This year’s Grade 10 cohort was described as “special” by Miss Gonzalez, coordinator of the personal project at SIS, as it was the last group of students she has been guiding before moving abroad but also the first to have their exhibition in the new aula.
The bittersweetness of the event, which concluded the personal project – a task that a lot of students described as “not an enjoyable experience,” but also marked the beginning of a new journey for the IBDP ‘26 class. The aula was filled with aspiring talents, from mechanics to painters, to social media influencers. I stopped to talk to a few of them and here are some of the highlights from the exhibition:
Maude decided to explore something that she was already familiar with, art. She researched self expression techniques in art by looking at the Mexican painter, Frida Khalo and the earless Vincent Van Gogh. The end result was a series of essays exploring her findings, but the most impressive was her painting, which incorporated both artists’ self expression techniques as well as her own. She described the process as strenuous, and found time management especially challenging. When asked about what she was proud of, she said “My resilience, yeah I’m pretty proud I could keep going for as long as I did”.
Carl, an aspiring engineer, decided to test his previous knowledge and experimented with energy. At the end his personal project was a hydrogen generator! He was very thorough with his research and was especially interested in the process. The most challenging part of the personal project was, something that all of Grade 10 can relate to, “…realising that the personal project was about the process and not the product”.
Lastly, Neva with her podcast about bilingualism and behaviour. Her commendable commitment to the podcast led her to an expert at Stockholm university, with whom she spoke to extend her research and enrich her podcast. Her results? Behaviour might change between languages depending on level of fluency. “A person who is less proficient in a language might act quieter, or more timid because they are less confident in their speaking abilities, but someone who is fluent in a language might act more extrovertedly”. ´
These were just a few of the projects, as there really was a multitude of talents. Other notable projects were those Sean and his therapeutic approach for art, Ryan and his aerospace engineering, Sofia and her chromosynesthesia paintings, Sara and her tailoring experience, or Bryan and his research about Manhwa translations.
We hope that the Grade 10s, or rather next year’s Grade 11s have a great summer, and to that we will see them flourish in DP, or wherever they might be in August!
