CAS Essay

The activity that first comes to my mind when I think of my two-year journey in CAS is Learning camps. This activity really stood out for me because of my personal engagement and attachment with the issue of education and equality that was practiced in that activity. I feel proud that I initiated that with a few of my other friends and remained committed to it for a very long time despite the fact that my CAS ‘project’ was already over. This activity reflected my learnings of all other activities. It showcased the patience I built, the hard work I put in, the compassion with which I looked at the world and the very concept that if you just start somewhere, your destination will come walking your way.

In the heart of the PYP comes the learner profile, and in the heart of the IB comes CAS. No wonder that CAS enabled me to be open-minded, to be a better communicator, to be a thoughtful thinker and of course, how could anyone pass CAS without being a little reflective? CAS is an experience that brings out all the learner profile attributes in you and forces you to practice them, in order to attain a certain level of success. Over the two years, the growth in me which could be measured and tested with the learner profiles has tremendously helped me to not only be a better learner, student, daughter or sister; but an actually better human and a better global citizen. CAS teaches you the art to interact, understand and respond to the world outside in a balanced and thoughtful way.

A way in which CAS actually does that is through the difficulties it throws you way in forms of ‘Learning outcomes’. One such difficult learning outcome for me was LO4 which reads : “how perseverance and commitment in CAS experience”. Ironically, this is my LO with one of the highest points. However, commitment to one particular thing for a decent amount of time was a great challenge to me in the start of 11th grade. I am someone who likes trying and doing new things now and then. Taking up projects has always been the easy part, but sticking to it has been a challenge. One of the reasons of why I absolutely love CAS, which I would like to mention here is that you actually get points to do this kind of crazy stuff and all these fascinating activities. Usually, students of different schools struggle to take out time for their physical emotional and spiritual well-being whereas CAS here makes it mandatory to actually take a productive break from IBDP and renew ourselves and maintain our flavors! Having said that, I don’t know if I need to specifically mention that I would love to take this forward and help others and make this world a better place because let’s be honest here. CAS isn’t just an IB requirement, it’s an escape to reality. A reality that teaches you and guides you and lets you be your human self. So I might not call it CAS when I go to uni or sometime later in my life, but these learnings and these experiences have surely just begun!

CAS Plan

CAS Plan:

Activity CAS Components Duration and start/ end dates Learning outcomes
Intraschool Basketball Competition Activity 7/30/2015 7/30/2015 L1,L2, L5
HMUN Creativity, Service 8/12/2015 8/16/2015 L1, L2, L4, L6, L7
Arts Fest (Singing Competition) Creativity 8/22/2015 8/22/2015 L1, L2, L5
Literature and Humanities Fest (Project) Creativity, Activity 7/19/2015 8/23/2015 L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L7
Bal Mela Activity 1/18/2016 1/18/2016 L7
Learning camps (project) Creativity, Activity, Service 7/26/2016 10/15/2016 L3, L4, L6
FSMUN EB Service 11/1/2016 11/2/2016 L6
Organ Donation Activity, Service 7/15/2016 7/30/2016 L3, L4, L6

Bon appetite

This activity was organised by french teacher for french students. In this activity, french students were required to cook some french dish. And as cooking  was a new thing for me, I decided to participate in  the activity . In this activity, we were required to help the french students in cooking so I was in zoheb’s team along with nikunj, jigyasa and dhyay. We as a team  planned  to cook a french dish which is well renowned .

A day before this activity we made a list of all the ingredients which we required. We also did a whole lot of planning and research about the dish.Then on next day in the activity slot we followed our procedure of doing the activity. We divided our works among ourself so nikunj was grinding cheese, jigyasha was frying the potatoes, dhyay was heating the bread, zoheb and me were decorating our dish this made most of over work easy and managed. However cooking was very challenging job  as because till the last moment we were changing the  dish and also we were running short of time and resources. It was really difficult to manage all those things and also we all were lacking in skills of cooking so it made our task more difficult. We also decide not to waste any of the food material,water or any of our resources.

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There was also a lot of disputes in our group as no one acted as a leader and so the whole team suffered from that. And also at the end we wasted a lot of food material as we were also not able to manage our resources properly. In the whole activity however special care was taken that no one in the group is hurt or is give given less time to demonstrate his/her skills. But somehow we managed to complete our task on time but we were just able to cook about 6 pices of our  food item  Still our work was appreciated by teacher as well as our friends which gave us a motivation to do different types of tasks in different life situations.

ACTIVITY :- SINGING

One of the most important things that plays an important thing in my life is songs. Listening to music or rather singing them has always made me happy. To learn this skill completely I decide to learn singing in my AS slots. In this period of almost 6 months I learned to sing new songs at different scales and in different styles. However singing in all is a very challenging task as to match the scale of the sone catch the beats and then gather the confidence the perform in front of the audience.

But still it was the most interestings things that I’ve learnt so far. However our class was conducted only once a week which made it more difficult for us to excel in this skill. Despite of being made fun of by my classmates I decided not to give up on this activity and therefore I stayed committed to the task. The most difficult thing to carry out this whole activity was to match the scale of english songs as they are very different from typical bollywood songs and being an Indian to get that accent was quite challenging.

The first song that I along with my friends sang in our first official performance was “ stiches“ which is an english song by shawn mendes.However before carrying this performance I tried to convince my friends as well my mentor to allow us to sing a hindi song as I am very good at it still they asked me to practice more and develop this skills. My friends also took this initiative to practice along with me to help me. We also took care of things like allowing each member in our group to sing an important part of the song this also did not allowed any disputes to come in our way.

On the day of performance we were all very nervous still we as a team motivated each other to perform well. In the end our performance was quite well and was loved by most of our friends this made us even more confident to take up such activities in life.

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NAGGER TRIP

What a trip ! what an experience ! the best trip ,the best experience I’ve ever had. I’ve always been  a person who is very fond of travelling. I got this opportunity to visit the world most beautiful place the HIMALAYAS. However before going for the trip  me any friends created a very detailed plan of the things that we were going to carry with us and we also decided some of the activities the we were willing to do in those trips.  

Finally the journey day! it all started of with a very tedious journey from Surat(Gujarat) to Nagger a town in Himalayas. While we were in train me and my friends didn’t had seats in the same section  or in the compartment itself ,there we tried to help each other finding their seats, sharing our seat with them this allowed us to learn the importance of a friend. Soon we reached our hotel in Nagger . Before starting anything me and my friends decided not to harm the natural environment there so we didn’t used any kind of plastic objects there we didn’t spread any kind of litter or so. We also decided not to make fun of any of our friends such that they get a sense of being bullied so we took special care of it.

 

So there our day started with treks in the morning and yoga activities in the end. Morning treks were the most challenging because as a person I’ve never loved waking up early in the morning and walk so long followed by yoga in the evening this itself was very challenging still we all tried to stay committed to our activity. Some how my friends also played a very important part in motivating me to say consistent to the our daily routine .

 

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There then we went for skiing, it was my very first time to step up on those skies so this experience allowed me to learn a new skill.

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However in the end the whole journey was very challenging tough very fun ! just had a great experience.

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CAS ESSAY

CAS has always been Best yet the most tiring part of IB . The very first activity that come to my mind when I think of CAS is the two flashmob in which took part in. The reason why it is so impressive is that it taught me many things such as in identifying own strengths and weakness,it taught me benefits of working collaboratively, it also taught me to show commitment towards any of the activities in future. Doing CAS activities not only made me independent but changed my perception about life. It made me open minded allowed me to balance between my work and my family life it even allowed me to improve upon my communication skills .

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CAS activities has thrown various challenges on me as in most of the activities in which I participated, there were lot of problems in my way such as to be able to communicate, show commitment towards any activity. However my friends and mentor were alway there to help me in battling with these set of problems .

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I was never good in initiating any kind of plan and learning a new skill. Still CAS was the only thing which pulled me to stay consistent. However it was very difficult for me to achieve learning outcome 3 but still at the same time I got to know the importance of working collaboratively ,learning a new skill, taking care of the ethics in life etc.

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After completing my IBDP course I would still like to work in a such a way which makes the world a better place by doing such brilliant activities which I did for my CAS. As each and every person has a social responsibility of making the world a better place and not just take from it.

PROFILE

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Myself, Sahil Juneja  I study in fountainhead school. Being an extrovert i’ve always involved myself in a lot of activities whether itbe singing, acting or anything else. In terms of extra curricular activities I love playing any kind of sport whether it be football, basketball, volleyball etc however even though I am not very good at these sports I still love playing them and excel in each one of them. Like most other kids even I love playing virtual games as well so whether it be games on X-BOX, playstation, laptop etc I enjoy playing games on all of them.

However the only things I like after sports is watching movies . Movies have always been a great influence to my life I’ve learnt a lot of things from movies .The other things that have a great influence in my life is  my friends. They have always stood as a reality check mirror for me. However there are many areas where I am willing to  improve upon myself such as my physical strength and endurance , my eating habits and my commitment and confidence in carrying out any activity

From my childhood I was always willing to work in Film making industry . However lack of confidence has let me down many times in grabbing any opportunity of doing so. Still I’ve always carried a dream of entering that industry any give my best performance till date. Despite of all these things I am a very strong believer of keeping my opinion no matter what it is . However in order to achieve huge things in life I think I need to improve my speaking and listening skills.

Helping the special children

In the world around us we see a lot special children but we never tried to understand their situation. Recent enough I went to Shree nandan school where I  got an opportunity to help and understand them. Shree nandan is a school for helping these special children to learn new skills. A day before visiting this school i made a whole plan on what all are the activities which I could carry out with them it . Researching on this was quite a difficult task  as each child is different from the other so each child poses a different skill from the other.

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On the day of when me and my friends were asked to visit the school we were all prepared. There we were first taught why are these children in this situation, what are the mental strengths they possess. Then each of us was asked to try to play with one of the special child. The most difficult part over there was to communicate with these children as most of the conversation depended on the actions as while describing any activity we were asked to first demonstrate it to them. However we still remained committed to our activity and we didn’t gave up. We even made sure that none of the children get hurt in any terms. The motive of this activity was also to aware people on a global scale to help such children ,don’t look down upon them,never hurt them in any terms.

In the end we worked very hard to make that children happy and enjoy that day .

Kala Utsav Singing ( 2015 )

Since I was a child, I have persistently participated in activities involving music but one area which I hadn’t explored was singing. This year, in the Kala Utsav held in my school, I decided to audition for singing to represent my house, fortunately, I got selected for solo singing. Considering that this was something I had never tried before, I was nervous to go on the stage and sing, but nonetheless, I worked hard for a week leading upto the competition. 5 minutes before I was supposed to sing, I started panicking but I overcame that and sang. I did not win but I did overcome my fear of singing in public, I was complimented by my friends. This activity taught me that its important to try new things and to overcome your fears. It was a new challenge and I realized that I have a lot of scope of improvement, which is something I have been working on since the day of the competition. Even though I didn’t win, I really enjoyed singing and I will surely participate next time.

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Debate competition for the LitHum Fest.

Oratory and speeches have always been something that I was good at, so participating in this debate was just another way to develop my skill.

When I participated in this competition, I was still a new student so I did not even know my team members very well, so I felt that this would be a way to make new friends while doing something I love – Debating!

We were first selected in the semi finals and then moved on to the final round. The topic which we had to prepare for was “Is competition necessary?” and we were against the topic, while researching for this topic, I came across a lot of new information which I hadn’t known before, so it enhanced my knowledge about a global issue.

While debating, I prepared my points and speeches in advance, I had to convince the other team with the most logic, instead of just fighting, so this helped me develop a new kind of skill for debating which I did not learn in MUNs

In this competition, I had to work collaboratively with my team-mates, unlike oratory and MUNs where I usually argue on my own, we did face some hurdles as even within the team we had disagreements, but we overcame those and were able to work together to win the competition!

I realized that even though we won, my arguments could have been much better and well-formulated, I could also recognize that working in a team was something that I had difficulty with and needed to learn as a survival skill for life.

While participating in a debate, it is crucial to have some ethical considerations, in this instance as well, I had to be mindful of the language I was using so that I did not offend anyone and also to remain unbiased and not cheat in the competition.

Overall, it was a fun experience where I learnt a lot of about a new topic and also made a lot of new friends!

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