Category: Grade 12 Sangfroid

“Life begins, at the end of your comfort zone”

This has been my principle throughout my life.

I am Priyam Joshi and I grew up in a convent school, but when I was in the 11th grade, I decided to take up a challenge, get out of my comfort zone and shift to an international baccalaureate school.
And just as the quote says, that was when my life truly began.

The opportunities that were provided to me, led me to discovering my true self.
I found my favourite hobbies like singing, acting, hosting merely by trying something new.
Meanwhile, I could also develop my existing skills like playing guitar, MUNning and debating by making use of the excellent resources that were provided to me.
But the most important thing that I found was my passion – raising mental health awareness! As a part of CAS, I conducted an event to provide opportunities for differently-abled children and raise awareness about developmental disabilities. While it was a just a one day event, organising and executing it truly impacted me, I was inspired to make my own start-up called “Make a difference” which continues to work for such endeavours!
This project definitely affirmed by ambition and inclination of being a psychologist!

Other than psychology, I have several other interests, out of which travelling and different forms of art battle for my priority. Having grown up in a family of artists, my childhood was filled with drawing sessions, road trips to heritage sights, pottery workshops and glitter-tainted hands. Consequently, I have fallen in love with exploring new places, and different art forms.
I have also peddled in classical music and dance, and to this day, still enjoy every bit of it!

However, the most I have travelled in through books! My love for reading has been catalysed through exposure to new people, MUNs, IB subjects etc. I have lived multiple lives, travelled to infinities and had amazing experiences just through these books.

As I begin a new chapter of college next year, I aspire to raise mental health awareness and contribute to the field of psychology. I hope to continue finding new passions, and living life with a positive outlook while always being ready to try new things!

I am confident that wherever I go, whatever I do, I will put myself further out of my comfort zone to live the true essence of a magical life.

I shifted from a Gujarat Board school to pursue the IB Diploma in the 11th grade. One of the most intriguing and interesting parts of the Diploma was the “CAS” component. Ever since I was a little child, I was always involved in some form of curricular activities everyday, so doing it as a part of a school curriculum seemed exciting.

I began my CAS journey by participating in activities that I was used to… like singing, debating, MUNning. I had a lot of fun developing my skills in these. I was exposed to new kinds of competitions where I had to use my skills, and identified areas where I could improve even more.

But as I moved on, CAS helped me get involved in things that were out of my comfort zone. I participated in sports, and activities which involved physical exertion. I learnt the importance of physical activity in maintaining my health, and also had new experiences of doing yoga, going for runs etc.

I also experienced the amazing joy of winning a team sport – Kabbadi! The feeling of unity and pride shared with your team-mates is a feeling which everyone should experience atleast once in their lifetime.

Additionally, CAS also gave me a chance to make the lives of other people better. I participated in various volunteering and tutoring, activities, book drives, plantation activities and other forms of community service which made me reflect on how privileged I am with the opportunities that I have been given. I also realized my duties as a responsible citizen of my country.

Apart from learning, CAS gave me an opportunity to become closer to my new classmates, I went on trips with them where I shared stories, clicked pictures, trekked, and had a lot of fun with my new friends in naggar! This trip made me get a lot of new friends, and create some fantabulous memories for life.

One of the most important things that CAS exposed me to were activities which made me realize my passion. The highlight of my CAS journey was my project called “Make a difference” where we organized events for differently-abled children. Through this activity, I gained insight into the problems faced by people with developmental disabilities and learnt techniques to make this situation better. I found my passion for working to raise mental health awareness!

Through this journey, I have grown tremendously as a person. The best part about this was that I learnt to do everything ethically. When I started, I was scared to try new things or to lead, but as time went on, I became a leader and faced challenges, learnt how to deal with failures, developed my skills in various areas like music, speaking, cooking, tried a lot of new things like kabbadi and in the end, created memories and friends for life!

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“Challenges are what makes life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful”

Inspired by this quote, I decided to take up a big challenge as a new years resolution –> to swim everyday for an hour!

I am not a very athletic or active person, and would rather curl up in my bed and read a good book in winter than go and swim in the chilly water, however, I was determined to conquer this challenge and become fit.

I already knew the basics of swimming but started training under my coach, who was very strict about the methods of swimming and made me work very hard every single day. In the initial few days, I would come home very exhausted and drained and would sleep immediately…and in the mornings, my entire body would ache, additionally, it took me a lot of efforts and pushing from my mom to get the willpower to wear a swimming costume in the cold weather. I was very close to giving up, but since I had promised myself to try this activity for at-least 30 days, I continued going and stayed committed.

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With time and practice, my strength started increasing and I would not feel so tired, soon, I would actually look forward to my swimming lessons. My coach taught me a lot of new styles like butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and so on, he also taught me breathing exercises. In this manner, I learnt a lot of new skills as well.

However, I realized that I needed to work on my stamina and also improve my sense of commitment as I would skip classes on some days, I also had to increase my strength for enduring cold and had to remove my habit of being lethargic. There were certain ethical considerations which I had to keep in mind, like making sure that I did not dirty the swimming pool and the locker rooms as they were public property.

Overall, I am glad that I took up this new years resolution and found a love for swimming and water! I also took part in a competition in the summer and have noticed an increase in my stamina, however, this activity also highlighted some aspects of me where I can improve.

A large part of our country’s population consists of farmers. Farmers are one of the most hard working kind of people, and I got a little taste of this tremendous hard work through this plantation and farming activity organized by our school.

This activity took place in Janki Van in early july, and being a new student, I was very anxious to go on this trip because I was not a very active person so I was worried if I would be able to the hard work and also, because I didn’t have a lot of friends yet as I was a new student. However, I decided to take up this new challenge of planting and getting dirty in the mud with new people! And it is safe to say that I did not regret it.

When we arrived to the beautiful Janki Van, we were first shown and instructed about how to plant the saplings, how to get the mud and ground ready for the plantation, how to dig etc… all these things looked very easy but when we started doing them I realised how difficult they were.

While digging and planting at first, we were all very confused and bored, a few hours went by, and despite all our hard work, we were very slow and felt exhausted in the heat. Then we came up with the solution to divide the work according to our strengths, the people who were good at digging, started doing that and the people who were good at planting and getting the mud ready started doing that, so with this sort of team work, our working-speed increased.

After a few hours, even when we were very tired, we stayed committed and we continued working until we had finished planting all the saplings and all the work assigned to us, by mid afternoon, our hands and legs were aching but we did not stop working. After all of this work, we went to a river and relaxed there and had fun.

At the end of the day, I was very exhausted, and realized that I needed to get more active and increase my stamina for physical exertion. I also realized the importance of team efforts in getting a job done and also ended up making new friends in the process. I had to be ethically mindful as I needed to stay committed to my promise of getting the work done and doing it properly while using proper methods so that I did not waste the resources of Janki Van, I also had to be mindful that I did my efforts as a team worker and did not just laze around and let everyone else do the work.

One of the most important lessons I learnt was that of the hard work that our farmers do, I got tired in just one day of a small plantation activity but my sense of gratitude for the farmers of our country grew immensely. I felt a new found respect for them, and also vowed to never waste food as a lot of effort has gone into growing the food and grains.

Another lesson I learnt was the importance of growing plants in saving our earth, while farming is hard work, I learnt a new skill of plantations and realized that if we all knew the basics of planting small saplings, we could do our own bit to save the world from global warming.