DP News

Extended essays now ticked off 

by Chris Dite, Extended Essay Coordinator

Preshil’s first IB Diploma Programme students have all successfully completed their Extended Essays!

The EE is a 4000-word thesis-like piece of writing that – along with Theory of Knowledge and Creativity, Action, Service – forms the core of the DP. Students form their own research question in their first year of the DP, then embark on a process of research, writing and editing under the guidance of a teacher/supervisor.

In the final meetings with their supervisors, the cohort was beaming with pride. Several students remarked that it fills them with confidence to head to university next year knowing they’ve already completed a longer piece of academic writing than any student will have to do in their undergraduate degree.

Just as our Year 12s are all very different, so too were their chosen research questions; wildly diverse, challenging and provocative. Our students chose to explore feminist social reforms in the early Soviet Union; the implications of quantum indeterminism for freedom; methods of controlling Crown-of-Thorns Starfish outbreaks; the effects on biodiversity of herbicide residues in vineyards; genetics and depression; distress and eustress; self-esteem and eating disorders; the historically shifting lines between mental illness and sexual preference; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and superb critical studies of Game of Thrones, John Milton, Mary Shelley, Yoko Tawada, Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock, Barbara Kruger, Alice Neel, Jenny Saville, Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch.

Our next cohort has already begun drafting their research questions and there is no doubt that the bold and diverse efforts of the Year 12s have filled them with the same sense of fortitude and daring.

Congratulations to all of you!