It's hard but totally worth it. You learn how to write a really good paper and you learn how to think about things. I'm going to use English and history as an example... I took IB History of the Americas junior year of high school (I failed because I didn't do the readings and I didn't study). Since I failed, I had to take honors US history in senior year. We barely learned ANYTHING in honors US history compared to History of the Americas and we were never asked what we THOUGHT about anything. It was "here are the facts, repeat them to us."
Same goes for English. Junior year, I took IB English Primary Language HL year 1. I failed that because my teacher never graded ANYTHING (no joke, she would tell you what your grade was and you would ask to see the break down and what grades went in to make that grade and she'd say "oh, I didn't grade them... this is what I think you would make if I did"). Senior year I took Honors English 3 to fill that grad requirement. We read NOTHING on the same level and were never asked to think about what we'd read. IB English was about reading something and thinking about what it meant. We had all sorts of class discussions about serious stuff addressed in the literature. Honors English was about reading something, learning the plot and technical details of it and spitting that back to the teacher.
