Category: Parvashi Manish Naik

CAS has been a fun learning experience for me. I was always inclined a lot towards co-curricular activities. May it be Arts, sports or social service. Before opting or knowing IB, my hobbies and co-curricular activities were things that concerned me because I was afraid that probably I would have to drop them because High school is one of the most important phase in life. But, CAS is like that one requirement of IB that is a stress buster and is fun. It has given me an opportunity to enhance my talent and continue my exploration and learning in the non-academic world. During my CAS Experience, I attended Subroto Football Tournament at district and state level, attended a plantation activity at vasnda, organised a Basketball 3 on 3 event as a part of my project work, became a part of the organising committee in FSMUN in our school, worked as an intern at Span Design Organisation for a month, learnt Corel Draw software, took part in an eye checkup camp affiliated with Rotary Club and spending time with special kids.

Coming to my CAS Experience, it has been great. One of the best achievement and the best learning part was my CAS project. From just an idea to the real event, it was a great journey. I got know about how people really are, what kind attitude we need to have in front of different kinds of people, how a sport event is actually conducted etc. Not only that but I also enjoyed learning different skills in all the three strands creativity, activity and service. Learning Corel draw, Attending an Internship and different service projects. It was a great learning experience all together.

CAS wasn’t just a learning experience, it was way more than that. Our morals, honesty and values were built, knowing what was right and wrong and building of problem solving skills was very helpful and worth. Knowing how much vital role our ethics play in all the situation is one thing I understood which I think is farmost the most important thing you learn in life.

CAS was not only something that was beneficial to me. It benefitted me as an individual, but a society as a whole. The service projects I did, helped the environment and the needy people. Contributing to these random act of kindness as a purpose to finish my CAS requirement, it gave me a feeling of happiness and a proud moment wherein I contributed to an act of kindness to the society. This made me realise that everything is not just done because it is required, there things that are done because they make you happy and proud, probably not at that particular moment, but later in life.

There were many incident which I came across during my CAS experience which I were life long learning experience for me. During my planning for FS 3/3, we were in search of sponsors. In that case we had a deal with one of the sponsors and then were betrayed by them due to some trust issues, that was the day when we realised everytime we trust someone in case of money or business or something like that, we’ve got to be very careful and take signatures in written to avoid problems in future. That is when our ethics played a role, after negotiation with the higher authority from the school asked the assigned person to pay but then, we the tournament directors mutually decided on not taking those money that we were given unwillingly with so much of grudge. There also came a time during the event day when one team raised protest against the other claiming they were above age. So, that was one problem that I came across for the first time but handled it pretty well probably. So incidents like this, build not only my confidence or problem solving skills, but also makes me a better and a honest person. At the end, that is what that counts.

CAS was a overall a very helpful programme set by the IB in order to make us balanced in terms of our academics and extracurricular activities, making all of us good at all the three important aspects that are creativity, activity and service.

After a grand Success of first edition of FSMUN, that is the Fountainhead School Model United Nations, FSMUN 2.0 is back. I was the OC Head for Utilities last year and took up the same responsibility as I recognized it to be developed strength in organising department.

There were some changes in the responsibilities this time. A significant change for me was that this time I had to share my OC Head position with my friend. Both of us, had to work together with more responsibilities. Our goal was to buy the best quality stationery for people participating in the minimal amount of money. Second goal was to make our work as organised as possible in order to save time and make it easier for the logistics and the registration team to do their jobs. I have always been someone who finds ways to keep things very simple. I thought using same skills here to make our work easy. The preparations started 3-4 months before the event.

Both of us, the Utilities OC Heads, divided our work to meet all the deadlines. The director and the secretary general seemed to be happy with our work as we were committed and finished all our work with our efforts and passion. We sacrificed our holiday to finish extra work and help other departments too. It was a good opportunity for me to get exposure of different departments. As I already had experience of my own CAS Project work, I gave suggestions and my own inputs in order to help the OC and also for the betterment of the event as a whole.

We, the whole OC faced challenges like having less count of delegates than expected, crisis in food. I tried my best not to have challenges in my department and make everything go smoothly. As I enjoyed the responsibility given to me, I was ready to do more and more work than assigned. Ultimately, enjoying your duty is what that matters. Then I made a whole CODE SYSTEM to code all the folder and the delegates in order to give them the stationary material as soon as possible when the registrations happen on that day. I learnt different techniques to keep the documents and stationery organised and easy to manage. The code system was not so much complicated so as to the volunteers could manage it pretty well. There were a lot of delegates who did not turn on that day, and to keep the event and the debate going, we had persuade people in the OC to participate for the betterment of the event. That was the  challenges that we faced of having less people contributing than expected, I developed persuasive skills in order to persuade people to contribute. Not only on that day, but also while promoting this event and asking people to participate, i built that skill.

Overall, FSMUN 2.0 was a great experience for me and I wish to take part in it next year as well to develop and more and more.

By now, I had decided what career I wished to pursue. School gave us an opportunity to get an exposure to work with successful people and get to know about their jobs. I had applied for it and got to work with Ar. Abhishek Bhansali and Ar. Minal Bhansali at Span Design Organisation for a month roughly. Overall it was an amazing experience which made me confident to opt for this field and not any other field. This was the first step toward my journey from a student to an Architect. The early days went reading different books and knowing about the field. Getting book knowledge and exposure was one way to learn and open the doors of creativity. Being an anti-reader it was a little difficult for me to go about it. But then, I thought about perceiving it visually and getting to know about different structures, pros and cons of designing children bedrooms etc. After that, I got to do practical learning as well, where I accompanied some employees there to the site and measured all the bathrooms at the site. It wasn’t easy, I had to climb till the 8-9th floor using the staircase as the site wasn’t built and there was no elevator, then walking around all the dirt and cement, water spilled and other fragments lying all over the floor to take measurements.  I learnt to be patient as well, I learnt that when you are learning something, the process won’t be easy, there will be a lot of difficulties that we have to face which requires patience and the zest of learning. Then, I was also taught to read different plans and know some basic terms about the field which are spoken. There, I came across to “Vastu Shastra”, which can regard them as ethics or rules that need to be considered according to the client’s beliefs. The most interesting part was to have interactive sessions with Minal Ma’am and get to know her journey and experience. I asked different questions and she answered all of them which helped me to get a better understanding and vanish my misconceptions and other myth about the field. I went with Abhishek Sir and one of his client for material selection. I got to know different properties of Marble and Granite. How they are different not only by other looks but their properties and purposes as well. We visited a shop where there not other materials like wood, ply, veneer, neolith, mdf etc. which had their unique looks and purposes. After all this, I was given an internship task to design a bathroom space according to the requirements. By the end of the task, I had to prepare a presentation about the experience and also present my idea about the task. There were different flaws that I came across which Minal Ma’am explained me and then I worked upon it and by the end of the task, I realised interiors was my strength at this stage as I got more exposure about it than architecture. Till yesterday, I knew what field I will go in my future. By now, I know what I will be doing in my coming future.

By now, I had decided what career I wished to pursue. School gave us an opportunity to get an exposure to work with successful people and get to know about their jobs. I had applied for it and got to work with Ar. Abhishek Bhansali and Ar. Minal Bhansali at Span Design Organisation for a month roughly. Overall it was an amazing experience which made me confident to opt for this field and not any other field. I felt the difference between my perception about this career field before and after this internship. This internship means a lot to me because the things that I learnt here, the perspective shift that I experienced was amazing. This was the first step toward my journey from a student to an Architect. The early days went reading different books and knowing about the field. Getting book knowledge and exposure was one way to learn and open the doors of creativity. Being an anti-reader it was a little difficult for me to go about it. But then, I thought about perceiving it visually and getting to know about different structures, pros and cons of designing children bedrooms etc. After that, I got to do practical learning as well, where I accompanied some employees there to the site and measured all the bathrooms at the site. It wasn’t easy, I had to climb till the 8-9th floor using the staircase as the site wasn’t built and there was no elevator, then walking around all the dirt and cement, water spilled and other fragments lying all over the floor to take measurements.  I learnt to be patient as well, I learnt that when you are learning something, the process won’t be easy, there will be a lot of difficulties that we have to face which requires patience and the zest of learning. Then, I was also taught to read different plans and know some basic terms about the field which are spoken. There, I came across to “Vastu Shastra”, which can regard them as ethics or rules that need to be considered according to the client’s beliefs. The most interesting part was to have interactive sessions with Minal Ma’am and get to know her journey and experience. I asked different questions and she answered all of them which helped me to get a better understanding and vanish my misconceptions and other myth about the field. I went with Abhishek Sir and one of his client for material selection. I got to know different properties of Marble and Granite. How they are different not only by other looks but their properties and purposes as well. We visited a shop where there not other materials like wood, ply, veneer, neolith, mdf etc. which had their unique looks and purposes. After all this, I was given an internship task to design a bathroom space according to the requirements. By the end of the task, I had to prepare a presentation about the experience and also present my idea about the task. There were different flaws that I came across which Minal Ma’am explained me and then I worked upon it and by the end of the task.Coming to what I learnt about myself is that I realised interiors was my strength at this stage as I got more exposure about it than architecture and what I learnt about other (Sir, mam and employees) is that determination and hardwork is what counts at the end. Till yesterday, I knew what field I will go in my future. By now, I know what I will be doing in my coming future.

My friend and I volunteered for an eye-check up camp that was conducted by Rotary Club of Udhna in Navnirman school where hundreds of unprivileged students, especially teenagers . This service project has immensely helped these children in terms of their vision. Out of these hundreds of children, minimum 20-25% of children had poor vision, but had lack of money and knowledge. By this service project, these teens were benefitted as the ones who had a defect in their vision, were given professional checkup and eye-glasses were donated to them too.

Gujarati was the only language that could understand. But, there were some students who couldn’t even comprehend that. So, in that case we had to use actions and gestures in order to make them go to an assigned place for the checkup. But this way I also developed a skill to communicate without a certain language. All it takes a an expression to convey a message. This was a difficulty that I faced. It was very difficult to make students

Except for helping in volunteering there wasn’t much that we could do about it as we aren’t qualified enough to check whether there a defect in their eyes or not. But when we saw the difficulty they had to read the alphabets was heart breaking. There was this one girl who was asked whether or not she has specs or not, she said she but she doesn’t wear them because her classmates make fun of her. This gave a big shock to all of us present there. So, then it was decided that after all the required eye check-up, there will be a session with these student where in they will be given knowledge about so as why wearing eyeglasses is important and other important factors.

We realised that there is nothing more important than acquiring basic knowledge about our body. Seeing those children in these problems was heart throbbing.

This eye checkup camp has immensely helped these students and I feel glad to be a part of this.

Doing a random act of kindness for the society is one of the best feeling ever. In past, I did different service activities but this activity was different than other activities in my CAS portfolio as this was for the first time I spent time with kids with different sort of inabilities. I knew about different NGO and different organisations working for these kind of children but I had never experienced how it was like to spend time with them. Starting with a prayer, I noticed all of these children singing their daily prayers with all their feelings wishing for a happy and peaceful life. I started off my day by learning that happiness isn’t just in good marks you bring or good things you achieve in life. Happiness can be found in such small things like a prayer. And that’s when I knew that there are hundreds of reason to be sad about but always one reason to be happy about and that one reason leads us to have a joyful life. After the prayers we did different activities with these children. As friendship’s day was round the corner, we had an activity with them where they were asked to make friends belts by themselves. So, I taught them how we could do it, and then helped them do it as well. I found happiness in teaching these people and i felt happy to see their zest for learning different new things despite of the negatives they had. I realised that apart from these enthusiasm for learning and finding happiness in small things, what made them the happiest was the feeling of being accepted, the feeling of having different friends. In the current society, these children do not have friends or relatives who visit them, they are confined to certain people only. So, i liked making this change and not only make these people happy, but also to do something better for the society. In all the problem that we encountered was communication and mixing up with them. It wasn’t easy for me to get hold with new people and communicate with them. But then, I learnt doing this with the help of different activities. What I thought was that these children probably have their own flaws but these children are equally capable of achieving pinnacles in life. This experience was a great learning and motivation for me. I learnt that passion and enthusiasm to learn can lead us to great paths in life. Overall, my first experience was very special.

CAS hasn’t just given me an opportunity to help and serve my society but it has also helped me develop and learn certain skills and new thing like learning COREL DRAW. It helped me make different artworks in my Visual Arts curriculum and also other areas where needed like designing the class logo on the first day of school. I lacked in my sketching skills so i realised that I could probably try a digital medium which could help me to not only make works that are curriculum related but also help me in designing different logo or something.

There were different shortcuts, the software was fun to learn. It felt like everything you imagine in the world, came to reality in just one click on the mouse and keyboard. Representing my ideas through digital medium and expressing it in my own personal way, helped me develop my own skill and thought process by which the message I intended to convey, was being passed on to the audience. I wrote all those shortcuts in my journal so I could remember all of them and now when I look back at those doodles, I realise how important these doodles will be in my coming future if in case I forgot this. In every session, after leaning certain codes and tools, we implemented them on our work and created different small works out of it having our own view and perspective to it.  Colours are always something that i am fond of, so I played with a lot of shades, tints and tones to make my creativity grow wider and open the door to wilder imagination. I finished my course of learning it and also finished my artworks that were to be made by this software. I wondered, where would I now use this software or where would I implement my learning? In the summer holidays, I wasn’t very focused and committed to this activity but as soon as the school started, the same old schedule of designing the class logo and other displays were given to us. Just like last academic year, I opted for designing the logo. From past 1-2 years, we have been drawing and designing it using different chart paper and pens etc. But this time, I thought using a digital medium would give it a unique touch. We, as a group presented our ideas and then worked upon it. Problems and difficulties did come in our way because of the inaccuracy while using this vector-based software. So, we tried with different possibilities and overcomes those problems of filling colour in an object and creating the graphic version of an image. Not only, that, we also used trial and error method to choose the best option for the logo. Here are my few artworks that I did in the corel draw.

Fountainhead School 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament

An Idea was born…

FS 3/3 was a student-led initiative by me and 2 of my friends. All three of us are Passionate Basketball Players, so we thought of organising a Basketball Tournament as our CAS Project work. The reason we named it FS 3/3 (3 on 3) is because FS is our school’s name and 3/3 is different format of a Basketball game and is not very well recognised in Surat. The objective was to promote Surat Basketball as a whole. Implicitly one of our aims was also to spread awareness regarding this game, especially in girls category as there are rarely any tournaments which have women playing 3 on 3 tournament.

Giving Idea a life…

After having a word with our CAS coordinator, we fixed 25th September as the date of our tournament. We came up with different concepts that made our tournament different from other basketball tournament. one of them is the Most Valuable Player Currency. We then designed the tournament logo similar to the one of our school so, the uniformity and standard is maintained. Also, we designed a logo for MVP currency. After doing the budgeting, we ended up with 1000/- INR per person cost. After asking people to participate, we realised the price was too high and to be on the safer side we had to approach the sponsors. In that, we learnt to negotiate and learnt persuasive skills that would pursue them to sponsor our event. And, finally we ended up with 500/- INR per person. I had organised events in past which helped me to organize this tournament with ease. I learnt how to prepare budget for the event, adjust the costs as per affordability, negotiating for the prices to make the total expense minimal etc. We faced minor problems in trusting people for sponsorship and keeping our own ethics of truth in mind, we overcome the problem by letting it go and compensating that cost from other sponsors or the collected fees. All three of us had decided that no matter what, this tournament will happen in the most appropriate, right and the correct manner. We won’t let any cheating happen and make the tournament success by following all the rules and ethics. It was not so difficult rather it was fun handling that department and finding ways to overcome different challenges. I took the responsibility of handling the Organising committee and other preparations that had to be done and the other two of my friends had taken the responsibility of approaching sponsors and making registrations done. Organising is one of my strength which I had identified and used it here. It was very difficult for us to bring registrations. This was the most difficult part throughout the tournament. As the registrations were less, the order for reversible jerseys that we had planned to ordered got postponed. As the jerseys were sponsored, I designed a rough look of the jersey. After the order was placed, we were informed that the vendor did not have manpower and therefore he could only send the jerseys without. Printing was important for us as the jerseys were sponsored. The jerseys arrived 3-4 days late then the expected date. 3 days before the tournament they had arrived and because of its material, when we sent them for print, they could only print one side of the jersey, the other side had the reflected print of the other side. Things were not going right. But, we then let all the negativity aside and overcome that problem by printing on one side only. I designed posters of the tournament and also the banner using Microsoft Publisher. I also learnt some skills which I did not know before. Converting those documents, editing them etc. My art teacher helped me with the banner. Those posters were put up all around the city so people would register. At the end, we ended up with 22 teams. One of the OC members helped me design uniform for the organising committee. Just a week before the tournament, the weather got worse. It rained a lot and new marking on the court seemed impossible. Arrangements on the court also were not something that we could do. Everything got postponed. We had to fix a tentative date after a week for the tournament, being on the safer side. The school workers had a lot of work and therefore they refused to do all the work assigned. All mattered to us was that the tournament to go success. So then the OC and the tournament directors themselves started to work. We learned how the basketball court is painted and marked. We could feel that how hard it is to clean the whole court in the sun and that was when we came to know that the staff worked so hard just to ensure we don’t  face problems. I am happy to take up CAS because it helped me the world through different eyes, interact people, pursue them to participate, know what problems they faced and tried solving them and asking them to participate. Different mentalities of people brought to light which helped me understand people better. Just before the day there were a lot of changes in the plan due to certain circumstances. So, we tried doing Smart work instead of hard work. We swapped responsibilities to make everybody’s work easier. We had teams from different cities that were going to arrive a day day before, so we had to go fetch them from station as well. OC dinner was planned where I instructed my team with all the work they had to do. I had prepared for folders per team which our work not easier but also organized. We tried giving all the possible facilities and luxuries in the minimum amount possible.

The day had arrived…

All the hard work from past months and the commitment was all going to reflect.2 teams did not turn up on the day, so we finally ended up with 20 teams. We faced some difficulties on that day as their were some misunderstandings in the date of event with the sponsor who was going to provide us with the breakfast. But then, utilizing our time efficiently, we started off with matches and then served the breakfast a little late than schedule, but we served it on the court itself. So, the teams that did not have matche could take the breakfast. So the rush would be less and the matches would still go on. I had also designed the whole agenda for the day, agenda for both categories. The format was League, so the agenda was also designed according to the group in the categories. There was a team who suspected who had suspected some other team to be over age. All three of us, the tournament directors had decided that I will be the chief referee in boys category and he other two of them will be in the girl’s category. So, the protest had happened in the boys, so I was responsible to resolve the conflict. I tried my best and managed to resolve the conflict keeping all the rules, regulations, ethics and the protest process in mind. We running out of time, the buses had to be postponed, but we managed take out time well and stayed up to our commitments to some extent. We did justice to nearly all the decisions we took throughout the tournament. I had also participated in the game. I played wit my team. In the first two matches, as we did not play from a lot of time, we had difficulties in coordination between all three of us. But, by the last game, we ended up with a fairly good coordination between each other. I earned 3 MVP coins in the matches as well. Though we lost that match, but we played our best. Not only that, the rules of this format is different. We tried meeting up the criteria as well. Finally, the Finals was over. The most valuable player was declared and it was a pleasant end of the tournament. CAS gave me the opportunity to explore a whole new side of the world. I was happy to know that this made me a lot more mature and responsible. I learnt how to cater to different problems. I will use my experience of FS 3/3 for upcoming events I will organise in. We received a lot of positive feedback from people. We also had a feedback banner where people jotted their comments which helped us know what was good and what needed improvement. A quote that I believe in is the quote I will use to conclude this reflection of my Project work.

“Basketball is not about bright lights, packed arenas and highlighted reels. It is the way of life. Its the way of life. Basketball the relationship between you and the ball, you and your team mates. If you love the game, nobody can take that from you.” -Jordan  

Keeping academic honesty into mind,

Source for the quote- http://quotesjunk.com/basketball-isnt-just-about-the-bright-lights-packed-arenas-and-highlight-reels-basketball-is-a-way-of-life-basketball-is-a-relationship-between-you-and-the-ball-michael-jordan/

Evidence for the event- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L6_XhDrcOs