The Ultimate EE FAQ

Honestly, my EE writing process was pretty much a train wreck. It was a long struggle, and featured being switched between 2 supervisors of which neither even attended my school and a last minute meltdown over citations. However, with a lot of hard work I ended up coming out the other side in one piece! I knew that during my EE writing process I had so many questions, and not enough information was available online that could answer most of them. Because of this (now that I'm finished with the IB), I wanted to compile a bit of an FAQ and some advice for writing a History EE. However, a lot of these same tips can be used for most EEs as well.

All teachers recommend I do my EE in "what I'm interested in." How do I know what that is?

Everyone is always encouraged to do what they're interested in or what their passion is. Every time I heard this in Pre-IB and IB1 I cringed because it gave me exactly 0 clarity as to what I actually could be doing. Sure, I was interested in Psychology and Physics and History... and English... and Chemistry.... and literally most of the other subjects I was taking at the time. 

How was I possibly meant to narrow down "what interested me"? I could tell my friends and classmates were equally confused, because no one could really separate if they were inherently super duper passionate about a subject or if it was just their teacher being awesome at teaching the subject, for example.

Furthermore, people couldn't really separate if they liked a subject or if they were good at a subject. While you can be both, many students tend to ace subjects based on simple skills like memorisation instead of actually knowing if they can truly dedicate themselves out of passion to studying the subject.  Because of this, I would encourage you to pick a topic, and THEN the subject! 

In other words, don't narrow your search to a subject you're interested in and then find a topic. I found it much more easy to pick a really interesting topic first and try to slot it into one of my HL subjects (including English Lang&Lit, History and Psychology). This realisation saved me a lot of heartache, as I'll talk about in the next point.

Key takeaway: To find ind some issue that really interests you that vaguely fits any subject, and from there slot it into one of your HLs. 

What are the main issues I considered when I started my EE process?

I originally started my exploration of possible topics pretty early on because I was super nervous about starting the assignment. Keep in mind that early on in the process, I first did the subject-topic method and only later, after discovering that it really didn't work for me, I switched it. During my Pre-IB years, I had already narrowed down my key interests in Psychology, for example. I really enjoyed studying how people interacted and the motives behind certain movements/ideologies, which is a key aspect of branches of social psychology. This made me very excited about starting an EE in Psychology, but there were still a few major issues I had to consider before jumping straight into the subject.

1. The Psychology teacher I had in Pre-IB was a subpar substitute and I had no idea if the teacher we would receive the next year was the same one, or similarly apathetic towards their students. I really had to consider if doing Psychology was worth the risk of getting a bad supervisor.
   
   
2. The topic of interest (delay of gratification within different cultures) was very much related to another IB subject: Social and cultural anthropology. This poses a massive issue in doing the Extended Essay for many students across the world: do not do a topic that may overlap into another subject that your EE is not focused on. This can result in actual failure of the EE if you're not careful because the person marking your EE are educated only in the subject you assigned your EE, not another that your subject may be too focused on.

At this point, I began to consider doing other subjects and weighed my options, as talked about in the next section.

Key takeaway: 

When making your initial decisions about the subject/topic you've chosen, be sure to consider:

• your potential supervisor
• any overlaps with other IB subjects (even those not offered in your school)

Why did I choose History over the other subjects?

I did my Extended Essay in History. There were a few key reasons I chose this subject above all the others, including the fact that:

1. I first considered the issues I stated above, and then decided Psychology would be too risky
   
   
2. It was an HL subject I scored pretty well in
   
   
3. The topic I would choose was closest to what I wanted to study in the future (International Relations)
   
   
4. One of the supervisors I could choose was a really good teacher and was reliable

These factors ended up determining why I did my EE specifically in History as opposed to English Lang&Lit or Psychology.

How did I find my topic?

The story for me finding the topic I wanted to do for my Extended Essay wasn't exactly smooth or well-thought out to begin with. It actually came about directly before a lesson where we had to present our EE idea to the class and discuss it with the teacher, a lesson which I didn't know was going to happen until I was already sitting in class and someone told me. I instantly froze up and realised everyone else had prepared something for the class on our shared class presentation, but my slide was left blank.

While other people one-by-one were presenting their EE idea, I quickly scrambled to find a topic I could potentially present. There were a few major things I wanted from my topic that narrowed my search:

1. I needed to find a BIG topic so I could narrow it down, rather than find a minor event and find out, in the end, I had too little to talk about (I saw how big the topic was by literally looking at the size of the Wikipedia page on the event/person/document)
   
   
2. I wanted a topic that we hadn't explored in class so I would enjoy learning about it (we had only studied European history, and I'm super interested in Middle Eastern history but know next to nothing on it)
   
   
3. I needed a controversial topic/event/person/document with many possible perspectives to discuss
   
   
4. I wanted the controversy to preferably be related to groups of people/ideologies/beliefs since I find they are very interesting to discuss and would probably be easiest to find opposing research on.
   
   
5. I wanted to avoid wars at all costs, I couldn't stand the idea of talking about artillery or war strategies

Once I narrowed my search down in my head, I started to go down the classic Wikipedia rabbit-hole in search of a topic. This basically meant that I would start from the Middle Eastern History Wikipedia page and go to the most interesting looking events, click into those events and look at how long the article is. If I deemed it long enough (to my scientific eye this meant having to scroll quite a bit to get to the bottom of the page), I would then try to find if there were any controversies within the event. This continued for a while, since I found quite a few different topics (ie. Ottoman Empire policies, Iraq-Iran controversies, etc.) but all of them seemed to have somewhat limited Wiki pages and/or conflicting opinions.

However, I ended up stumbling across the gold mine: the Iranian Revolution. I won't go into too much detail about the subject, but I found that the Iranian Revolution Wiki page was very, very, very long with a very controversial history (and had basically no "battles" that needed discussing! :D), so I thought I had finally found the topic I wanted to do. While it ended up changing into something quite different, it definitely formed the groundwork for my EE topic.

Key takeaways:

Try making a basic list of the things you need and want from your EE (just general interesting areas like my vague "Middle Eastern History" interest, which is incredibly vague) and include things you would really hate having to do (ie. I wanted to avoid wars if at all possible, because I couldn't imagine myself probably spending heaps of time finding out information about battles or guns).

What was my timeline like for writing the EE?

I pretty much had no idea what I was doing in terms of spacing out my writing process over time. I tried different things, like making pretty meticulous initial plans and writing a lot very early, to spacing out my EE drafting over the summer, to cramming in information last minute. Honestly, each one of these methods worked pretty much the same. 

Now, I know everyone says that you should space out your EE writing evenly and that you shouldn't cram in lots of information last minute, but I actually think a bit of cramming here and there under time pressure really forced me to sit down and fully immerse myself in my arguments and what I wanted to say about the topic. 

However, all in all, my complete EE explorative process, writing, drafting and submission took place from around late December 2018 to mid October 2019. During the first few months up until May, I pretty much gathered information and just got a feel for the topic I wanted to do, so I didn't actually write pretty much at all. I just tried to research and clarify what I wanted my Research Question to be like. I crammed in heaps of writing at the end of May, and then sporadically wrote a few paragraphs during the summer but basically stopped editing it halfway through the summer. 

When I got back to school in mid-August, I still hadn't touched my EE, and only began towards the end of August to start getting back into it. At this point I was very panicked since I realised I had no supervision and wouldn't have it until I finished my EE. So, during the month of September and half of October I wrote the majority of my EE (as in, around 3/4 of the whole thing). This mostly meant reorganising and rewriting rather than writing from scratch, which you usually can't exactly do with an EE in History that relies on you having read different sources over a longer period of time.

All in all, I would say the actual 'planning' part of my EE took 1.5 months, and the 'writing' part took another 2 months. I would, of course, recommend more time to writing a history EE as the writing part of the process was incredibly stressful for me, particularly towards the end.

What were the major issues that arose during the process?

As mentioned earlier, my EE process was notorious for how many issues came up during it, one of the major ones being about supervisors. I got to choose between 2 supervisors for my EE writing process, Greg and Tom (not their real names). I chose Greg originally and felt he was really interested in my topic, giving a lot of good advice for the first few months of the process. However, when the summer holidays came around, I didn't hear anything from him about my EE. I brushed this off, thinking that other supervisors probably weren't in contact with their students. 

Then school rolled around, and I still didn't hear anything from him. I tried to message him, but got no response. Only 2 months before our EE final deadline was I told by a classmate that he'd moved all the way to Dubai (keep in mind, I'm living in Finland) because of his wife getting work there. I didn't get any warning, and nor had anyone thus far even read my EE drafts. 

I was completely baffled but had to get a replacement supervisor, which was Tom. However, another problem arose with having Tom as my supervisor: he had also taken an indefinite extended leave. Simply put, he hadn't and was not going to be at school for months. So essentially, during 90% of my EE writing I didn't have a supervisor and only got EE feedback the day before the final deadline (literally the biggest WTF moment in my school career). 

On top of all of that, he really didn't like my topic and didn't know much about it to begin with, so he avoided talking about it with me whenever I brought it up. I have to admit, though, that we weren't exactly on the friendliest terms as we mutually disliked each other, so we could kind of sense that neither of us really wanted to discuss the EE as a whole.

What were the most important websites you used to write your EE?

I used many websites for different things, but here were the main ones that helped me and for what:

• Wikipedia (https://www.wikipedia.org/) 
  This helped me find and narrow my topic down to my final Research Question, which is arguably the most important part of writing an EE. Furthermore, Wikipedia gave me the main important information about controversial aspects of my topic. From there, I would use the sources provided in Wiki articles to go further down my research rabbit hole. While it can be edited by just about anyone, there are still many valuable sources you can find in their articles which are curated continuously, so I wouldn't dismiss it at all. HOWEVER, don't use Wikipedia as a source itself!! Use it as a platform for exploration and finding sources, not as a source itself.

• WorldCat (worldcat.org)
  WorldCat, as discussed in this post, helped me SO MUCH to find the key information I needed to be able to cite the sources I used in my EE. All of the works that I read that didn't have clear years of publication or were translated and I needed to find the original work, I could find there. It's a history EE goldmine. Where automatic citation websites failed, WorldCat really had my back.

• Sci-Hub (https://sci-hub.tw/)One of the most frustrating parts of being a high school student is not being able to access those pesky journal articles or online books that are only available to university students or teachers. Well, sci-hub is here to help. This website has access to over 81 million papers, and 9 times out of 10 have the paper you've been scouring the net for. Just find the DOI number of the paper you want to find and put it into this website. That's it: you have total access to the whole article.

• Chicago Manual of Style (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html)
  Literally the most straightforward guide I could find to citing in Chicago style, and gave me clear examples of exactly what to do where. However, I wouldn't be afraid to dip my toes into other websites when I found more obscure citations (use the tab at the top of this website Menlo School Library Chicago Style Guide to find how to cite the rarest documents in Chicago style).

What was the hardest part of writing the EE?

I pretty much was dead in the last 1.5 weeks before the final deadline. I genuinely was in the most stressed out state I have ever been in my life, but this was due to a few things overlapping. First, realising I didn't have a supervisor I could rely on for questions. 

Second, on the week of EE submission was an event I had been directing and planning for 9 months with a friend (the Helsinki Regional Session of EYP Finland) which would be gathering over 100 people from all over Europe for 4 days. This was incredibly stressful, since many last minute issues were coming up alongside my finishing the EE. 

Third, the only guidance I was given for doing the EE was given the day before it needed to be submitted and didn't really answer any burning questions I had, making finalising it incredibly hard. 

Fourth, I ended up using the incorrect citation style. I started doing my bibliography using the Chicago style, incorrectly assuming that my in-line citations could be done using the numeric style, not the author-date style. I'll be discussing what these mean in terms of writing, and why I made the decision to switch to the Harvard style.

In the days at the very end of writing my EE, I pulled 2 back-to-back all-nighters (with 2 naps in-between) and didn't eat enough food because I didn't have energy to make anything other than basic sandwiches. I cried, many times, and was very tired. 

I honestly really came to breaking point when I had to do my reference list, which is so ridiculous to look back at as a source of stress. However, I really, really, really want to emphasise that you NEED to reserve plenty of time for writing your bibliography, especially when writing a History EE. Here are the main things I took away from writing my bibliography:

1. Don't use automatic citation websites if it can be at all helped. 

I rely embarrassingly heavily on automatic citation websites like citethisforme and and Citation Machine for all my assignments (including all my IAs, for instance) and used it for everything except my EE. I initially thought I could use them and get the process over and done with quickly, hence I left it all to the last minute. However, if you have documents/books that are old or rare, you will likely not find anything on either website. Because of this, I had around 70 references I needed to manually enter in the very last minute. 

The stress from realising this was nearly completely overwhelming as my sources were kind of obscure and in Arabic, for instance. Therefore, I'd really emphasise that the best way to cite is manually (and this is coming from someone who hates manually citing things) if you don't want to be stuck forever trying to figure out why your automatic citation has the wrong year listed or completely different author (happens more often than not).

2. Use WorldCat.org for citations

This website (WorldCat.org) was a literal lifesaver for me when I was finding my weirder and older sources, since it gave me ALL the information I needed to make a proper citation (and thus get full points for the presentation section), which included the Author, Year of Publication, Volume (if necessary), Place of Publication, and even the name of the work's Translator, which was important in citing my non-English sources. 

3. Make sure your citation style is THE CORRECT ONE! 

There are various styles you can use in a History EE. The main ones you can use for History EEs are Chicago, MLA, Harvard, and Turabian. Other subjects require other specific citation styles, for example Psychology needs APA, English needs MLA, and the sciences usually use a style specified by your supervisor. Now, you may be wondering which one you should use for your own EE. 

I initially made my references in Harvard style, and switched to using Chicago because of a few things. I wanted to have numeric citations rather than author-date citations because thought author-date looked messy and I would be more likely to make mistakes. Choosing either one depends on what you think will flow better with your EE. Take a look at how the citation styles look like below:

Numeric citations look like this

https://library.wur.nl/infoboard/7_citing/citation_styles.html

Author-date citations look like this

https://library.wur.nl/infoboard/7_citing/citation_styles.html

4. Prepare for the unexpected citations

Not all of your citations are books or journal articles. Some might be books that no longer exist or ones you'll never be able to physically access. I had sources that literally didn't exist anymore or could only be accessed through going to a specific location (ie. a Microfiche of Papers about 'Political prisoners in Iran', which was published in 1976 and could only be found in Folder 15 at the official Amnesty International Headquarters). 

I found this source being quoted through another source, and had no idea of how to even cite the source itself. I mean, what even is a microfiche? I still don't really understand what it is, but had to also figure out what kind of miscellaneous citation sort I needed to use. Therefore, I'd recommend you make a separate list of the 'weirder' books, documents or sources that require more effort to figure out their origins and how to cite them. If you make the list separate, you can more easily gauge how much time you'll need to invest just into those citations.

5. Save all citations as you're working on your EE

As is usually recommended, save your citations as you are saving the information. At the beginning, I ignored this mostly and pasted very vague information on where I found the source, but actually couldn't find the source. This waste me so many hours where I could've actually just put the Author, the Year of Publication and name of the source. You will save yourself so much stress and time if you save even just these key pieces of information. 

What do I do with sources that don't fit into any of the main sections (ie. journal article, book, video)?

I had many, many sources that didn't fit into the traditional types of sources you usually see, like books and journal articles. For instance, I had a treaty between Britain and Russia, a memo from a secretary to a President, and a microfiche, and I had NO idea how to cite any of these sources. I ended up finding this website (Menlo School Library, Chicago Style Guide) which basically covered any and all rare or translated sources that I didn't know how to cite otherwise. However, if you're really stuck and still can't find the appropriate style to cite, your best bet is to cite the source as a PDF. 

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