Personal Profile

screen-shot-2016-11-30-at-4-24-11-pmHi my name is Muskaan Agarwal and I am 17 years old. I was born and brought up in Surat and have been studying in Fountainhead school from 6 years.

My interests and talents include dancing which I have been doing since like birth, playing basketball and football but basically sports in general, cooking, and many other fun activities. I have taken part in several basketball competitions and have been learning dance formally for more than 10 years now yet I am encouraged to learn more. Apart from all this I also love taking part in adventure activities which is the reason why I have been to around four adventure camps and have done rappelling, mountain climbing, treks, river rafting, zip line, bridge slithering and many such activities.

If we talk about my personality, my friends say I am very bold and fun loving. I am an extrovert however I do not like public speaking and am shy sometimes. I am also straightforward but still know where to draw a line. I also believe that  friendship is a true blessing and everyone should embrace it to the fullest. Friends stay with you and support you in all your hardship and I believe my friends are also creditable for who I am right now.

My career plan for now is to move towards the field of management. The reason behind this is because I love leadership roles. Management lits me to perform exceptionally and give my 100%. I have organised and taken part in several events and seeing the outcome and happy faces of people have truly been a delight. I want to improve my skills, learn and experience more in this area and dream, to one day be a very successful event manager.

In the future I also want to travel to different places outside India as I haven’t had an opportunity to do so yet. I believe life is a journey with learnings and lessons and we should enjoy and seize every moment of it.

Well in the end, my takes from the past 17 years are that “learn and change for good, but don’t lose your identity” and that “you are the ruler your world, no one else”.

Plantation Drive

img_0729I have already been a part of many plantation activities before however this one was really different. Nature club was taking us to KV central school to be a part of a plantation drive which I volunteered for. I always wanted to do something for the nature because I love the nature and getting muddy has never been an issue.

This time it was monsoon and was raining heavily when we had to do the activity. No matter what condition I did not back out from the activity and with raincoats and umbrellas, I was all set to go. We were introduced to different trees and were told the reason behind planting them which was to give the birds shelter later in bad weathers. This made me feel confident and knowledgeable about the nature at least a bit.img_0731

When we started planting the trees, definitely it was harder than other plantation drives as because of the rain it was all muddy and we were even unable to walk properly. The holes were already dug for us before hand but because of the rain, they were filled with water and so we had to remove the was with the SAW and then plant the trees immediately so that the holes doesn’t fill back with water. Also the saplings were kept like really far away from the area we had to plant so we had to carry them for a long distance. For this to happen we divided yourself into random teams and worked collaboratively so one person remove the water from the hole, the order brings the tree and plants it. It was really fun however it was raining constantly throughout the time which made it really difficult and physically tiring. Accompanying me and my friends we also had another group of people who were completely strangers to us so I kinda tried to interact with them as well. After the plantation drive was over we, all of us planted about 50 trees which was really great and I felt really proud of myself that I was a part of this activity even though the weather conditions weren’t as supporting.

 

The time I spent time with special children

screen-shot-2016-11-23-at-1-42-49-amI have never in my life volunteered or spend time with mentally challenged kids (special kids) and this was the very first time I do

so. I volunteered to spend time with special kids in Shree Nandan school and help them learn/ play with them. Initially I had no clue how I am going to go about this activity and how I am going to converse with the children in the school as I did not have any experience.

In the starting the kid wasn’t really able to converse with me as she spoke gujarati and I wasn’t really fluent with the language however I tried and did my level best to speak and converse with her and no matter how crooked I spoke she understood, which really made me feel appreciative. 

 

I was able to identify what difficulties she faced when the special child was learning about different animals and shapes as she knew what the names of the animals were but was not able to put the correct shape into the the board cut according to the shape. After some time she was really bored therefore we went to the area where all the children were about to play musical chairs. It was really satisfying to see these kids enjoy and play happily which even made me happy.

Definitely this activity made me knowledge about special kids and what kinds of difficulties they faced. It was something out of my comfort zone which is the reason why I was uncertain of attending the activity at first however now someday I might volunteer for a similar activity.

 

 

CAS Essay

CAS to me was one of my favourite things in the IB because it helped me do something other than academics. Where we had to study all the time, CAS was a recreational activity that helped me get my mind of the pressure and struggle.

When I think of CAS, the first activity that comes to my mind is the farewell that I organised for my seniors which was my CAS project. I will never forget that experience because that was the first ever event I organised being the head and I enjoyed and learned a lot. The event required a lot of creativity and I am really proud of myself because of putting up that event successfully as my seniors did appreciate me for my efforts.

 

CAS has taught me a lot of things making me lot more knowledgeable especially me because I pursue to become an event manager in the future and CAS gave me an opportunity to organise and be a part of many events. It was just like becoming an event manager in the age of 17 and definitely I came to know that I am capable of being one. I have learned new skills throughout the process, from developing my personality to learning new skills in the areas I already have experience, CAS has taught me how to be a learner. With that I have also learned the importance of communication skills and definitely I feel I am a better communicator now. Almost all the projects I was a part of was collaborative work with my friends and sometimes even strangers which has challange me from with and taught me how to be patient and cooperative and also how to be caring towards your colleagues.

To be honest, I have rarely been a part of any service related activity in the past and personally I wasn’t even interested. But I had to go and experience those kind of activities because of CAS and still date now I have been a part many plantation activities, serving people with water at marathons, helping special children and in many have taken part in many more activities that I haven’t even included in my CAS report. Now I enjoy going to such events and this particular experience has taught me how to be open minded and always be a risk taker and step out of your comfort zone an now I know that yes life begins at the end of your comfort zone. However the most difficult outcome to achieve was LO 6 which is demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance. Mainly because not often did people propose activities that fulfilled this learning outcome and other than doing something for the environment, it was difficult to do something on a small scale yet fulfil this learning outcome.

The most important thing that I am taking away from CAS is that it has now given me a start, I am going to continue to organise and be a part of events because first of all I know and have experience and second of all I enjoy being a part of different projects from within now. For sure I am not going to stop just because CAS is over.

All in all, I really enjoyed the whole process of CAS. I feel it is a really good opportunity for oneself to learn new things and grow as a person and not only IB schools but even other schools should be a part of this. 

CAS PLAN

Activities Components (C/A/S) Duration with start date and end date Learning Outcomes
Activity – Dance Creativity, Activity 4-Jul-2015 to 31-Mar-2016 LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
Tree plantation activity at vansda Activity, Service 19-Jul-2015 (4 hours) LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO6. Engagement with issues of global significance
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Volunteering in Garba Fest Creativity, Service 7-Sep-2015 to 11-Oct-2015 LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO6. Engagement with issues of global significance
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Football – Suboroto Cup State Championship Activity 8-Sept-2015 LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Surat City Half Marathon Activity, Service 13-Sep-2015 (4 Hours) LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO6. Engagement with issues of global significance
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
DP FEST ORGANISATION Creativity 21-Nov-2015 to 11-Dec-2015 LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO3. Initiate and plan a CAS experience
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Organising Farewell for seniors Creativity 10-Feb-2016 to 8-April-2016 LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO3. Initiate and plan a CAS experience
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions
Plantation Drive Activity, Service 3-Jul-2016 (3 Hours) LO1.Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO4. Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
LO5. Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively
LO6. Engagement with issues of global significance
Visiting and spending time with special kids Service 6-Aug-2016 (1 hour) LO2. Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
LO6. Engagement with issues of global significance
LO7. Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Activity – Dance

One thing that has always been a part of my life is dancing. Dancing brings me immense pleasure and is one of the activities I have always been complimented for. For my CAS I chose dance as a long term activity and formally learned new techniques and forms of dancing for two years. During this course of time I learned different forms of dance including hip-hop, Robotics, tutting, freestyle, whacking and salsa.

It was one of the most interesting things and well I was always the first one to reach the class. However we could only formally go to the class once a week which for me was very frustrating because it took too long to complete a song and practise is never enough. This really brought my morale down and sometimes we didn’t even receive this one class. However I always tried to put in extra effort therefore always practising when I was at home.

Out of all the dance forms, I was worst at robotics. I also tried to convince my teacher to remove this section however he made me understand that practise is important and if you try you could excel in this area as well. Our first official performance in front of our parents was on the song “sorry” by Justin Beiber. Many of us did mess up the performance a little but our teacher yet assured us he was proud of us as this was our first performance. I really enjoyed learning this dance form as I had been learning Indian and International folk dance for the past four years therefore performing on a new pop song was really exciting for me. There were some clashes between the students of my grade and the younger grade because of the differences in opinions and just the fact they were really different from us. Therefore it really took time for all of us to gel up and sometimes things are still awkward but adjusting and cooperation is what I have learned here.

Dance performance on song “Sorry by Justin Bieber”  (Me: front row wearing White Tshirt and red shirt)

Overall my experience for these two years has been amazing and my take away as a learner has been immense. I’ve learned new skills and forms making me a versatile dancer and I am also currently working on new performance encompassing all the new forms I’ve learned. I am really excited for the same and hopefully will demonstrate how much hard work has been put in these two years.

 

 

Organising Farewell for seniors

For my CAS project, I chose to organise the farewell of the “now” former grade 12 students of my school. I really wanted to take charge of this event because of my personal interest in event management which is the reason why I informed the authorities about my interest almost one year before the event had to be planned. When the time came, I came to know that I had to collaborate with my classmate Kripa which was actually good news because we are good friends and she in my opinion is very capable.

Before we started the planning, we knew there were two big challenges we would face.

  1. First being that the event demanded utmost creativity to make it as entertaining and memorable as possible for the students whilst using emotions to connect to each and every student in a personal way.
  2. and second that the finalised date of the event, was just before two days my final exams for grade eleven started. Meaning that in the following one month, I had to work for the event as well as coordinate studying for my examination.

Needless to say I took up the challenge to organise the event. We started planning for the event by first discussing what the theme of the event should be. So that the whole grade eleven felt that they were a part of the event, we decided to act democratically and always collaborated with everyone for the decision making process as everyone’s opinion mattered. The theme that was finalised was the red carpet where all the grade 12 students would be celebrities and would be presented with an award for one of their qualities. With that we came up with different ideas like a dance performance from grade 11 and teachers and making a video based on how their day goes around in school.

screen-shot-2016-11-22-at-12-53-40-pm

 

 

Kripa and I came up with several other ideas that could be incorporated such as a slideshow displaying teachers comments. We wanted to make it as interesting and realistic as possible so we decided to print invites. Vanshika my classmate was well versed with editing so we took help from her to design the invitation.

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Trophies

Now the big work started. Because it wasn’t a small event and there was so much work to be done, the whole grade was divided into groups according to their preferences and where assigned departments such as the Decorations department, Photo booth, Game planners(who decided what games were going to be played), Technical department, dancers, filmmaking and acting. For the next couple days preparations were going on I had to be updated about everything. For that bit I really felt stressed and thought what have I stepped into because of the pressure of exams and managing 40 people wasn’t as easy. We also had to make sure we acted ethically from holding ourselves together to always being fair and doing the righteous thing. Kripa and I had to work really hard to get jobs done as beside managing these departments we had to design the trophy, Decide the menu, arrange transport and above all of that maintain a budget. We almost had at least one meeting every day for 10 days where we ordered all the material that would be needed, Approved of the trophies, decided the menu with the chef, finalised the location of the event, ordering the cake, designed the banner of the photo booth, arrange transport and decide the time of the event.

When it comes to organising an event, our school give us the full liberty to explore and really experience what event management in real feels like because we have the opportunity to work from the scratch and being a part of this event really gave me an unforgettable experience for my future.

 

THE DAY OF EVENT

Well the main day on which the event was taking place was full of crisis and mishaps. Kripa and I divided ourselves so I looked at the food, decorating and other stuff whereas she finished the movie that was supposed to be made. I wasn’t aware of the fact that the venue(Amphitheatre) of the event was already booked by junior grade teachers for practise. They did not want to negotiate and did not understand our situation which really got me frustrated. The event would begin at 3:30 PM and the hall wasn’t going to be free until noon. Which meant EVERYTHING including decorations, dance practise, on stage practise, sound check has to be done within three hours.

Finally it was noon and we were given the venue. Although there were mere conflicts between my classmates, but all was sorted later on. Everyone came together even the people making the movie video and teachers who were free to complete decorations and everything started going in the right direction FINALLY. Everything was in place, the cake and trophies arrived, the hall was decorated, dance practise was over, the food was in place and everybody rushed to get dressed. Grade 12 students arrived at the venue and everyone was looking as pretty as the venue. I was extremely happy and proud of myself at that point of time. The show started and we performed and it was a wrap.

The Hall

The Hall

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Seniors cutting their cake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell review from one of the senior

Farewell review from one of the senior

 

To sum up, I am very happy that I was a part of this project. It did hamper my examination but that I is what I have learned. How to work in pressure and how you’ve got to be prepared for crisis and most of all how to keep calm and think before you act. This project really gave me insight into how this profession works and how “People” management is the key to event management. In the end the appreciation from grade 12 students and all the teachers truly brought peace and made all of the hard work worth it.

Video of Kripa and I giving Acknowledgement speech (After 1:41)

Surat City Half Marathon

Some of my friends and I had volunteered to help SCHM on their first ever hosted Marathon. We were supposed to work on the pit stop and provide the runners with energy drink and water. When we reached on our pit stop it was nothing compared to what we had imagined.

Our Pit Stop

Our Pit Stop

There were just tables and water bottles that were provided but we were so fascinated by the idea of being a part of the marathon and helping people that it did not matter to us anymore.

It made me really happy when I saw the first runner approaching and the feeling of helping people and doing something good was overwhelming. We weren’t just providing them with water but were motivated them, clapping for them, hooting and were cheering for almost every runner. As a welcome they cheered and thanked us back.

I definitely learned multitasking as we had to open the water bottle caps as well as provide water to the runner which had to be quick. This also made us realise the importance of teamwork as when we started working collaboratively and divided the work, it not only decreased the time that took to do the work, but also the efforts.

We also had to show commitment to the task as we had to stand there for about 2 hours which also bought thoughts of quitting but knowing that it wasn’t ethical for us to opt out of the activity we had chosen and also the commitment of the runners to complete the race kept us going.

There were runners who were 70-80 year old and there was also a blind runner. Seeing them run in the marathon made my mind boggle and that also set a live example for me of how passion cannot be affected due to any limitations. It extremely motivated me to not be lazy for things I am passionate about and make an effort to work hard in other to achieve success. All in all, I am grateful that something like CAS exists which encourages me to explore and participate in such events.

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Volunteering in Garba Fest

Garba fest was an event organised by two of my colleagues and I was the head of the decorations department along with Avina. I was very happy to be in the decorations department as I love doing the same but it was one big responsibility as the main glam of the event would be the decorations.

One Photo booth and me

One Photo booth and me

There was a lot of work to be done from preparing the photo booth to the lightings of the venue which was a challenge to coordinate with academics . Avina and I had to work collaboratively to ensure that the work is done on time. But because of less experience our planning did not go right due to which Naomi( another volunteer) and I had to work on the photo booth for the whole day on the main day which was hectic.  

This definitely taught me time management and gave me experience of how things are managed which will help me in future as well.

Moreover it was the first time I had to talk by myself to several dealers of different things which again increased my knowledge in the field. It made me realise the strength I have in the field of event management and made me want to participate in more such events.

Rangoli made by us

Rangoli made by us

We found ourselves pondering for a solution to the social issue of global significance : Wastage of food. A lot of food was wasted on that day because not many people consumed the food. We thought about what we could do with the food; give it away to someone who needs it and thankfully our school also has a compost system.

The outcome of all the hard work and time we had put in was great. Not only I was proud and happy with the beauty the venue had but other as well who appreciated me and Avina. In the end everyone enjoyed the whole event by doing garba in the beautiful atmosphere that was created.

Venue

Venue

DP FEST ORGANISATION

Abhishek and I were chosen by the school to organise the DP fest aka The Xbox performance that takes place every academic year where we show our parents what we have learned throughout the year. It was very difficult at the start to imagine the outcome as there was shortage of time. This one big challenge we faced  as planning and execution of performances needed time . But even after that limitation the outcome turned out to be great.

Invitation card

Invitation card

As an organiser I had to be impartial and not let my personal attachment with anyone affect my decisions. I learned how to maintain that. Simultaneously I had to be humble and open minded while listening to everybody’s ideas about the fest. I never understood how ethics would fit in CAS but this project gave me an example. The teamwork between me and Abhishek was very important as well as the leadership we took. We had to coordinate and execute everything and divide the work so that the burden don’t go on one person with that we also had to be good leaders and keep everyone motivated and be strict with deadlines to complete the project. My skills were improved, I became better at time management and I experienced organising an event by myself for the first time in my life.

All the hard work paid off when after a successful event everyone applauded us including the head of school which felt amazing. It made me remind that I am capable of becoming an event manager which I further want to pursue as my career.

IB as a prison which changes to metamorphosis

IB as a prison which changes to metamorphosis

IB as a prison which changes to metamorphosis

IB as a prison which changes to metamorphosis

One of the appreciation :)

One of the appreciation 🙂

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