7th/Aug./2022

CAS Learning Outcome:

1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth 

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively 

I went to the new Wells campus in Chonburi with some other students for an open-campus event to welcome new students, parents, and teachers there. Before the ceremony, when students and parents were interacting with teachers, I sang with two other students around 10 English pop songs, with our music teacher Mr. Chi's guitar. I realized that my strength is to sing in front of audience, because I didn't feel nervous. My area for development would be to learn how to harmonize when singing with multiple people. This time, one student that sang with me was able to do harmonizing, so she harmonized to me and another student singing, and this sounded very good. I recognized the benefits of singing with multiple people: it sounds much better with harmonization, and it is much more fun to sing with others!

8th/Nov./2022

CAS Learning Outcome:

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

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

On the International Day, some people from the G11, including myself, had a booth to sell bubble tea. Me and 2 other friends mainly planned overall. Firstly, we gathered people in our grade who are willing to help out to have a booth with us. Secondly, we decided what we want to sell. This stage was already difficult as we had arguments on what would be the best to sell. Nonetheless, we came to a conclusion that bubble tea is still trendy, so we would be able to get customers, we would be able to make 7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actionsit cheap, as ingredients don't cost that much when buying online, and it would not be too hard to make. Thirdly, we asked 40 baht investment from people that are helping, and we got about 1000 baht investment in total. Fourthly, we bought equipment and ingredients online, and we tried to buy things cheap, so we can generate as much profit as possible. Fifthly, we decided who would take on which role on the International Day, and got ready to make the drink.

On the International Day, we encountered a lot of problems, but I would say that our booth was successful, so I am happy. Firstly, we tried boiling the tapioca pearls, but it was mostly of our first time, so we failed a few times. Nevertheless, there were many customers waiting and excited to buy our drink, so that motivated us. Most of the time, I was busy getting water because there was a long queue waiting for our drink. There were some troubles such as burning the pot and spilling some ingredients, but it did not end up in a serious accident. Overall, we got profit around 2000 baht. It was a great experince as this was my first time cooking something at the booth to sell and managing all the equipment and money by studnts only. It was also great to work with my classmates, as many of them helped and I felt that we got closer to each other thanks to this event. Next time, I would like to be able to plan deeper and clearer to we would not make a mess.

8th, 9th, 10th, 11th/Nov./2022

CAS Learning Outcome:

1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

Although I participated to help organize the Wells Math Competition III last year, I had more responsibilities this year as I am now one of the leaders of the Wells Math Club. Although we tried starting early, it eventually got last minute, but we managed to successfully host this event.

Firstly, we created 4 rounds for the competition this time. We included wider range of students, from G7 to G12, and we also had a round where teachers also participate. Then, we needed to ask some teachers if they would be interested in participating. Although many of them said they were not confident, we managed to get some teachers by convincing them that the questions would be creative, which would not require them to know specific formulae. At the same time, we also needed to make questions for the competition. We assigned our club members to be responsible of making questions for different sections: G7-8 section, G9-10 section, and G11-12 section. Us, the leaders, were in charge of making questions for the Teachers vs. Students round. Although it was fun making creative questions, it was also difficult at the same time, because the questions needed to adjust to the various math levels of different people. I would say that my strength is to solve these math questions to check answers, but my weakness is still to make or find the appropriate question for each section. Nevertheless, with the help of members, we were able to finalize with different interesting questions. 

The hardest part of planning was to get students to sign up. This was because not many students at our school liked math, but we got help from different math teachers to promote this competition and give extra credit to the students' math grades if they participate. Thankfully, we got many students to sign up. I felt that my strength is that I can communicate to different people easily, but my weakness was that I should have planned more ahead to avoid making things confusing. 

On the days of competition, I saw many students working hard and enjoying some of the creative questions. I felt that the competition went well, as it was on site unlike last year's one, so participants were more energized to collaborate with each other and compete. My highlight was seeing a group of non-math teachers working on math questions together. Although they ask us to do the group work all the time, it was my first time seeing teachers working in a group like that, and I thought that they were collaborating really well by listening to each others' opinions and suggesting ideas peacefully. 

26th/Nov./2022

CAS Learning Outcome:

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

In the ServICE Conference this year, I hosted a How-to workshop, the Handicapped Simulation, with my friends. In this workshop, we first presented to participants what my friends and I do in the ASL Club at school, such as the method of learning ASL during meetings and fundraising to help the deaf community, so we can inspire the participants to start an ASL Club at their schools. Next, we moved onto conducting the simulation, where participants role-played to have different disabilities (blind, deaf, vocalization disability, and hands disability), and they needed to collaborate together in order to pass on the word to person in front and make the last person in the line to draw the correct item. 

In this simulation, we let the participants experience what it feels like to be disabled, so they can have more understanding towards disabled people, especially when they have interactions with them. We also let them learn to cooperate with each other while having different disabilities, and we saw some novel ways to communicate with each other. Moreover, I could not have made this workshop possible without cooperations with my friends. Although we had some disagreements at times, we learned to reach an agreement and plan on what would be both meaningful and entertaining for participants. We learned to combine the idea of what we do in ASL club and simulation of having disabilities, but making it more hands on by letting the participants work in groups to achieve the goal of drawing the correct item. 

25th-27th/Mar./2023

CAS Learning Outcome:

4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

This was my tenth MUN conference. It was the first THAIMUN I attended on-site, and the first 3-day MUN conference for me. Although the 3-day conference was a bit tiring, because there were 3 days, we were able to touch more topics, in which I learned a lot from. 

It was my first time in the USCC, in which I represented an existing demorcrat senator. Prior to the conference, I visited my senator's Twitter account and found some useful information on his stance. This method of research was new to me, and I was once again interested in the fact that politicians use social media to express their ideas nowadays. Because this committee is all about the US, I was able to learn a lot of problems that the US is facing today, which were the topics of abortion, health care, and gun control, in both democrats' point of view and republicans' point of view. I was fascinated by the fact that this committee is like a combination of country committee and the crisis committee, because we implemented both elements of writing a bill (like a resolution paper) and debating on it, as well as submitting directives and having press releases. I was able to experience how senators in real life have to keep up with on-going events and solving long-term problems. I also learned that it is very difficult to compromise between democrats and republicans, as few of the bills we created passed due to not reaching the two-thirds majority. 

Because THAIMUN is the biggest MUN conference in Thailand, people from abroad flew to Thailand to attend this conference. Therefore, I was able to interact with people who live in different countries, from my home country Japan, to nearby countries such as Cambodaia, and to the US. It was a great experience for me to work with them, as I have only worked with people living in Thailand in previous conferences. Some Americans from Chicago were in my committee, and I felt as if they were experts on topics we were discussing in USCC. 

22nd/Apr./2023

CAS Learning Outcomes:

4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

This was my 11th MUN conference, and it was my first time in SPECPOL committee. I chose SPECPOL as my first choice because the topic was the question of the status of Taiwan, which is familiar and interesting to me, as I am Japanese, and I see news about China and surrounding countries (including Japan) often. I realized that although in many other committees, most of the countries have the same stance to "improve the society," but just like in USCC, this SPECPOL topic caused a clear division in whether a country agrees with one China policy or not. Therefore, it was difficult to pass a resolution. I learned a lot not only about different perspectives among countries, but also the significance of voting rights, as some countries in the committee did not have voting rights due to not being recognized by the UN. 

As it was my 11th conference, I saw a lot of similar faces in my committee. This made it easier for me to work together with them as there was no need of time to get to know each other first. I worked together with friends I made in THAIMUN last month, which went not only smoothly but also fun. I once again realized that MUN community is a great place to form social connections and interact with different people, developing communicating skills. 

13th/Jun./2023

CAS Learning Outcomes:

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

When I was cleaning up my room, I realized that I have a lot of materials for making UV resin which I don't use anymore. My friends and I then decided to host a workshop at school to give opportunities to other students to have fun with UV resin. We first talked to one of our teachers if we can use the classroom. Later, because resin was running out, I bought extra on Lazada. I brought materials to school throughout a few days, as there were a lot of equipment (such as UV light, electricity voltage converter,  and decorations) which I could not carry in one day. I also advertised my friends, especially those who are interested in DIY, to join. In the workshop, I briefly explained how UV resin works. I helped some people add some decoration or put the resin under the light. However, because there were too many participants, I was helped by my friends who hosted this workshop with me to also help or answer participants' questions. I was happy seeing everyone having fun and making many pretty keychains and necklaces. I thought that hosting a workshop at school was a much more meaningful than making alone at home myself for the sake of using up already existing materials, or in the worst case, throwing away. 

14th/Jun./2023

CAS Learning Outcomes:

3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively

7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

As part of the Japanese Club, I was in charge of hosting a workshop of making keychain from shrink plastic. Shrink plastic is a common DIY kit in Japan, which is a transparent plastic sheet to draw on using permanent marker, then shrink when heated in oven toaster, adding some thickness to the plastic like an acrylic keychain. Because the sheet is transparent, people can easily trace their favorite art, including anime arts. I wanted to share this fun experience to people at school, so I decided to host this workshop, with the help of other Japanese Club members. 

I had quite many shrink plastic sheets at home which I ended up not using. Then, with the assumption that maximum of 25 people are joining the workshop, I calculated the size of optimum shrink plastic, and cut accordingly. Shrink plastic shrinks according to the ratio shown on the description section on packaging, so I did a bit of math to calculate the optimum size of shrink plastic in a way that everyone can make several but not too small at the same time. This took some time, but it was fun applying math concept I learned in math class to real life situation.

I then brought materials and oven toaster to school. I advertised to people who like drawing. On the day, the Japanese Club members and I cooperated with each other to make sure everyone's work is being burned and shrunk properly in oven toaster, as well as giving everyone keychains afterwards. There were many participants, so I could not have managed this workshop without the members' help. I was happy to see many people making different variations of their own shrink plastic keychains. Because shrink plastic kit was hiding in my closet for many years without being used, I felt that this was a very meaningful way to consume, as I saw many non-Japanese people having fun with this. 

(Background photo is participants' work)