Swamped: How it feels to be drowning in assignments
4,000 words. 16 months. The Extended Essay is coming to a close for the Grade 12 students, and our reporters have mixed feelings. QQ writers Josefine S. and Jiyoon K. offer their opinions leading up to the final EE submission.
More stories from Josefine S.
More stories from Jiyoon K.
Illustration by Misha P.
Josefine in the weeks leading up to the EE final submission
Take a look around the OPG building right now. What do you see? You might spot a bunch of stress and dehydrated twelfth graders hunched over their laptops with dark circles around their eyes. Or maybe they’re huddled in a group, laughing dryly about their disheveled states. Perhaps you’ll find some kids crying in the corner. No matter how hard you search, I highly doubt you’ll find a person who’s just fine. Who’s okay. Someone who has all of these assignments piled on top of them like the rest of us and is still handling it perfectly.
(If you do spot someone like this, please let me know. I’d love to interview them to get a glimpse into their minds. How someone could function so well in a time like this, I can’t even fathom.)
The overall consensus of Grade 12 is that we’re overwhelmed. Swamped. Drowning. The one good takeaway from all of this, however, is that once today is over, it’s over. The EE is done and turned in. The Math IA and other assignments can be put away for the time being. Once we get through December 12th, we can all go to bed and sleep for a whole eight hours, which is eight hours more than we usually get.
In the meantime, however, if you do come across a twelfth grader, then please: offer us some water. Or a pillow. Or a shoulder to cry on. Any sort of reprieve from this pit of assignments is encouraged and will be met with tears of gratitude.
One more day, folks. One more day.
Jiyoon the day before the final draft was submitted
It’s that time of the year again, where the DP2 students mark the end of their EE journey. Since the summer of 2020 when we first chose our topics, we have spent countless hours researching, writing and revising our 4000-word essays. For many of us, working on a single paper for almost two years was a new challenge that overwhelmed us in many stressful ways. However, due to such efforts, the happiness we feel as we make our final submissions is true and clear. Regardless of the results, Extended Essays are over, at last!
