My CAS program as whole accomplished many small experiences, but they’ve gathered to contribute a great impact to me as an IB learner.
By writing the CAS blog posts every two weeks, It has built me the habit to look back what I’ve done regularly. In the reflective blog posts, I was able to determine what my goal is through an experience, my plan to achieve it, the strengths and weakness of my plan, and my next steps. For instance, I had made myself a small goal to go to the gym three times a week. I was able to examine my schedule and determine what to do would be the best for me. Although I faced some difficulties when time became a pressure to me, I adjusted the plan by separating the time of class-day and exercise-day, to improve my energy level while exercising. That was when I was able to identify the changes I need to make by pointing out what was effective and what needed to be altered in the blog posts. I had the opportunity to take a step back each time, see myself in a broader term, then improve specific areas, in which those steps helped to examine my learning on my own.
Moreover, I think the CAS program has made me an inquirer. In my opinion, the CAS program has pushed me to think about different things I can do every week or every month. That way it has inspired me to step out of my comfort zone and to try something new. In addition, the CAS strands: Creativity, Activity, and Service, have achieved that as well. For instance, at the beginning of the program, I realized that the experiences that I could think of were mostly focusing on the creativity strands, such as arts, culinary arts, photography, drawing, and painting. Then I was trying to balance activity and service strands. Activity was the one that I struggle the most. Especially exercise to me is a long term goal that I would like to continue even after the IB curriculum. I have always wanted to improve that and the CAS experience just became the final reason that pushed me to do so. Then, I was able to see myself endure new challenges. I learned new knowledge and skills about body-building, which was a field that I am unfamiliar with. After the experience, I am still improving my knowledge on it by constantly filling myself with the professional knowledge on the internet about nutrition and exercising. In the end, I am really happy to see my personal growth and change.
One of the recent highlights that I did for CAS experience was doing meditation for the current COVID crisis. This experience has contributed to multiple IB learner traits including being knowledgeable, caring, reflective, thinkers, and open-minded. In addition, I found this experience most emotionally impactful because I have never thought about this issue in depth. Before lockdown, I was seeing the world going through the issue like an outsider because the confirmed cases in Taiwan has been very few and stable for the past year. Then the number suddenly went up recently, making the atmosphere in the community very intense. I came to understand the ones who lost their relatives in the U.S., Europe, or other parts of the world. Moreover, I began to catch up more constantly with the latest news and updating knowledge related to this new virus. By doing this experience, I was able to sit down and think calmly and rationally as an individual of the global and Taiwanese community, and asking myself: what is my role, what can I do, who can I influence? I came to understand the importance of each of us participating and contributing to solving a global issue.