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Overall, my experience in completing CAS program had brought more joy and excitement to my DP years. Through completing the three strengths of CAS—activity, service and creativity, I am given opportunities and time to complete my personal goals besides from those related to academic. To a pretty big extent, the CAS program gave me the permission to spend time on activities I’m interested in, and gave me a time to grow mentally through accessing people from different context.
1 - Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
My skill in identifying strength and develop areas for growth is achieved to a large extent. During the initial stage to create educational videos for Thailand children, I’ve intended to skip the process of brainstorming and go directly into writing the script. However, as my team and I began to write the script, we found that not only that our ideas were disconnected, the final product were also low in quality. As a result, I decided to form discussion with group members before our second try. Before discussion, I acknowledged the mistake I committed and ask for other’s opinion and idea on the script and outline of the video. As expected, the result produced after discussion were much better than the first one. Meanwhile, this experience also taught me a valuable lesson on the importance of acknowledging my strength and weakness and take action to develop areas for growth.
2 - Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
My skill in undertaking challenges and develop new skills is achieved to a large extent. This skill is particularly developed widely during the planning of the Masterchef event. As the secretary and organizer of the event, I am responsible for finance as well as the overall schedule. However, even with months of thoughtful plannings and meetings on the event, unexpected changes still happened during the finale. Five minutes before the start of finale, we were told that the basketball court aren’t available for use. Without a backup plan, all members of student government immediately become shocked by this temporary notice. However, dozens of audience, judges and participants were waiting for us. At that moment, all I could do is to move equipments to an available, yet less proper location, and arrange other details later on. Although the solution of this accident might not be the perfect solution, I genuinely learned about the important of having a backup plan. In the future, if I am given another opportunity to organize such big event, I will certainly make up a few backup plans and be prepared for every possible accident.
3 - Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
My skill in initiating and plan a CAS experience is achieved to a large extent. When starting the running CAS project, I learned from my experience in creating a workout plan for PE class during MYP and made a workout plan for running. Meanwhile, to make the training more scientific proven, I further did some researches on the training schedule for Marathon. In this way, not only that the efficiency of workout will be ensured, I’m also be able to protect myself from injury. On the workout plan, dates and task are written on a table. With clear goals and time, stepping out the to run and workout become easier than the times without a detailed plan. Although I did struggle with training regularly during summative weeks, my skill in initiating a CAS experience had certainly enhanced.
4 - Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
My skills in committing in CAS experience is developed to some extent. Although most goals of each CAS projects were reached, there are some regrets in my running CAS experience. Initially, I followed the workout plan tightly, making sure that all task were completed. However, as the school work become heavier, it become harder to stick with the plan, where the running miles increase gradually. Hence, I decided to took some rest during summative weeks. However, when I came back to train, I wasn’t able to get along with the plan as my endurance reduced. As a result, I have to repeat those plans with shorter distances before I move on to those with longer distances. As summative weeks visits per months, my running ability also reached a plateau whenever summative weeks come. In the cycle, I’ve attempted to make some adaption to the workout plan, such as reducing the load of each workout rather than skipping workout. However, these methods eventually fail as I always use school work as an excuse to skip the workout. Hence, I would that there are still space for me to develop skills in making commitment to a CAS experience.
5 - Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively
My skill in recognizing the benefits of working collaboratively developed to a large extent. When conducting the event of MasterChef, my team and I divide works into several categories, and further ask for the help from other students to work below each category. For instance, while I’m responsible for planning and organizing of the event, there is people who is responsible in contacting the judges and food provider, there’s also people who make sure the participants are clear about the rules of competition. By distributing work into people with different talents, no only that the event become more simplified, it also ensure the quality of every task as every one can do the best at the thing they are expert on.
6 - Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance
My skill in engaging with issues of global significance is developed to some extent. During the winter service team, my team and I planned out a series of events that invite student from elementary school to reconstruct the garden at our school. As a person who’s not good at gardening, we’ve invited our school gardener to teach us about the instructions beforehand. During the events, dozens of grade five students rolled up their sleeves and dig into the soil with limited amount of shovels. This is an experience taught my the importance of collaboration, no matter what age of members are. More importantly, I’ve also felt about the pure happiness one gets when an action that contributed to the environment are taken.
7 - Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions
My skill in recognizing the ethics of choices and actions is developed to some extent. This strength is definitely one of those that’s harder to obtain. While the making of educational videos to Thailand kids, we’ve encountered an issue in whether we are going to stress the theme through the perspective of us or that of Thailand kids. This is an important ethical choice to make because it directly influences whether our content will be accepted by the eye of Thailand children. If it’s written from our perspective, there might be traditional which foreigners won’t understand. Yet if created from the perspective of Thailand kids, it is easy for us to unconsciously offend their culture and identity. To solve this, we’ve met online with the officials from Thailand church, and they recommend us to deliver from our identity, as it allows them to know about us, and also prevent us from making cultural mistakes. With the help of officials, this ethical decision had been made and resolved. However, support won’t come every time. Hence, to completely obtain the skills in recognize and successful making choice and action regarding the ethics of them, I’ll still need more opportunities to practice and learn.
In conclusion, I’ve learned a lot through my CAS experiences.
In order to sustain long-term interest in CAS experiences, it is crucial to choose experiences which you are willing to spend time on, or experience that lead to a certain goal which you’ve wanted to achieve. Without these features, CAS experience might seemed more like a task instead of an opportunity to discover more about your strength and weaknesses.
When looking back five years from now, I’ll still remember the time where I struggle to communicate with my team members on the issue we were facing. Of course, my soft skills had grew a lot through conducting multiple CAS projects. However, the most memorable one is still the relationship developed with members and the production we were all proud of.
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