AT THE FINISH LINE

It has been one year since I started my IB Diploma Programme, one of the hardest periods of time in my life for sure. In the beginning of the first semester I’ve created a list of the goals to achieve in the upcoming year. The most important of them were to improve my language skills, to learn how to play group sports, to become self-confident, to become more sociable and to improve my time management skills. After looking at my older posts I was very happy to see that I achieved most of the goals I’ve posed before. All of the activities I have done during the two semesters of grade 11 eventually refer to 8 IB learning outcomes which are awareness, challenge, initiative, collaboration, commitment, global value, ethics and new skills. Therefore, I would like to sum up my progress and outline my achievements and development through the prism of these learning outcomes.

To begin with, I would say that the prevailing part of my CAS hours was action. During this year I tried myself in three sports including volleyball, basketball and football. I succeeded in two of these sports and made the team to participate in SAISA tournaments abroad. More exactly, I went to the American School in Bombay as a member of volleyball girls’ team and I was also a member of a girls’ football team even though I couldn’t travel to American International School in Dhaka to take part in Girls’ SAISA Football Tournament 2015. I have never had that intense trainings with such a serious and professional attitude. This way, I gained experiences and new skills in these group sports.  In my opinion, the most important aspects of the group types of sport are collaboration and commitment of the members of the team. Each player must be passionate about what she is doing and communicate well with the other players to succeed as a team. That is why OSC teams were either the leaders or the runner-ups this year. I was proud to be the part of those united and spirited teams. Taking into consideration that I have never actually practiced these sports before and I didn’t have any initial skills, it was sort of a challenge for me to improve during such a short period of time (2-3 months per season). The most challenging for me was basketball. This sport required perfect athletic preparation, dedication and awareness. During the basketball sessions we were taught various (absolutely new for me) techniques and strategies which could not be mastered quickly. Although I was athletically quite strong I didn’t know how to manipulate and direct my power. Moreover, I lacked accuracy when I was shoting the ball. Despite I couldn’t make the basketball team this year I noticed some considerable improvements in my play and fitness.

The second important part of CAS was creativity. Music was the major part of the creative side of my identity. I do love singing, playing musical instruments and gaining any new experiences and skills regarding music. This year I was a part of the girls’ Vocal a capella group and the rock band called The Sweet Chains. I improved my vocal and performing skills. I learned how to deal with stress in front of the big audience, how to harmonize when singing in the large group and how to deal with unexpected situations. Both singing in the small band or big vocal group required initiative and collaboration. All of the members in the collective must listen to each other in order to sound beautifully. As regards initiative, every member of the group should be ambitious and confident about saying his/her preferences or suggestions to choose the right song to perform considering all the abilities and weaknesses of the group in order to make the performance perfect. Moreover, since December I started attending guitar classes. I have done a significant progress after a few months of constant practices. Generally speaking, I can play the guitar now. I am planning to continue practicing and mastering my guitar skills. Besides the music events I was also involved in the Gecko Event Crew during the Girls’ Basketball Tournament 2015. I was taking and editing pictures of the games. That was really exciting! I was a part of a group of responsible professionals from the event crew. This experience was very useful for my photography skills.

Finally, another part of the CAS model is service. Service introduces an outcome – global value, as our service group was cooperating with international organization known as SOS Village. SOS Village was founded in Austria after the World War II to help children who were left orphans. Since then SOS Village became worldwide. We were the part of Sri Lankan community. Once a week we were spending time with children from the SOS Village. In general, we were teaching them how to swim, we were practicing English with them and we taught them how to operate with the computers. This was very important experience for me as I never tried myself as a mentor and I never worked with orphans.

The separate crucial part of CAS was Week Without Walls. This event included all of the three aspects of CAS – action, creativity and service. I was on the cycling trip to Arugam Bay and Ella. Overall, we cycled about 201 km; on our way we did service in the local Tamil school; we were repairing bicycles of the children from that school; creativity was a very important component of our trip; for, example one day we were given a task to cook the launch for everybody including adults which required collaborative work and imagination.

This year was productive and interesting regarding my learning and self-development. Next year, I am looking forward gaining even more new skills. I still have a lot of things to work on.