By the time the average high school student has reached his junior year, he has experienced absolutely everything the world has to offer. He is now a big boy. But nothing could have prepared him for the International Baccalaureate program.

I began my junior year in the most lame way ever: taking all Advanced Placement classes. I was dissatisfied with my schedule, and so I decided to follow the route my older brother took by joining IB. Ms. Dill even got irritated with how often she would find me in her office wanting to change my schedule because for some reason, I decided to change each class on the schedule independently rather than all at once. But, once I completed the switch, I was a full-fledged IB student.

I walked into Mrs. Nichter’s class and took notes, and that was normal. Then Mr. Cassady’s class. More notes. Still normal. But then came time for third period, with Mr. House, a legendary English teacher and Jeopardy! survivor only spoken about in rumors and thought to be nothing more than an urban legend.

The class seemed normal when I walked in. Actually, no it did not. The door had a depiction of Hell painted on it. But upon closer inspection, it looked like the room of a hoarder — not saying that Mr. House is one. There were typewriters, barbie dolls, My Little Pony figures, spark plugs meant for a car, a mannequin, Jesus dress-up wall magnets, and even a giant wall sticker of a random Asian man. It was almost as if a kleptomaniac dumped their possessions in the class. And it was weird.

We began our journey in Mr. House’s class learning about existentialism, possibly the most pointless philosophy in existence. He began by asking us: “Why have you not committed suicide yet?” To this day, no one is really sure whether or not there was an underlying connotation to that question which implied that Mr. House hated his job as a teacher.

But then again, IB students themselves are usually all weird, so nothing about the class really seemed weird to them. The class is a sort of baptism; it is the initiation to become a true IB student. Anyone who was not weird before became weird, to the point where they breathed test scores in place of oxygen, and SAT scores were their lifelines. I heard that one time, an IB student was hospitalized, and instead of an IV bag, they placed an SAT booklet in the bag and it worked. Defibrillators did not work- their shock was too weak. So, doctors would shove a test with a failing grade onto the student, shocking them back into consciousness. Once, a student was confirmed dead under a pile of homework, but the student awoke, screaming: “I DID NOT UPLOAD MY IA YET!!!”

The point here is that IB is far superior to AP in every way possible.