CAS October Reflection 1 (Service)

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Service

In my junior year, became president of Charity Art Club, and for the first event, we collaborated with Gin Club, together, we made 50+ hand drawn tote bags and sold all of them. Originally, we were going to donate the money to an elderly caring center 弘道老人基金會 located in Kaohsiung. However, after hearing what happened in Lebanon, we decided to donate all the profit to Lebanon as a relief fund. During our drawing sessions and club members meeting, we made a presentation that discusses more details about Lebanon and why the explosion happened.

Due to government corruption, we decided to donate the money to Lebanon Red Cross, despite the money was not much, but the we did raise awareness about the issue by allowing people to learn more information about Lebanon. I believe it was meaningful because majority of people, including me, didn’t know anything about Lebanon until the explosion, and after learning about the issue, majority of people just shared this on their social media, but barely know anything about Lebanon as a country.

Since this was my first event, I struggled a lot, I found it difficult to manage the schedule, and distribute jobs to executives, one thing I learned this time is that even if you have a plan and the schedule for the event, you need to make it even more detailed! It has to include basically everything,  I always thought leadership was easy, until I found out that there were so many problems I had to deal with, for example:

  1. it was really hard to form a plan beforehand
  2. hard to make some executives more productive
  3. hard to deal with divergence in opinions
  4. hard to distribute jobs

I was really happy because received over 30 designs and over 20 people signed up to draw the designs onto the tote bags, it showed how people were really enthusiastic about the event, which made me feel really accomplished. I learned so much in one event, so I’m looking forward to what I can learn from the following events.

Here are two of my favorite designs made by members (NOT BY ME)

Drawing sessions photos

 

 

 

CAS October Reflection 1 (Activity)

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Activity

  • Basketball
  • Continue Vertical Program
  • Basketball

I started to train for basketball last week, I decided to put my session in the morning around 5 to 6:30, this way I can play more frequently, since I will finish my school work and night, I also decided to play sport in the morning because I’m hoping it can motivate me for school and athletics, I felt really burned out in the last 3-4 weeks.

So here’s what I feel after a week of basketball practice: This week I only had three sessions because I want to slowly adapt to the schedule and perhaps increase the intensity, on the first day, I slept at 11 and woke up at 5, I felt really tired when I woke up and it took me around 20 minutes to prepare because I was really exhausted, however, I consumed some food that can be broken down quickly so I get re-energized around 20 minutes into the practice. At school, I get more motivated instead of feeling burned out other days. On the second day, I’m still really tired, I almost went back to sleep again, however, I feel way better as soon as I started playing, and I felt more productive in the morning because when I came back home, I could take a shower, make my own breakfast and prepare to go to school, this helps me to get more motivated for school. When I was training for velocity, I accidentally hurt my knee when I was measuring vertical on Wednesday (previous injury: jumper’s knee) (This time is very minor, I just need to rest for a few days), so on Thursday, I practiced shooting and dribble and condition (slow run).

 

  • Continued on my Vertical Program
    • Did more research
    • Started Training

Training reflection: I did reactive jumps, velocity training, and contrast training in the first week of October. Also in the first week (Saturday) I tried to dunk on 9’8, and my vertical decreased a lot with a basketball, I think it’s because my flexibility and coordination, my position is really awkward in mid air. And in the second week of October, I did velocity training during morning basketball session but then I hurt my knee so I stopped vertical training this week.

Current Vertical: 75 cm, I was going to measure vertical on Wednesday, but as I jumped, I felt my Patellar hurting again,  so I stopped immediately, I’m not sure how will my vertical be affected after this, so my current vertical is not very accurate since it has potential to decrease.

Vertical Program Document Research+Schedule

In the document, I mentioned that I had to test my 1RM, and it was 80 kg, 80% of 80 kg is 60kg, meaning I will be using 60kg to do squat, and after 2 minutes, I will do plyometrics. This is my 60kg squat:

 

 

CAS: Increasing Vertical Program

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I have initiated my first CAS Experience last week, which is to increase my vertical jump through customizing my own workout plan, I’m currently working on my Investigation Document and Planning, this Investigation document includes my goals, my research, as well as the safety evaluations, I will also be recording my jumping data on this document. Throughout my research, I worked with my Gym Coach, who is verified with various certificate, he taught me some basic information about Vertical Training, Throughout my research, I realized that Training for Vertical and Normal Weight Training are very different, for example, vertical is very dependent on speed and muscle strength, however, often time, normal weight training only increases the strength, but ignored the speed, in order to make my jump more explosive, what I need to do is to also train for speed, such as squat jump, which requires faster contractions of the muscle groups. My research gave me a better direction on how I should plan for my workout schedule, now I know I need to train for these two areas, next I need to learn how to schedule these two things without conflicting each other.

I measured my first Vertical Jump this week, I reached to 311 cm, and my standing reach is 234, which means my max vertical is around 76-77 cm (30 inches). I’m planning to finish Investigation phase by this week (September, 20) and Start Training on Monday (September 21, 2020)

Anderson’s CAS profile

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My name is Anderson Chen, and I am currently a junior studying at Kaohsiung American School based in Taiwan. I’m looking forward to the following year, because I’m given the opportunity to focus on what I love to do!

Thanks to my parent, the CAS strands (Creativity, Activity, Service) were well modeled in my youth, they always support my passion, I remember saying I wanted to play in Argentina National Soccer Team when I was 10 so my mom found a former Chinese National Team member to coach our soccer team. I’m really grateful for what they’ve done to build my strengths today, I’ve still got a lot to share, so here’s some of my experiences that built my CAS profile:

Creativity

I started drawing when I was really young, my grandparents were my art teachers, when I was in elementary school, my grandpa bought my a comic book, it was the comic book that got me into drawing, and slowly, I approached more variety of arts such as digital art, collage, photography.etc

Besides drawings, I also love Filming and Editing, I discovered this interest in 8th grade, and filmed my first video in 10th grade, this was a video about Elderly Population in Taiwan. I have improved throughout this summer so I will be producing better content in my CAS project!

Activity

My foundation was climbing trees when I was a 1st grader, it took me a long long time to achieve that but I never gave up because I was trying to impress people. This dedication is really what I need today in any activity! The first sport I ever played first was soccer, I joined soccer team in 1st grade in China, joined Tainan Eagles in 6th grade, and joined KAS Varsity in 9th grade, but I have stopped playing because I  always liked Basketball more. I started playing basketball in 6th grade, I made Basketball JV in 9th grade and 10th grade, but that was not really what I wanted. My goal this year is to make Varsity this year, and also, dunk!

Every summer since 8th grade, I would participate summer camps in Washington State and Oregon State, I got involved in many adventurous activities, they were the most memorable moments so far!

 

Service

Thanks to the education in KAS, I gradually became a global citizen and a person who knows how to contribute to his community, throughout my years in KAS, I learned multiple perspectives about global issues or community-based problems, clubs, classes taught me ways to raise awareness and help out the community. Last year, I was filming videos raising awareness about elderly population in Taiwan, and this year, I’ve contacted a social volunteer who has participated in many charity events, my goal is to make a documentary about her and the organizations she visited such as drug control center or jail.

At KAS, I also learned how to use my skills to contribute to the society, for example, as a former Charity Art Club member, I sold my own sticker designs and donated to proceedings to Charity organizations that needed our help. This year, I will be the New president of CAC, and I’m collaborating with Gin Club (environmental club) and 弘道老人基金會 (Elderly Population Organization), I’m aiming to raise awareness about few current issues through Artwork creations.

 

Connecting Films with Real World

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In this unit, we focused on analyzing films, we were trying to discover how each cinematic elements created different effects to the movie, and the impact it gives to the audience. At first, we started the unit by analyzing texts, such as Tim Burton interview, Scarlet Ibis story.etc, to get us “in shape” for the summative later on. Then we analyzed Edward Scissorhands, at first, I felt like the movie was only a really lame story, but then I found out that the cinematic techniques and the messages it conveyed was really meaningful. I analyzed The Sound of Music for my summative, I really loved the movie, so during the process of taking film notes and interpreting its meanings, I didn’t feel really stressful.

I Believe This Unit Was Fun

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In this unit, we got a chance to express ourselves, and our beliefs. We analyzed I believe essays, wrote a lot of freewrites about ourselves, a final I believe essay and a video about the essay. Although this unit was challenging and time-consuming to finish the projects, I still found it really fun and exciting, because it linked with my interest, which is drawing and editing, so I didn’t feel tired to make the video.

 

Risk-Taking

Unexpected Happiness comes from an Unexpected Summer

Unit Reflection

Behind The Hela Cells

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In this unit, we have been exploring different global issues through The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. We focused on medical ethics, racial discrimination, religion, justice, and power. It has been an interesting unit, we took an in-depth look at issues happened in history and could link back to today’s society. Many topics we discussed also had connections to topics we were learning in other subjects- the issue of medical ethics was connected to our psychology social experiment, the topic of racial discrimination was connected to our history class.

Discussion

TIEA How does skloot use sympathy or empathy to develop an argument?

Blogpost

Trust

Unsung Heroes

Verbal Analysis

Unit Reflection

 

Trust

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The age and language barrier between my dad and mom has caused a lot of problems for us, and it is still a major problem. My dad has been a “cold” person on his outside, but he loves every one of us inside his heart, but the problem is, his coldness causes a lot of arguments and fights in the family since it is often misunderstood. He’s a very stubborn guy, so he doesn’t like it when other people tell him to say sorry or to change, and I believe this is because his parents raised him under traditional Japanese culture, in which men should be the backbone of the family, and men should be more powerful than women. A few years ago, my mom, who’s also a very determined woman, decided to start her own business, my dad gave full support until my dad’s business went downhill, and my mom’s “surpassed” his. He never said it but I could understand that he felt “ashamed”, because he wanted to keep his dignity. Well, my mom didn’t understand, as she became more successful, she started to instruct my dad what to do in to save his business, and of course, my dad was triggered. So they were pretty much-having arguments every week, it eventually caused distrust between the two, they even accused each other of a lot of shaming things that never happened. As kids, my sister and I played the silent role, because we could never build a bridge between the two, every time we tried to stop the fight, my dad would be more triggered, and started to fight me, and my mom would blame me for making the fight more intense. But as time passes, their relationship is getting better and better, my dad would try to be less cold, and my mom would be less commanding.
Trust

I believe the story of my family is related to the relationship between Rebecca Skloot and Deborah in the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because distrust played a very important role in both stories. In the story, since Rebecca Skloot is white, and Deborah has experienced a lot of unfortunate things that were involved with white people. She felt threatened all the time, even after they became friends. She would still doubt Rebecca Skloot for working for the other “white people”, and the distrust between the characters eventually led to a big fight. But they eventually get back together because they’re sharing the same goal, which is to reveal everything about Henrietta Lacks. Trust is a very important factor in any relationship, a lot of times, what led to a break up between friends or couples is when one unconsciously shows a little distrust to another.

Image result for rebecca skloot and deborah lacks

The Unsung Heroes

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In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Doctor George Gey sacrificed Henrietta’s privacy to gain success, he removed her tumor cells without her consent and sold it worldwide, which could grow infinitely, meaning scientists no longer had to do experiments on living things, which solved a lot of ethical problems, taking the development of science to the next level. Ironically, what’s unethical about this story was that George Gey and “his HeLa cells” became well-known names across the world, while Henrietta Lacks, the contributor of the HeLa cells, was ignored.

“Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory” (Skloot, 42).

Henrietta became an unsung hero, what’s worse was that her family didn’t receive any benefits from her cells, it even took her children 2 decades to figure out exactly what happened to their mother.

The story of Henrietta Lacks reminds me of another unsung hero, Joseph Swan, the person who invented the Light bulb before Thomas Edison, Swan debuted his preliminary light bulb 8 months before Edison, but Edison improved on the light bulb, in which he eventually got all the credits. This is just light George Gey making HeLa cells useful but stole the credits and attention from the contributor. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to improve on someone else’s idea, but getting all the credits for it makes it very unfair for the people who contributed to the success of something.