Zachariah's CAS Journey

Introduction

Being an IBDP student, CAS has always been important to me in my two years of life. CAS makes my DP life more exciting and lets me learn more skills that I wouldn’t have learned by myself. In the three parts of CAS, I found out that the creative part tends to be the hardest one for me since I often find out that others have already done what I want to do; therefore, I try to be creative. I need to spend a lot of time thinking of new ideas and planning different new kinds of activities that have rarely or never been done before. The following CAS reflection will be explaining how I have achieved the outcomes through my CAS experiences.

Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

The outcome of identifying my strengths and developing new areas for growth is being achieved through my CAS experiences. This part of outcomes can be especially shown by the CAS experience of “Beyond Horizon Youth Group” since that in the CAS experience, I found out that I am interested in explaining things to other people. In this project, I was assigned to teach a kid from the countryside English; at first, I felt pretty uncomfortable about myself since I had never done this before. But as I started to teach, The kid understood what I was talking about and learned English much faster than I could think. However, I also found a weakness of mine in the CAS experience; my weakness is that I don’t have muscular physical strength; I found this when I was on the TISSA basketball team since I will feel tired very quickly on the court. Therefore, I think that training myself to have more muscular physical strength is a new area that I can develop more on.

Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

In most of my CAS experience, I face lots of challenges. However, my Eagle project is the CAS experience that can prove that I have achieved my outcome of demonstrating the challenges being undertaken and developing new skills. For example, I met an issue of not knowing how to get donations from other people in the first place, which is a huge issue for me because if I don’t have enough budget to buy the furniture that I planned to buy, then the whole project will not work, since my project is based on building furniture for people that need it. To undertake this issue, I started to learn how to get a donation from those with experience and prepared a better presentation for it. Finally, I got the donations I needed. This shows how I undertake the issue of not being able to get donations and how I develop a new skill based on it.

Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

Planning is essential in most of my CAS experiences since I planned most of my CAS experience by myself; therefore, planning involves all parts of my CAS. An example is that I started my planning for my Eagle Project, starting from zero to a plan that can work, and while planning, I also asked other people to review it so that my plans didn’t miss a lot of necessary things. Another example will be my planning the road cleaning project, where I also started from zero and finishing planning the project through a lot of research and discussion with my groupmate, which lets me learn how to make a good plan for a project with my CAS experience.

Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

In my CAS experience, I remember that there was always some point that made me want to give up. However, at last, I still completed it since I believe that I need to show my commitment and perseverance to the CAS experience that I have already started. The most significant experience will be the TISSA basketball team. In this CAS experience, I felt burned out at first since there is a lot of very high pressure and challenging training that we have to do, and I often feel very tired after every practice. At that moment, quitting the CAS experience came to my mind since I would not have to do those hard training anymore if I left. But at last, I still decided to keep going and finish the season since I believe I have the responsibility to finish it once I start a CAS experience.

Demonstrate and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working with other people in all my CAS experience is essential since there is always more than just me involved in the CAS experience. An example will be that in the TISSA basketball team experience, I always need to work with my teammate because basketball is a game that requires teamwork and the involvement of all five members of your team on the court; therefore, I always need to communicate with others to make sure that all the people on the opposite team ae being guarded well and make sure that our plays can run out correctly. To achieve all these, collaboration is very important since if one person does not want to collaborate with the team, the whole team will lose. Still, looking at the result, our team did a great job dealing with collaboration issues, and everyone worked well with others.

Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

An essential part of CAS is the service, which lets us learn how to serve others and be grateful for what we have. This has a lot to do with demonstrating engagement with the issues of global significance since dealing with global issues often means we will have to do things without getting any benefit, which is also a type of service. An example of achieving this is when I pick up trash on the road. This is a global engagement since that trash throwing causing pollution is a big problem for the globe; therefore, me and my groupmates picking up trash on the road demonstrate engagement with the global issue of throwing trash randomly causing pollution.

Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Ethical choices and actions are strongly related since there are ethical concerns in all activities that people make. An example that can show that I can recognize ethical decisions and actions is that when I am doing my dog shelter building project, I felt that people should take responsibility for their actions because lots of people leave their dogs at the dog shelter and never come back. Still, they have not to think of how unethical this is. Therefore, I made a poster near the dog shelter to warn people not to do these unethical actions.

Conclusion

Looking back on my two years of IB life, CAS is an important part of my IB life that can never be replaced. Through CAS, I learned a lot of new skills and explored myself to make myself a better person than before, and I believe that with these experiences, I will be able to use the things that I learned from CAS in my future life. For suggestions to those doing IB later on, I will suggest they see CAS as a task that needs to be finished and see it as a chance to learn so you can enjoy the process of doing CAS.