We’re now halfway done with IB!!! With summer around the corner, I’d like to take some time to reflect on the past year as well as set some goals for the future.

a little recap

The second semester of junior year has been a particularly busy year with all kinds of internal and external assessments hitting us in our faces. The COVID-19 pandemic further added to that stress with the lack of a school routine. Regardless, these challenges trained me into a more self-disciplined learner, and it made me cherish and grasp each and every opportunity to act on CAS. I ended up documenting more diverse activities compared to semester 1! A lot of them were completely new to me, such as inkblot painting, the dancing challenge, class plank competition, cranes-folding service project, and a lot of others. In short, this semester for CAS has truly been fruitful and unique – marked by stepping out of comfort zones, exploring new skills, and developing areas for growth.

challenges faced

Aside from the more literal challenges I faced in each particular CAS experience, my biggest challenge as a whole was opening myself up and convincing myself that it’s okay to not be perfect. It’s okay that the surprise birthday cake doesn’t look as good as it appears on the menu; it’s okay that the long-awaited varsity basketball promotional video doesn’t turn out exactly as intended, and it’s totally fine that the ACAMIS bingo poster doesn’t look as aesthetic as it can be… They’re all part of a learning process, and learning to be flexible and adapt accordingly is definitely a valuable skill in life. It was also in this learning process that I realized that the tangible products (such as the cake, the video, the poster itself, etc.) aren’t the only results of each CAS experience. I found myself achieving various learning outcomes that turned me into a more thoughtful and well-rounded individual. For example, the inkblot experience where I painted an inkblot made me learn to go with the flow and seek creative solutions to tackle a new problem. This new skill that I have developed is further manifested in my dancing experience, where I found unexpected joy doing unfamiliar activities that challenged my body coordination and learned to open myself up to more unfamiliar experiences that I usually refuse doing because I’m not good at it. One learning outcome that I hope I can achieve next year or at least explore more about is Learning Outcome 7 – recognizing the ethics of choices and actions. While carrying out service-oriented experiences or projects, I hope that I can consider multiple perspectives more and recognize the consequences of one’s choices and actions can have on others and the community. For example, if I were to organize a beach cleaning on behalf of Red Cross Club, I hope that I can incorporate more perspectives in my reflection, such as the perspectives of those who litter, the possible reasoning behind them and the impact of it on the wildlife, the perspectives of the local residents, and the perspectives of the local authorities, the reasoning behind their intervention or the lack of it and its consequences on the associated parties. By doing this, I believe that I can also become more involved in global issues.

balance between C.A.S

As you can tell, so far my CAS experiences have had a pretty heavy emphasis on the creativity portion of CAS… part of the reason being that it’s a field that I’m especially unfamiliar with, and I constantly try to push myself more to do new things. However, most of the creative acts take up relatively less time compared to the active or service acts, in which they kind of balance out. The creative acts take up at most about a day to complete, but some of my active and service acts can take up to months as it is a continual process that requires multiple steps until results can be felt and shown (for example, it’s unideal to learn how to serve a volleyball or fold hundreds of cranes in a day). Regardless, it’s true that I would need to incorporate more activity and service-oriented activities in the upcoming year. I already have some experiences planned and waiting to be documented over the summer, such as a dental internship program and my ongoing summer workout plan. Hopefully, these can make up for the lack of balance that is evident in my current CAS Venn diagram shown above.