We had the opportunity of interviewing Noelle Sorich, an alum of Seton Hall University, about: High School Courses
In college, Noelle
received a degree in International Relations, Economics, and Modern Languages
interned with multiple organizations at the UN, and was invited to be the commencement speaker at graduation
was the President of the Model United Nations team in Seton Hall, where the team is now ranked within the top 25 programs in the country.
Key points Noelle shares:
"I think a lot of it was making sure you're studying the right things. So for IB, I needed to know what was on the exams at the end of the year."
"And that's okay. I kind of enjoyed learning things that I will never need again and still reflect on them fondly."
Quality over quantity. How would you say this influenced your work ethic in high school?
A: I think the IB program is really structured in a way that critical thinking is just so important to it. So, for me, quality was much more about the way you broke something down or how deep your analysis was. I think if you were to compare IB versus AP, it was quality versus quantity. Like when I look at eight AP courses I'm like, “Oh yeah, I memorized a large quantity of things”. And that's great. But the quality of the work that I learned and the depth of things that I was learning in IB was just so much. So I think I really appreciated doing critical thinking work and working on quality. Though It was hard to time manage well and effectively with it at times, I ended up really enjoying the IB Program.
Did you ever have teachers that weren’t suited for a course or didn’t put effort in? How did you still succeed in your class?
A: Yes, there were definitely teachers that didn't teach me what I needed to know, but I will say that 90% of them did. I think a lot of it was making sure you're studying the right things. So for IB, I needed to know what was on the exams at the end of the year. And there were some chapters here and there that we may have missed in some subjects, I think. It took a lot of time at home. I remember, for the last year of high school, I was in a study group where we just met at third place books. We just sat in a food court for hours and hours and hours. And we would tutor each other on what we were missing. So I would help people with history because that was my strong suit, one of my friends would help us with English, another friend would help us with physics, and we also had friends who were doing bio, so the bio kids would help each other. We also had another friend that was really good at calc, so they would help us do calc and we kind of rotated through. I think without that support system, I wouldn't have gotten through the IB exams the way I did, so I'm really thankful for them. I'm still close with all of them now. But I think it took a lot of hours outside of school to reinforce the physics and calc for me.
How did you keep track of your work and assignments?
A: A lot of Google Calendar, and a lot of sticky notes. I have a lot of notebooks that I went through because I was the kind of person that if I didn't write it down, I was going to forget. I had a lot of reminders in probably three different places. I had one on my laptop, I probably had one connected to my phone, and then I had it written down. I splurged every year on an Erin Condren planner. I love those things, and I still buy them. They're my lifeblood; I would not have gotten through high school or college without them.
Were your classes all based on a certain passion you had, or did you explore various fields?
A: For IB, I took physics, history, calc, and English. Of course, I was in Band. I definitely studied things that I did not ever pick up a book about again in college. The only math class that I had to take was statistics. I tested out of calc, and I used calc in my econ courses, but I didn't actually have to take more calculus classes. I loved physics, but at the same time, I was very bad at it - I'll be brutally honest. But, I enjoyed what I was learning, and I loved my teacher. And same thing with calc; I was just not great at it. But I was okay at it. All in all, though I still enjoyed high school, I did learn a lot of things that I will never use again. And that's okay. I kind of enjoyed learning things that I will never need again and still reflect on them fondly.
This interview originally took place in an audio format. However, we have converted it to text to avoid sound quality issues. To ensure coherency, we have slightly modified the wording.