Shooting Range—Activity
After watching the Summer Olympics, my family decided to try a new sport together. We first went to a shooting range in early August at a gymnasium in Taipei. The environment was safe as there was a coach, established safety protocols, and the guns used were air rifles with lead bullets.
Prior to actually trying out this sport, I only heard about how mentally demanding shooting is. I realized that it was also quite challenging physically. The rifle I practiced was considered light and that athletes usually add a few grams/kilograms, but I struggled to hold it still when I lift it up. There was a standard procedure athletes had to carry out, including standing side-ways and placing one hand in their pockets. I felt that the position was somewhat unnatural and the accuracy of your position dictates the path of the bullet. Since I was a beginner, the coach advised me to use both hands first and practice aiming. Aiming was the most difficult part for me. There are two points of the rifle that should align to the bottom half of the target paper. The objective, as a beginner, is to have the alignment at the same height and angle as many times as possible. Given that there were not a lot of people, concentration was not what made the aiming difficult, but it was my hands’ unsteadiness. I learned that professionals often have to train their upper body for stamina and stability.
A few weeks later when my family came back to Kaohsiung, I attended a two-hour shooting training program. This experience definitely made me more nervous with more people around. I learned from the two days of practicing this sport that each sport is unique in the different skills it requires athletes to have. I researched more into mental abilities in shooting air rifles and came across this video. It talks about the interconnectedness among all body parts and how professional athletes are able to decrease their heart rate from 60 – 100 bpm to 40 – 60 bpm. The amount of control required reminds me of taekwondo and how mental stability under high amounts of pressure is an area that I should further improve.
AIM Program—Service, Creativity
We sent out tutor applications to high schoolers on August 9th and we have since been reviewing applicants. With this CAS project, I see myself “apply interpersonal, decision-making, and problem-solving skills in real-life situations,” as stated in the handbook. In our application-reviewing process, there were two components: reading applicant’s answers to our Google Form and interviewing them.
Prior to reviewing applications, Mikayla, Ms. Tina, and I established a personal specification list to understand the different types of applicants we would like to be part of our program. This directed our approach to find qualified applicants in a fair manner. The process was much more time-consuming than I had originally imagined. Each application required careful analysis and understanding for us to make a good judgment. I learned to be neutral and observant of each applicant’s answers; these are critical thinking skills I can apply to subjects such as Literature and also in my other extracurricular activities as well. This experience was unique in that it provided me a perspective of college admissions officers. This alternative perspective was really interesting as I, as a student, am often being analyzed instead of analyzing. When I speak about a student’s top quality, I learn what I value in not only a tutor/leader, but also what I value in myself. This helped me become more open-minded in critiquing my own skills and approaches to conflicts.
To make the program more personal to Mikayla and I, I designed our logo on Procreate. I think that the final design looks much better than my first, where the letters were quite distorted. I refined the letters repeatedly and added a black outline so it would stand out more in profile pictures. The arrow adds dimension to the name and some fun aspects.
STMUN Planning—Creativity
As STMUN is nearing, admin recruits are open to KAS students! Being the Activities Coordinator of HSMUN, I made a post notifying students about this opportunity. What I found difficult when making this post was being concise and attractive. I decided to organize the information as follows for the students to understand the information efficiently. For future posts in MUN or KASPER, I want to make my own template/design from scratch to elevate my skills in design.
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