extended Essay (EE) research questions. On Monday, Nov. 4, the International Baccalaureate Student Organization (IBSO) hosted a party for the seniors to celebrate the submission of their EE with games, speeches, and dinner.
The EE is a 4,000 word essay that IB students write about a subject of their choice. Writing an EE is an extensive process which starts in the winter of junior year where students pick a subject, write a mock research question, and meet with their advisor — a staff member with expertise in that particular subject area. The bulk of the writing and researching takes place in the summer, when students keep up with EE checkpoints and submit paragraphs to their advisor. Once fall rolls around, students meet with their advisor, make edits to their rough draft, and submit their final EE to IB Coordinator Ms. Christin Key.
“For my EE, there was a lot of research because I did a topic on Japanese isolationism and its impact on modernization,” Coleman Loyd ‘25 said. “One of the things I like about the EE is that you get specialized [in your area of research] and you know more about the people [who do the same EE subject as you], so the event was a good way to bring everyone together.”
The party began by splitting the IB students into one of the six EE subject areas that they had chosen. There were multiple activities and games throughout the night from which each team could earn points, and the winner with the most points would be allowed to eat first. First, teams participated in the “egg relay race” where each team had to run across the cafeteria while balancing a plastic egg on a spoon, and then hand it off to their teammate without having the egg fall. Then, teams participated in a school wide scavenger hunt, IB trivia Kahoot game, and tug of war.
“Our biggest goal was wanting to make it feel like a community – that’s why we included juniors,” IBSO President of Events Deborah Gutierrez ‘25 said. “We wanted to celebrate the seniors but to also make sure that there is always the possibility and the opportunity [for juniors] to talk to us, to approach us, which is why we thought a party with activities and showcasing our EEs would give the juniors some inspiration and insight for next year.”
The last activity before dinner was the game of tug of war. Signaling the start of the game, IB teacher Mr. Garrett Mott blew his whistle, with the rope immediately snapping due to the strong forces on both sides, and IB students falling to the floor in a fit of laughter. After all the points from the games were tallied up, students lined up for a catered Chick-fil-A dinner and cake. IB juniors helped to serve the food and learned more about the EE process from the seniors.
“I think it’s great that [we] celebrate the seniors just because it’s such a long process,” Atiriya Banerjee ‘26 said. “It gave me a lot of motivation to get [the EE] done because we saw the completed product. I think [after the celebration, the EE] definitely feels a lot more doable and it’s possible to be able to do it well just because so many people have done it. ”
After dinner, EE Coordinators Ms. Key and Dr. Joshua Plocher held a speech celebrating the hard work the seniors had put into their EEs and encouraged students to write thank you notes to their advisors who had helped them throughout the entire process.
“I thought the [party] was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the downtime after the EE because it was an intensive project, and it was fun to talk to other teachers, write letters to them, and be able to show some gratitude after having worked with them,” Loyd said. “It was a good way to give back to all of the teachers!”
For the rest of the evening, IB students socialized, snacked, and reflected on their EE. The seniors even left their handprint on an IB EE banner to symbolize their class achievement.
“Everyone participated in all the games, the food was great, and everyone was attentive when Ms. Key and Dr. Plocher were speaking,” Gutierrez said. “I think it was a success – we had a great turnout and everyone had fun!”
