Sofía Mareque is a twenty-four-year-old photographer, journalist, and music lover, who graduated the IB at La Châtaigneraie in 2019, and also worked on her school newspaper, The Update. She has since gone on to do her undergraduate degree in history at UCL (University College of London), and has just graduated from Columbia’s School of Journalism with her masters, all the while keeping up her creative and humanitarian pursuits. Between her degrees, she has worked as an editorial assistant intern at Vogue Philippines, and among other ventures has gotten an article picked up by the Rolling Stone Magazine. Most recently, she has just scored a contract as a contributing photo editor with The New Yorker, one of the most prestigious and influential magazines in American journalism. Safe to say, she has had a rather successful career as of yet, and this article will give insight into her advice on various aspects of life, from the transition from high school to university, navigating the IB, and how to deal with the stress of it all.
After discussing our favorite bands, her gravitation towards the humanities, as well as creative drive, on which she said: “I realized I like storytelling or, expressing myself, and how other people express themselves. I just like communication generally; that’s what I gravitate towards, so whether that was history or English or politics or any of those things, that I realized that I just get”, we got down to talking more about school, which, of course, makes up a substantial part of our lives.
So, I see you graduated the IB with honors and excellence. Do you have any tips for students on how to achieve this and for managing school to life balance?
I think it helped that I took things that I really liked.… I took 3 A level languages, which was a lot of reading, but I enjoyed it, and then I did nature of science.... Then, there’s the obvious one, manage your time well. I remember taking a lot of notes, it was a big thing I did, and sometimes I took too long trying to make them pretty, and definitely took longer than I needed to. But I think it was just as a safety thing, it made me feel like I was doing something.... Also, make sure to keep up your social life. Make plans with your friends, obviously to a reasonable degree, but I actually found that it pushed me to work better and stay on top of it, because if I knew that I was hanging out with my friends that weekend, I would get all my work done during the week because I knew I wouldn’t have time. So I would say that that’s a really good strategy.
A lot of people say that the IB kind of makes the first two years of college seem easy; is that true?
Yeah. I mean, the IB for me was the most intellectually stimulated I’ve been in my life so far, so it definitely forces you to develop a bit more depth.
And you went to UCL, which is in London. Do you have any tips for applications to the UK?
If you're applying to Oxbridge, you're on a different timeline. They make you put in a lot more work, but the one thing I love about the UK is it's one essay.... They really want to hear why you want to do the course. It's really not like US applications, where you're telling them about a moment in your life that changed you. They don't necessarily want to know something super profound about you unless it relates to why you want to do that course.... Of course, being personal is a part of it, it's called a personal statement, and there, give them a sense of who you are. But always make sure that it's relating to the point. It's very point driven; tell us why you would be suited for this course, and if you're telling us something about who you are, how does it inform why you would do well in this course, or why you want to do it?... I would also look up those lists that say what to avoid, and dos and don'ts, of what to write in a statement.
We then got on to discussing where she applied to, at which point she shared:
I ended up getting into Cambridge [a conditional offer], so that was my firm. But you can get an offer, however they're literally expecting some of you to fail, which is a lot to deal with. Then, during my exams I got sick, and I had my English exam - which was one of my highers, and some of my teachers said: don't take it, you're too sick, let the IB put your grade together based off of your IA and your previous history. I was predicted to get a 7 for English, but then other people said it's so unpredictable, you never know that they won’t give you something truly random if you don’t take the test. So I remember thinking: I'm going to do it.... I ended up getting a 5 on that exam, and my conditional offer was 41, so I missed it by two points. I remember, my counselor was saying don't worry, we're going to appeal.... He said something like: “Sometimes they tend to still take students despite missing the offer. You didn't miss it by that much. You know, you were sick. We provided doctor's evidence and all these things, saying, you know, she was sick in this period when she sat this exam where she got less than she was expected.” But, unfortunately, they still said no. I remember being disappointed, and sad, crying, being really frustrated because I missed something I had worked for.
As IB students, I think this is a point that is incredibly important to discuss, because things like this are going to happen, not only in the IB, but all throughout life. However, as Sofía soon shared, we must also always look on the bright side, because these kinds of events in our lives are simply, as she puts it, never the end of the world:
But, my career prospects weren’t ruined because I didn’t go to Cambridge. And, I'm so, so happy I went to UCL. I had such an amazing time.... I think I grew so much as a person, and I became a version of myself that is so much more creative and brave and bold and inquisitive, and I think being in a big city like London that has so much going on really brought that out of me. I was able to develop other parts of my being and who I am as a person outside of academics.... There's not a day that I regret or feel like I missed out on something because I didn’t go to Cambridge. And so, I guess when it comes to schools and getting in and not getting in, I think it's so much easier said than done when you're not in that process anymore, but, it's not the end of the world when you don't get into where you want to go. Let's say you really want to go to Harvard or Yale or Columbia or Princeton and don't go for undergrad, you can go for post grad. So I didn't go to Cambridge, but I went to Columbia for master's. It's never that serious. You have so much time to keep doing things, and whatever school you get into, you can always make the most out of it.
How would you say the transition is - not just academically, but also socially - between high school and university?
Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like I'm still learning, and I think in some ways, and not all of my friends feel the same way, but we almost feel more lost than we did when we were started at university, because university still gives you a framework, a structure. But transition... I think focus on feeling safe in your environment, and try to make friends as well, ones that, you know, feel also safe. Just any ways of feeling secure like that, because being by yourself, you have to put your big person boots on.
Out of all the work you've done, from the more humanitarian side, to the creative, what would you say personally is the most rewarding for you?
You know, it's a very selfish decision, but it's one I'm making, because I've realized that your job is so much of the rest of your life. I really, really want to like my job. At least where I am at this moment, I think I want a job that lets me be creative, that lets me shoot [photos] or that lets me work within the arts, or that lets me write about culture and write about music. One piece that I felt was really rewarding was this article that I did with one of my best friends from grad school. We wrote an article on Pop Smoke and his legacy in Brooklyn, in his neighborhood, Canarsie, where he is from. It was a piece that was about music and gun violence and grief, and I think those are my favorites, the kind of work that combines so many different fields and themes and disciplines, and I got to shoot portraits for that too. So, I guess feeling like I get to do it all. That’s what I was feeling when it was written, I felt like I got to do everything that I like.... And that piece ended up being in Rolling Stone, which was super fun. So I guess, so far, what I'm realizing is when I really follow what I like, good things come out of that for me, and by good things, I mean, it gets published somewhere that people, like, “ooh” and all that. Not that that's why you should do it, but do what you're passionate about, what you like, and what you want to do, and if you keep following what you like, you'll be good at it, and you'll do well, and good things will come for you.
If you could give one message to the people reading this, who are students possibly starting the DP, CP, maybe a little earlier, what would that be?
I guess this applies to people who feel a lot of pressure on themselves, because for me, that pressure manifested into me getting really sick, or having a lot of anxiety. And it's not helpful. You don't need to be worrying about things you can't control. We hear these things all the time, but I really wish there was some much more emphasis on, like, if you work hard, and you follow what you want, and you take some little steps here and there every day that are geared towards helping you get where you want to be, you will be okay. Especially going to an international school in Geneva with all the resources available and at your disposal. You will be okay, and there's no reason you can't do what you want to do.... And I guess that's really easy to say, and it changes based on each person, but the older I got, the more I started internalizing that you're safe. You're okay. The world is not crumbling. You're not going to fail. Building that up within yourself and being like, it's going to be fine. It's so basic, but I think, especially in such a high pressure environment, people really forget that. You get lost in all this, you get lost in the IAs and the EE and the applications, and I've realized how much time I wasted being anxious over things I have no business being anxious about. Be kind to yourself, remove some of these unnecessary weights that you're carrying, and trust yourself. Trust that things that are meant for you will be for you.... I really believe that if you work hard, and you follow your gut, nothing that's meant for you will not be yours, whether it's now or later. Of course, there's always a balance between doing what you want and being responsible, but I think once you know you're being responsible, once you know you're taking care of yourself, and you're setting yourself up for stability of some form, then don't stress about everything else.
Sofia then left me with one last quote, a Spanish phrase her dad used to tell her, which roughly translates to:
“Don't drown in a glass of water.”
This is obviously a very cut down version of all the topics that Sofía and I discussed; however, she was able to share so many important insights and lessons to us all. As a society, we have all built up this definition of success, but at the end of the day, success looks different for everyone. It’s important to, every once in a while, look about at the world that surrounds us, and realize that, when it really comes down to it, we will be okay. There’s no point in stacking unachievable expectations for yourself, giving yourself more anxiety than is necessary, and rather focus on balancing out your life, following your passions, until one day, you look around and realize that you are exactly where you were always meant to be.
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