As this semester closes up to an end, I’d like to take this opportunity and look back at the various CAS experiences and projects I’ve completed over the semester and reflect on the ups and downs and all in between ❤️.

Challenges Throughout the Journey

This semester, I did a CAS experience on improving my volleyball serving skills, as well as a CAS project on filming a basketball promotional video. Each event was a bittersweet experience. For the one about volleyball, one of the biggest challenges was the insufficiency of practice time as part of the gym’s opening hours. As the volleyball practices end right as the gym is closed, I couldn’t practice on my own after practice, so I had to use class time to practice; however, it still wasn’t really effective as there are PE classes going on so the net wasn’t up. In addition, I planned to document my learning process into a video to reflect on at the end, but I couldn’t videotape the serving practices we’re given during practice time, so I could only write about my feelings after every practice, which I found to be slightly unconvincing. Nonetheless, I’m still glad that I took every opportunity possible to fulfill this CAS experience. On the other hand, for my CAS project, there was much more planning and work to do but everything went much more smoothly. This was something I’ve always wanted to do, so I poured in a lot of effort to ensure that every little detail is taken care of. The main challenge I faced was probably when I was informed that drones cannot be flown in the gym due to school policies right in the morning before when I was about to film. Fortunately, the IT Director offered an alternative solution to it and I was able to quickly carry on.

Discovery of Self and Others

Throughout this journey, I found myself to be much more capable, and most significantly, I discovered the profound impact enthusiasm and passion can have on developing one’s persistence and perseverance. I’ve never thought of myself joining the volleyball team nor filming a video. Stepping out of the comfort zone feels so refreshing – each and every step felt like an adventure. The two months I worked on serving flew by like two weeks, and the enjoyment and eagerness for improvement I felt in the process went way beyond my expectations. I could never forget the moment a lightbulb popped up in my head during the middle of the night and all the successive hours of work that went into the drawing of the storyboard in order to reproduce the image of the promotional video in my head. It was also during the production of the basketball video that made me realize how Dragons is really a big family, and how all the teachers are so willing to help students achieve to the best of their capability. Shoutout to Mr. Yanna, Coach Daniels, and Mr. Meehan 🙂

Recapping the Collaborative Experiences

Personally, I think I don’t work very well in collaborative and team experiences, as I tend to assume too many responsibilities. For example, for my CAS project, even though my partner and I distributed the tasks beforehand, I still ended up doing some of her jobs due to my insecurity that something can be messed up. I need to become more open-minded and learn that things don’t have to follow the plan perfectly.

Balance of Strands

As of so far, I think I’ve been pretty good at maintaining a balance between the three strands, part of the ease coming from the desire of wanting to try everything out. Looking back, I have completed 1 creativity-oriented activity, 2 activity-oriented activities, and 1 service-oriented activity that is still underway.

CAS and the IB Learner Profile

By encouraging us to step out of our comfort zone, CAS has definitely shaped us into reflective risk-takers. We’re always asked to consider the consequences of our actions beforehand and the impact of our actions afterhand, and that has helped us become more well-rounded citizens who are aware of their impact on the community and the world-at-large. The CAS experience I did on volleyball especially helped me become a more open-minded person as I, ironically enough, failed to achieve my goal. It has pushed me to the self-realization that all great things take time and that the acceptance of failure is sometimes a crucial element to success, especially for an ambitious person like me. Over the rest of my CAS program, I hope to become a more effective communicator as I finish off the last bits of my CAS project. Tying back to my experiences with collaborative work, I hope to be better at coordinating things and play a better part as a teammate rather than a director.