French SL Papers 1 and 2

It's been almost twelve hours since I finished my last IB exam paper for this year and I'm still pretty exuberant about it all.

Paper 1
Section A

• There were a whole slew of short readings. The first one was about Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Quebec and their various populations of francophones. The second had to do with some crackpot lady's trip to the capital of Niger. The third one had to do with a woman who crossed the ocean in a single-person boat--how did she go to bathroom (not a perv-question btw)? And the last had to do with plastic bags and their effects on the appearance of the countryside, wildlife, and future waste management problems.
  
• There were also corresponding short answer type questions, including matching the correct endings to beginnings of sentences, matching the right synonym to vocab words taken from the text, and true/false + justification from the text type questions. Those were mostly easy and I'm sure I killed them all (with the exception of one tricky vocab word that I couldn't place until after I handed the paper in). "There's only one real answer and you can find it in there."
  

Section B

• A short writing task of at least 100 words where one had to write an article or argumentative essay that would go into the school newspaper citing the problems associated with using plastic bags for many daily purposes (NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES IN CONSUMPTION!).
• I remembered reading over the format/structure (worth a third of the mark for writing assignments for IB) of "les discours" in particular (I just had a gut feeling it'd be handy) and so I was well versed in how to write in this style. You're supposed to use exaggeration (OMG t3h b49s 4r3 4tt4ck1n9!), emotion (think of the dolphins and turtles!), and humour (plastic bags are like people with disgusting perfumes, they're grossness lingers even after they're gone) to prove/argue my points. So I did. I even came up with the title "L'attaque des sacs!" for my "discours" and I'm actually pretty proud of coming up with that on the spot (and in French, no less).
• I also used (and slightly abused) idiomatic expressions which score big style points with IB. I'm such a nerd.
  

Paper 2
For paper 2 we were to choose one task from the 4 (or so) given and carry it out writing at least 250 words and using the writing style appropriate to the task (eg: essay, official letter, informal letter, guide, report, journal entry, etc...). Obviously each type of writing has its own quirks, pros, and cons. I took on the first task.
Question 1
Write a page of your personal journal describing your decision to move in with three of your friends and the difficulties of living together.

• I wrote down on my scrap piece of paper all the things I could remember about each of the different styles needed in the tasks mentioned, and I just ended up knowing more (than nothing!) about journal entries than the rest of the formats. I also didn't feel like writing another essay.
• So I started out by drafting my introduction on scrap (I had 1 hour and 30 minutes to write >250 words so I took my time), mentioning how much I regretted my decision to move in with the three friends.
  
• In my first body paragraph I talked about Joe. Joe is my imaginary friend from grade school and he's a big social butterfly. He also likes to bring home strangers and leave them all over the place without warning, so I wrote about how nervous it made me to come home to a random "inconnu" in my room. Perhaps an agreeable stranger (there's only one way to find out!), but a stranger nonetheless.
• Then I talked about Tina, the studious Chinese (implied, not directly mentioned) immigrant who is a complete slacker at home. I complained about how she did all her work from school but never bothered to clean stuff. Frustrating!
  
• Last was Gordo. With a name like that, you can't be surprised that he's the one who eats all the food. I whined about him eating the food I put in the "frigo" (I hope they like slang in journal entries). "DAMNIT GORDO!" I actually ended this paragraph off with the sentence "ZUT!" which, FYI, means "DAMN!" and not "F*CK!"
• In my conclusion I pined on and on about how I've got to be more understanding of people (not entirely untrue for my real life friends/acquaintances) and less impatient. I also mentioned, in a rather emo fashion, that no one would like to be my friend otherwise...

And that was my IB French SL exam! Done within a total of almost 4 hours (7:30 - ~11:30 am). I'm really glad I went to Shivon's place yesterday to review. I also really don't think I would've done as well if his father, during the ride they gave me back home, hadn't challenged me by telling me to think of "someone with average intelligence" as my model to follow. He's a wise guy. "Expect the unexpected. You never know what will happen the next day. No one knows who will die tomorrow." And so I went home and frantically reviewed (but not too frantically) and rested up. Now I'm dead tired and totally satisfied with my performance in the past few days.

Note: You might be wondering why I chose to remember these details from my exams and write them up. It's not because I think most people with find it interesting. It's my way of being done with the anxiety of these exams for good and recording them for future reference/nostalgia. IB exams come once in a lifetime. Savour the nerdiness.