Edward Hsieh's CAS Journey

Identify own strengths and develop areas of growth:
For me, I can be successful at anything as long as I put my heart to it, that's always been the case so growing as a person happened very quickly during these CAS experiences. My strengths include being strong at communication, more physically capable than others, strong understanding of global issues and how they are connected to us. The biggest flaw I have is that I am not patient, and am prone to giving up if I have no interest or if it's too difficult or boring, I learned to be persistent and endure, even if it's something I don't want to do. For example, during "summer break exercise", I wanted to skip a day so many times, because my body would be aching all over, but I knew if I missed a day of training it'd all have been for nothing, so I had no choice but to press onwards.

Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken developing new skills in the process:
Making and designing props for the MYP PRESENTS SEUSSICAL JUNIOR event wasn't actually as difficult as I thought it would be, since we had so many people, all we had to do was persistently work on it, and results soon showed. We made fish and grass props by cutting foam boards and coloring them with paint, what was the most challenging was creating these furry ball on a stick (?) props, it involved using hot glue so we were cautious. Because I was inexperienced with handcrafting, I had to rely on my crew members for tips and advice, as to not ruin anything and hinder progress.

Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience:
For the Sports Day Barbershop Vocal Performance, we planned this performance a month ago but only started practicing a few week before sports day. Everyday during lunch and after school is over, we'd get together in the music classroom on 6th floor to practice. Kyle prepared music sheets for everyone and assigned to us our roles (soprano alto tenor bass). Since we were on a tight schedule, we had to practice regularly in order to nail the song. For the MYP PRESENTS SEUSSICAL JUNIOR event, I was in the props crew, and we planned everything we were going to make together beforehand, and how much material we would need. We looked at previous events and that helped us plan more efficiently, thankfully I've had experience calculating material for festival events in the past so it wasn't very difficult.

Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experience:
For the MYP PRESENTS SEUSSICAL JUNIOR event, everything was prepared and completed on schedule, thanks to the crew's hard work. Crew members regularly stayed after school to cut, glue, and paint material for months, now the performers have well made, sturdy props to work with, assisting them in pulling off a great performance. I learned to be committed and collaborative throughout this experience, because only group effort could achieve this amount of success. As mentioned earlier, during "summer break exercise", I wanted to quit numerous times, but my goal was to exercise everyday for the duration of the summer break, so even missing a day would ruin the whole point of the experience, so I persevered and stayed committed to achieve my goal, and soon results showed, I lost up to 5 kilograms, and gained muscle.

Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively:
During HSINMUN, I learned a lot about global issues ranging from global warming to human trafficking. Along the way, new friends were made, and my collaborative skills grew. As difficult and mature as these topics and tasks seemed for me, I pushed onward to learn and adapt, and struggle to understand. Working together allowed advanced brainstorm and new ideas to be generated, we can bounce other each other's ideas and point out mistakes to fix, these experiences made me more open minded and improve as a critical thinker.

Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance:
I have been in the MUN club since middle school, so I am no stranger to participating in these MUN conferences. We practice and prepare for the events during club time, and improve our skills in debating on global issues, such as topics ranging from global warming to human trafficking which I had to research for in preparation for the upcoming conferences. I participated in HSINMUN knowing that it was a big event and would have many participants from other schools, this means I'd get to see new faces and meet fiercer competition, and learn more about the world's most pressing crises at the same time. The planning was done by our club advisor, Mr. Harmon, who handled the traveling fee and other expenses for us.

Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions:
Doing MUN conferences and debating on global issues in our MUN club has taught me to be responsible for my actions since all global issues stem from human activity, for example, there's an energy crisis because people waste electricity and food. We as individuals can mitigate that by remembering to turn off the lights, only turning on the AC when necessary, and limit how much food we waste.