CAS Essay
The activity that first comes to my mind when I think of my two-year journey in CAS is Learning camps. This activity really stood out for me because of my personal engagement and attachment with the issue of education and equality that was practiced in that activity. I feel proud that I initiated that with a few of my other friends and remained committed to it for a very long time despite the fact that my CAS ‘project’ was already over. This activity reflected my learnings of all other activities. It showcased the patience I built, the hard work I put in, the compassion with which I looked at the world and the very concept that if you just start somewhere, your destination will come walking your way.
In the heart of the PYP comes the learner profile, and in the heart of the IB comes CAS. No wonder that CAS enabled me to be open-minded, to be a better communicator, to be a thoughtful thinker and of course, how could anyone pass CAS without being a little reflective? CAS is an experience that brings out all the learner profile attributes in you and forces you to practice them, in order to attain a certain level of success. Over the two years, the growth in me which could be measured and tested with the learner profiles has tremendously helped me to not only be a better learner, student, daughter or sister; but an actually better human and a better global citizen. CAS teaches you the art to interact, understand and respond to the world outside in a balanced and thoughtful way.
A way in which CAS actually does that is through the difficulties it throws you way in forms of ‘Learning outcomes’. One such difficult learning outcome for me was LO4 which reads : “how perseverance and commitment in CAS experience”. Ironically, this is my LO with one of the highest points. However, commitment to one particular thing for a decent amount of time was a great challenge to me in the start of 11th grade. I am someone who likes trying and doing new things now and then. Taking up projects has always been the easy part, but sticking to it has been a challenge. One of the reasons of why I absolutely love CAS, which I would like to mention here is that you actually get points to do this kind of crazy stuff and all these fascinating activities. Usually, students of different schools struggle to take out time for their physical emotional and spiritual well-being whereas CAS here makes it mandatory to actually take a productive break from IBDP and renew ourselves and maintain our flavors! Having said that, I don’t know if I need to specifically mention that I would love to take this forward and help others and make this world a better place because let’s be honest here. CAS isn’t just an IB requirement, it’s an escape to reality. A reality that teaches you and guides you and lets you be your human self. So I might not call it CAS when I go to uni or sometime later in my life, but these learnings and these experiences have surely just begun!