Looking back on my two years with Pamoja Online Courses

Written by Amelia from Gjøvik videregående skole, Norway

From understanding the consequences of my own lack of action, to the importance of balance and time-management, Pamoja has taught me lessons I will be using beyond the classroom.

It has now been two months since my last exam, and now the perfect opportunity to reflect upon the last two years. In my first Pamoja blog post I wrote about how unexpected it was for me to take two Pamoja courses and how I was thrilled to have found an international learning environment in a small-town. In hindsight, I can proudly say that I found so much more than that.

Looking back, as soon as my Pamoja Business course started, I knew that I had made the right choice and this was reaffirmed as the months went on. Because of this appreciation of the IB Business course, I decided to write my Extended Essay in the subject of Business. I spent weeks convincing my school that I was capable of doing this and when they finally allowed me to write my Extended Essay in Business through Pamoja, I couldn’t have been happier. In fact, I was the very first student on the course for that semester and that very night I spent hours going through all the resources and materials made available for the Pamoja Extended Essay students, just because of how excited I was for this opportunity. Despite having never met my Business teacher in real life, he proved to be a brilliant Extended Essay supervisor who pushed me to do my best possible work. One of the best parts of writing an Extended Essay online with Pamoja was that I had an experienced supervisor who knew how to guide me throughout this process. This was the exact opposite to what some of my friends went through at my school so I was immensely grateful for the guidance which was offered to me. At the end of my Extended Essay process, my supervisor predicted me a ‘B’, yet when results came out I was ecstatic to see that I scored 32/34 which left me with an ‘A’. This result made me realise just how well prepared I was for the process of writing a 4000 word essay due to the variety of essay tasks in the Pamoja Business course.

In the lead up to the May 2022 IB exams, I, like many other DP students, felt immensely stressed not only about the exams but about HOW to start studying. This stress was soon eased when my Pamoja teachers in both Business HL and French ab initio helped us create study plans, shared resources with us, and, most importantly, were available for calls so we could ask questions. In fact, in my Business HL course, one of the subject teachers arranged 7 calls which were centred around areas of the curriculum which many of us students struggled with. My French ab initio teacher also made herself available to answer all my questions (of which there were many) in the lead up to exams. I had so much support from my Pamoja teachers, in the end, I was better prepared for the exams in my Pamoja subjects than in the subjects that I took at my school. During the exam period, all my Pamoja teachers were available to me, even if it was just to reassure me. Due to all this encouragement, I ended up performing better in my Pamoja subjects than in my school-taught subjects. In Business HL, I ended up scoring a 7 and in French ab initio I scored a 6. Although I did get similar grades in my school-taught subjects, I did not perform to this level of accomplishment in them all. I could not be more proud of my final result, especially given the doubts my school voiced when I embarked upon this journey with Pamoja.

Whilst the IBDP may now be over for me, it does not mean that the friendships I have made along the way in Pamoja are too. I still talk to friends which I have made from Business HL and French ab initio nearly every day and I think I will continue to do so over the years to come. I am planning on meeting up with a friend who I met in French ab initio now that we are both studying on the same continent!

Now I am able to look forward to the next chapter, and for me, that is university. I am planning on studying International Business at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands starting this September. To say I was heavily motivated by my Pamoja Business course to study this subject is an understatement. The past two years have taught me that I am deeply interested in the business world and that this is where I want to focus my studies.

Finally, I have learned so much more than just the IB syllabus in these two years. From understanding the consequences of my own lack of action, to the importance of balance and time-management, Pamoja has taught me lessons I will use beyond the classroom.