CAS 2017

Hi 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”.

I 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.

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.

I 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 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.