Category: Pranit Nitin Bagadia

Hello! I am Pranit Bagadia studying in Fountainhead school. I am 16 years but in about a month and half I will turn 17! To introduce myself, sometimes I can be fun, boring, I can get angry and even be calm at times; overall I am a complete mixture of an introvert and extrovert (hard to believe it right?). The best thing that I find about me, is that I can start a conversation with any Tom or Harry, whether it’s about a tv show or about the weather, I can talk to a stranger for hours. On simple terms, I am tv show addict. I just enjoy watching tv shows all day; if given the chance, I can watch tv shows for ages..

I lack the skill of commitment towards my work. I have never been able to complete my homework on time or submit an assignment on time.This pinches me many a times. The absence of this quality has led to negative outcomes in my life, like, I have been scoring very bad marks in my exams due to this. For now, I supposedly think I would like to be involved in more outdoor activities, maybe in terms of participation or initiating it. What I like to learn? Well, sarcastically speaking, I love to research about fictional characters (Game of thrones, Walking dead, Avengers…), their origin, their personality, their powers, everything. It’s my favorite way to pass my time. But in the practical world, I like to learn and research about computers, their working, the technicalities, their structure, compatibility, in short everything linked with computers.

Well, my dreams? There are millions of them, one of them is that to simply wake up one day as BILL GATES! Be the richest person in the world, have power to influence people, be the authority and a role model to many. Won’t that be cool? Won’t you be glad to have ‘BILL GATES’ as your friend? Sometimes I think, that I even lack the mind to imagine the things I could do with all that money and power. But they are just dreams, so yeah. Overall I think life is an adventure and is always mysterious.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ― Robert Frost

Ever since I started with IB DP program, I realized that there are various skills that I lacked in  and consequently, wasn’t able to complete tasks properly on time. I gradually had to face a lot of issues in fighting with my ‘laziness’. In the beginning of the 11th grade, I barely used to complete any homework or participate in any indoor or outdoor activity. This hunger of laziness had started to affect my daily life, influencing my scores and personality. It was then, when I was introduced to the IB program ‘CAS’, well to be truthful, in the start I found this program, boring and time wasting; but after I began performing tasks, taking part in activities with my peers and even organizing a few of them, I understood how fun this program was for me and the various skills it was helping me develop exponentially. ‘CAS’ standing for Creativity, Activity, and Service – has overall helped me by making me more aware about my strengths and weakness along with developing new skills, building up the confidence to undertake new challenges, initiating and planning activity collaboratively with my peers, showing perseverance and commitment in my activities as well as being engaged with its global importance and the ethical implication along with it. As a whole CAS, has helped me shape myself into a well rounded person.

Thinking of CAS, the one activity that immediately strikes in my mind is the ‘Learning Camps’. This activity was a project which I had initiated with my friends. Well, the fact is that I will never be able to forget this activity in my whole life is because no other activity pushed me through such mental and physical pressure as these ‘learning camps’. On the very first day of this activity, we were planning to teach a bunch (more like 10-12 students were expected to come) of students with the starter course for computers (like what is computer, a bit of its history and ask them that do they even know how to use a one?), but to our surprise, more than 50 students just smashed in; Shashvat literally had to barricade the ICT lab. A hell of a day that was! Even after that, every day at learning camps, there were many critical surprises for us; like the one when one of the student, simply got lost in school, and all four of us were running in every corner to find him like cats and dogs. But even though we had to face such difficulties, at the end we realized the many skills we lacked in ourselves such planning, and worked on it. This activity helped me interact with stranger more fluently, even in a language I don’t know, ‘Gujarati’.  

CAS has taught me how to improve the skills I lacked in and also how to develop new skills, by taking an initiation to participate in all or random activities. It helped me cover all the skills I lacked which further helped me in my IB program. The one thing I have learned about myself is that, when I am dedicated to achieve something, well I achieve it, with the help of my family and friends. Taking an example of ISA, teamwork and leadership was the key for our great success in the fest. It was because we work collaboratively with each other that time in ISA was fun all the time. There were competitions such the “presentation of stall” which would have been a debacle – in which we were suppose to decorate stalls and present a particular country. We also kept the ethical considerations in mind, we did not cheat at all or break and of the fest’s rule. “Win or lose, we will not cheat” was our motto in the fest.

Today I am a different person from the one I was 2 years ago, and that is because of CAS. It has helped me to become a well-rounded individual and to become more proactive. My overall CAS experience has been adventures and fun. Today I use the skills I developed through CAS in my day to activities and in tough situations, which has made my life easier and more productive. In short, I can say that the ‘CAS’ program has effectively made me an International Minded person.

 

 

Proposed Activities	Description of the activity	Components (C/A/S)	Duration with start date and end date	Goals	Learning Outcomes	Location	Status	Started/ completed	Supervisor	Ethical implications related to the activity (if any)
Visual Arts	creating a piece of work with other VA students	C	7/10/2015 to 3/14/2016	– To improve my art skills – Work collabrity with my friends – To become more creative	L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7	In-school	Compete	Completed	Rahul Sir	– Not wasting resources – Not copying art work from the internet or other resources
Skating	I did the activity skating for a time span of 1 year.	A	7/1/2015 to 3/1/2016	– To become more fit – To be more commited to my work – To develop skills in a new sport – To be more focused	L1, L2, L4, L7	In-school	Compete	Completed	Asif Sir	– Not lying about the number of rounds we took during skating to sir
Bal Mela	Bal Mela is a fest in which we invite and entertain students from the local schools of Surat. My role in this fest was to make those children play tug of war along with my friend Shasvat.	A, C	1/1/2016 to 1/1/2016	– To plan strategies to control so many young children while remembering to make the have fun at the same time. – To learn the skill of being calm in tight situations such as fights or a crowd. – To learn the skill of co-operating with others	L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L6, L7	In-school	Complete	Completed	–	– To treat every child with equality
Trip to Naggar	Winter trip to naggar	A	12/26/2015 to 1/3/2016	– To make new friends – Work collabrity with my peers to keep the room clean – To have fun – To participate in all the activities	L2, L4, L6, L7	Out-of-school	Complete	Completed	Krishna Ma’am	– To not dirty the street
French Cooking	I and the other french students had planned a french cooking fest, in which we had to cook french food.	C	–	– To learn to make french food – To make healthy and tasty food – To work with my friends	L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L7	In-school	Complete	Completed	Smriti Ma’am	– Not break the friday school policy
ISA Fest	My friends and I participated in the French Fest which took place in International School Aamby (ISA), Amby Valley. This fest was a competition between various schools from all over India.	C	–	– To win the completion – Learn new things about the language – Interact with new people – To have fun – To develop new skills – To become less lazy	L1, L2, L4, L5, L7	Out-of-school	Complete	Completed	Smriti Ma’am	– To not cheat – To not waste resources – Not waste food – Not dirty the city
Tree Plantation Drive	It was an opportunity for us students to serve nature and help save the environment by planting more trees.	A,S	7/3/2016 to 7/3/2016	– To learn how to plant trees – To understand the procedure for plantation	L1, L2, L4, L5, L6, L7	Out-of-school	Complete	Completed	Nature Club Supervisior	– To not throw the plactic bag around the garden
Gym	Going to gym for a time span of 5 – 6 months regularly.	A	3/6/2016 to 9/8/2016	– To become fit – To become more proactive – To complete all the tasks assigned by the trainer	L2, L4, L5, L7	Out-of-school	Complete	Completed	Vicky Sir	– To not cheat/lie about the completion of the task assigned by the trainer
Learning Camps (project work)	Teaching computers to the children from the villages around our school	S,C	7/10/2016 to 9/27/2016	– To plan the entire teaching schedule before hand – To make it fun and intresting – To teach the children the use of computers	L1, L2, L3, L4, L5, L7	In-school	Complete	Completed	–	– To treat every child with equality

In March I was determined that I have to achieve an aim of mine which I had set months ago; which was to workout in a gym for 5-6 months continuously. Before the month of March I was very lethargic and not committed to my workout schedule in the gym, but after I noticed that I was becoming unfit, I made up my mind that I will have to work out in the gym every day no matter what.

The biggest challenge I faced in this activity was ‘fighting with my laziness’. According to my schedule, I need to go to the gym at 6:30 pm, which exactly 45 minutes after I reach home to school. Well, usually after I come home I am completely exhausted and just lie around on my bed for about an hour. But now because I need to go to the gym at about 6:30, I need to freshen up, eat some snacks and pack my gym bag after I come from school. Gyming has not only helped me getting fit but also helped me release all my stress and frustration in form of physical workout. I was able to utilize my time in something better (such as getting fit) rather than wasting it in watching movies and TV shows.

There were many such instances that my trainer was busy with his other clients, but he used to instruct me the work pattern for the day; it was in my ethical considerations that I didn’t cheat or lie to my trainer about completing a task that I hadn’t done. I also made a few new friends who helped and motivated me in completing my workout, which encouraged a teamwork between us as we used to communicate and help each other whenever required. This activity thought me how to be extremely committed to your work no matter what costs it involves and also helped me enhance my teamwork skills.

Skating is a sport where I can remove all my stress and just be me for the time. In Skating there are only 2 students – Anshul and me; our coach is Mr. Asif Patel. For me Asif sir is like an ideal sport coach, because he is both fun and focused. He always cheers up the atmosphere in the ring and motivates us to the most, so that we could stand up and complete our given task. Skating is a very tiring and a hard sport. You really need to stay attentive all the time, otherwise the chances of you meeting with an accident increases.

In the starting of the year, I was really bad in this sport, because I had never done skating in my life. I used to feel very sheepish seeing the younger children skate much much better than me. This had got the good of me, but after few deadly motivational speeches from my coach I started to work really hard on this sport. His, so called speeches, constantly focused on one point, “If you don’t concentrate on your sports and complete your given task in time; then one day when you will look at yourself in the mirror, all you will see is a very very fat person”; and to be honest, I have no interest in being fat. Thus, I set some strict goals for the sport which were: a)being the best skater in the batch b)winning the district level competition for chord skaters c)becoming fit. I used to be very determined and punctual in my PS slots to try to achieve the goals I had set. In the process of achieving my goals, there were many challenges I had to face; the hardest challenge was when sir used make us do “long run skating”. In this we had to skate for a minimum of 40 rounds (1 round = 120 m) continuously without a single break with a constant speed, and if were not able to come up to sir’s expectations then we had to do the entire activity again from scratch. This challenge has always proved to be unfortunate for me because, if by any means if I was able to complete it, I used to be exhausted to the maximum level, and my body used to pain agonizingly. Eventually, the tasks that sir made us do were becoming harder by the day; it was becoming very difficult for me to participate in the activities and thus I used to be disinterested to participate in the following task and feel lethargic. But whenever I used to get feeling such as boredom or incuriousness then all I used to do was think of the goals I had set and what could be the possible consequences if I didn’t complete my goals. Thus, I had to be extremely committed to the tasks that I was given in order to achieve my goals; initially it was very difficult for me to complete the task given by sir but after time – achieving great number of practice in different methods and exercise, slowly, I was being able to show improvement in my sport, which made me feel very proud.

After a time span of 5 to 6 months I gradually understood my strength in this sport, was mobility. I could move around the ring freely, which gave me the advantage to overcome any opponent by cutting them from the forward. There were many ethical considerations that I had to keep in mind the most important one was to “never cheat”, it could have been very easy for me to skip the jogging or lie about the number of excercise that I have done. But I was so determined to achieve my goals that I prefered not to cheat at all, because after the loss will only be mine. So, I finally think I have done a good job in achieving my ethical considerations. Seeing my improvement in the sport, my coach used to praise me all the time, and used to give my example to the juniors. This used to make me feel radiant and superior. I know think that all the determinations and hard work I have given in this sport have proved to be worth.

For my project work, I have initiated Learning camps, with my friends: Manan, Shasvat, and Riya. The following video is my reflection. We initiated this program because we wanted to bring a change in our society. We wanted the children from the villages around our school to understand their concepts in the field of computer and language more efficiently. Learning Camps has helped me develop skills in many areas (which will be elaborated in the video). If I do get an opportunity in the future I will surely take part in the learning camp!

Link to Video

 

 

What activity can give one more pleasure than planting trees and helping to keep the nature clean in this thrilling beauty of the monsoon season? The “Tree Plantation Drive” was a fun, informative and satisfying activity for me. In this activity we had to plant trees in K.V Central School, Surat with our friends and teachers. The main reason I wanted to participate in this activity was that, I wanted to do something for the nature like cleaning the environment, planting trees, or showing awareness to the community about the present condition of nature. I thought that this activity could be the first step for me to achieve my goal/ambition.

Now, that I’ve performed this activity, I think that I have successfully been able to grow in a new skill, which is ‘environmental care’. Well, I have always hated to be surrounded by especially ‘mud’ – it used to make me feel gross, nauseous and it was really irritating for me. The jest in this  activity was that, that the entire activity was primary focused on mud; such as digging hole in the mud, placing the plant in the mud and then cover the plant roots with mud, like everything we did was somehow related to mud. This made me extremely regret my idea to participate for this activity because it was becoming very hard for me to take part with the others, initially. However, when I saw my friends performing the activity with such enthusiasm, I tried real hard to persuade myself into taking an initiative, and in no time I was enjoying the activity with my friends.

The biggest challenge that I faced was when I decided to plant a really big tree. Well I don’t know what got into me, and I suddenly decided to pick the biggest tree in the lot, and plant it almost half the way around the school. The only support I had in this ‘stupidity’ was that I wasn’t alone. I had two of my friends, Vinit and Shasvat and some of the strangers we met there to help me. We started with picking up the plant and transporting it to the back of the school, which wasn’t very far, but with the plant in the hand it seemed we would take ages to reach there, it was that heavy! So Vinit and I, somehow reached there with the plant, and ‘then’ we found out that there was only one big pit empty, and unsurprisingly that pit was completely flooded. Well we obviously weren’t professional planters and consequently we were not at all in a good mood, so we just cut the plastic cover around the plant and tried to fit it in the pit, but just when we thought our work was done, BOOM! – the plant just fell off the pit to the ground, like it wasnt being able to stand still, because it had no support to the ground. In this situation we had two choices a) Just the leave the plant there and go back home or b) Struggle really hard to remove the water from the pit and plant the tree again. Well, we were completely satisfied in choosing option ‘a’ but our ethics came in way so onwards we went with option ‘b’. We tried to remove the water from the pit chance by chance and by then we had Shasvat joining us too. We might have taken approximately 10 mins to TRY to remove the water, but whatever tactic we used, the pit was really very big and it would take us ages to remove the water. Thus we decided another stupid idea, to dig a pit of that size by ourselves; and hence Shasvat and I got to work. It was very hard and challenging for us to dig a pit of that size and to make matters worse, it was raining quite heavily, and as every second passed, we thought again and again to quit, but we were extremely dedicated to our task, and so, after some time we were able to complete digging the pit. Then it was the easy part in which we had to just place the plant the attach it to a stick, but digging up that pit was a real challenge for us and only because we worked collaboratively were we able to complete the task by ourselves.

Well, during this activity the biggest ethical considerations in our mind were that we weren’t supposed to dirty the surrounding, by throwing plastic (which were used in covering the plants) around or just leaving any tree unplanted, and I think I have tried my very best to achieve the ethical considerations. In short, this activity was amazing and I had a lot of fun in being around nature. I was also able to remove my perception that mud is gross; which I’m completely confident about as I was covered in mud the whole time and I was actually having fun.  

Taking everything into consideration, I believe that I’ve completed my goal/ambition of helping nature. I hope that I will soon be given chances now and then to complete further steps of this fantasy.

 

 

 

My friends and I participated in the French Fest which took place in International School Aamby (ISA), Amby Valley. This fest was a competition between various schools from all over India. My personal involvement in this fest was to collect data and make the presentation. I was expected to complete my research on time and update the team on time. This helped me with punctuality issues which I often struggled with. However, ISA made me realize that there is no excuse for lateness and everything I do should be on time otherwise the entire team will be at a loss. French as a subject is difficult for understanding and it had been only 7 months since we started  learning the language. This fest in whole was a very difficult task to prepare and present, but we undertook this challenge. Every school which participated in the fest were well organized and prepared for each and every activity. This really scared me because we were very less prepared against the other schools in the activity. Before the fest actually took place i used to think that the fest will be extremely easy and there will be a max of 1 or 2 school participating, to a max of 10-15 students, which will make us winning very easy.

During the fest I felt very excited about meeting students from different schools and cities and on the other hand I also felt scared because of the tight competition we will have to face during the fest. In this fest I perceived the difficulty that the students face when they have to manage an event such as this and the level of preparation they need to do before hand to entertain and inform the students and teacher from different schools.

I had hoped that I will learn many things from participating in this activity such as, understanding the language, the type of activities which can be organized for a language fest and the problems and difficulties faced by students in managing such a fest. There were times I felt that I was finding myself to be out of my comfort zone, like I prefer not to dance / participate in group activities, but I did things out of my comfort zone which made me feel very thrilled and glad.

After participating in this fest I discovered that my personal strengths are to adapt to different situations and to change my plans on the last moment successfully. The area that I need to improve is controlling mass students when I am supposed to do an activity. This fest overall was full of enjoyment for me and the others, there were many fun activities organized by the school to keep us entertaining constantly.

Teamwork and leadership was the key for our great success in the fest. It was because we work collaboratively with each other that time in ISA was fun all the time. There were competitions such the “presentation of stall” which would have been a debacle – in which we were suppose to decorate stalls and present a particular country. We also kept the ethical considerations in mind, we did not cheat at all or break and of the fest’s rule. “Win or lose, we will not cheat” was our moto in the fest.. I later on understood that, in this project I have wasted alot of resources such as paint, paper and chart paper even after many warning from ma’am, we kept on continuing with our project and wasting resources. I also think that the resources that we wasted could have been reused by other students to complete their activities. Earlier I could not easily work collaboratively with others but after doing so many group activity, I could easily work collaboratively with my team in ISA and enjoy it at most. Also, we we had not shown our commitment and perseverance in this activity we could not have achieved such good comments from the examiners and at most we could not have even completed the activity. Overall my experience in this fest was stupendous!

 

 

 

My trip to Naggar was the first trek in my life, and overall experience was terrific. Well, we did face a lot of challenges in this trip, such as the cold weather with thin air high mountain climbs which were kinda dangerous and much more, but if I keep all the problem/difficulties aside my experience in Naggar was marvelous. My initial thought for this trip was that

a)It will be very challenging – the weather conditions

b)The treks will be very dangerous

c)We had to travel on the bus for 15 hours continuously which will be extremely tiring, but the fact is all of my paradigms were proved wrong. Even in the bus, we did entertain you and the teacher did help keep busy by making us play different activities on the bus.

In Naggar, I participated in mainly all the activities except one, ‘the storytelling’ because I found it boring. I participated in all the physical activity even though we were given the choice of backing off and relax in our rooms because I knew, that the reason I came to this place was not only to enjoy with my friends but also to explore a new place. I made a lot new friends on this trip, maybe because I was able to open up that talk to everyone openly which I am not able to do in school. In the  trip, we helped each other in cleaning our rooms, in the trek and by keeping each other busy all time. In this trip I was able to make a friend circle, which I would adore for life. I also learned many things from this trip – the culture of people living in the Northern suburbs of India, the unique art of specific villages by visiting the galleries there. The visits were awesome. We were also instructed to take special care of nature as we were shocked seeing the amount of garbage and dirt in the city. We also learned that we should start to work on preserving the nature than polluting it – this was the ethical concern and global significance we noticed on this trip. In my previous trips with my family and friends I had a habit of polluting the environment around, by throwing garbage on the road, but on this trip – I made an aim that I will not pollute the environment, especially by throwing garbage on roads. This aim was proving to become a lot difficult for me initially, but after showing some commitment and perseverance, I was able to achieve this aim of mine. The trip overall was terrific and I would have regretted the decision of not being a part of this trip.    

 

 

                    

I and the other french students had planned a french cooking fest, in which we had to cook french food. This activity proved to be a tad bit (aka a lot) challenging as managing so many students in the school kitchen, where half of them don’t know how to cook or where the utensils and ingredients were kept.

During the planning, we first thought to only keep this activity between us french students, however I felt with such few students (we were only six french students), this activity will not be fun and we will not get many dishes to explore. Then we decided to invite the hindi students as well. So, each person took four to five hindi students to help us. I personally feel that I am lacking certain leadership qualities, including managing people and allocating work. This made me nervous and apprehensive as I thought thought I would screw up this activity for myself and others, but I undertook this challenge as an opportunity to improve my leaderships skills. Cooking wasn’t my expertise either. They have gotten me into some deep trouble, thus I participated a lot in this activity so I could cook something good for that day and to improve them for the days to come. On the day of the activity, we were told that the students without pants would not be allowed to participate in this activity.

After hearing this announcement, I was horribly shaken as my whole team (excluding me of course) was wearing shorts. I was feeling terrified, because I felt that I would fail without my team. I also felt that if I would mess things up, the school might not do this activity again.. I knew I was dramatization, but at that time I was seriously panicked. However, I decided to accept this challenge with a smile. Ignoring the difficulties I will have to face in future, I teamed up with Khushi Shah at the last moment and started to cook my chosen dish, which was ‘Apricot French Toast’. During the activity, I realized that I had forgotten to order the primary ingredient – milk. I was hyperventilating inside, but I pretended to be calm while scanning the kitchen for some milk. I searched up and down, left and right, high and low,  when I finally found a pack of soy milk. I didn’t actually know how to use it, but I did anyways. The amount of commitment and perseverance I need in this activity was very high, because there were many on the point changes which was considerably very shocking and difficult. 

In course of the activity, I did keep in mind the ethical considerations and the school policies while making my dish as instead of using eggs, which is against the school policies, I used unsweetened or unsalted butter. I didn’t spoil other people dishe or cheated while making mine, hence being ethical. After a lot of hard work, my dish was ready and everybody loved it. Currently, I believe that my cooking skills have developed, however my leadership qualities couldn’t be put on show as I had to work in a pair in the end.