Hello everyone! My name is Jakob Geusen and I have been asked to write about how the decision to complete the IB Diploma has proved to be useful in my life after Felsted.
 

I remember that in multiple ways the IB curriculum encouraged and allowed us to be open-minded and risk-taking. This is probably why I decided to move to the outskirts of Santiago de Chile to teach English at a local public school after leaving Windsor’s House in 2016. Truth be told, it was tough to adjust to such a different environment after leaving the well-protected Felsted bubble and to understand mumbling Chilenos using words that couldn’t be found in any dictionary. In the end it turned out to be a great year and I guess it was partly due to the IB programme equipping me with the right tools to stay calm and overcome these initial troubles.

Another thing that I got better at during 2 years of IB was managing my workload. With all the coursework deadlines piling up and exams on the horizon, it was essential to break down assignments into manageable tasks and to organize and use your time efficiently. I would especially like to thank Mr. Homer for looking over my schedules and helping me to prioritise my work. It is needless to say that these skills were quite useful while studying Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Munich and I found it was much easier for me to cope with the high workload than other students.

I think studying the IB Diploma has already shaped my life a great deal.

Last but not least I would like to highlight the benefits of the IB’s interdisciplinary approach. It was clear to me that I was going to study something like information technology very early on, but I am extremely grateful for being taught English, History, Psychology, German and ToK in Sixth Form rather than just focusing on Maths and Physics. A year ago, I was given the task to conduct a feasibility study for a low-budget Brain Computer Interface and there I found myself studying Psychology books once again. This is just one example where the IB’s balanced education and its wide range of subjects has proved to be very handy even though I always knew that I was going to end up with numbers and code.

To sum it all up, I think studying the IB Diploma has already shaped my life a great deal. I am writing this article while sitting in a train to Zürich where I am going to start studying my masters in Signal Processing and Machine Learning. So I am very excited to see how my time at Felsted and the IB programme might shape my life even more.

Learn more about the IB Diploma at Felsted