Tennis: SSC open grade 'A' tennis tournament

On Saturday the 18th, My doubles partner Hemaka and I played our qualifier match for the semi-finals. This gave me the chance to work collaboratively with Hemaka. I have successfully been able to address one of my CAS goals which was to take part in three tournaments, so this makes it 1 out of 3 so far.
We were up against some very skilled players as we had expected. Of course, we did not expect to win against them because the amount of time and practice they put in to the sport is much much greater than we put in to it. Yet we showed perseverance and commitment to the match and improving our techniques as we played. We did lose heavily unfortunately-although coming very close at certain points such as having three deuces  in the first three games. Since this was my first ever tournament, I was under a lot of pressure and while playing, I could see myself making very stupid mistakes that I usually do not do when playing matches with students from my tennis lessons and I also saw my partner not performing his very best either. However, the important thing is that we gave it a shot, we hit the ball hard, served to the spot most of the time and at the end of the day of course, the better team won. The two players we were up against even gave us some pointers after the match to do better in the next one, this was very helpful and so I really tried to take as much of their knowledge as I can so I can use them in my next tournament/match.

What I learnt:
So over all, this was merely my chance at experiencing some real world tennis first hand and challenging my self to take on the pressure. As this was my first tournament, I was very nervous during the match and as I said before, I did not perform the best that I could. However, as we played on the pressure slowly began to fade away and I started to feel a lot more comfortable with the environment. This increased my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth, both in my physical skill and mental capability for improvement. I feel that this is a great achievement for me because I am now able to put aside my fears of all the eyes looking down at me and taking on competitors who I have never met before. Though we lost very badly, We kept our heads up high and soon, even began to laugh about the whole thing. I hope to continue showing dedication to the sport and to always show sportsmanship during a competition.

The tennis court at SSC, as seen from the balcony

Reflection on Grade 11

I joined OSC at the beginning of this year through the scholarship program. This was a huge transition for me because in my previous school, education wasn't as free and very open-minded as it is in OSC and in the IB Diploma program. At the start, I barely had any clue as to what CAS or even TOK encompassed and I had a hard time trying to come up with CAS goals, writing up blogs etc. However, after about 2 months or so, I finally began to understand what CAS really asks from its diploma students.

CAS is about pushing the IB student to take part in activities that help both the student to grow as an active human being, as well as doing an activity that provides a service to the community we live in. Service allows to us to take in to consideration the different religions, the different races as well as the different communities that are in our world and to get an understanding as to how they live their day to day lives; these aspects help us to get out of that bubble we live in and to really see how those that are under privileged than us are living their own. Of course, if the service one takes part in is directed towards the environment, they will be able to understand the natural environment that surrounds us and why it is so important that we must do our best to preserve it. Since I was took part in both 'Recycling and Sustainability' as well as 'SOS Orphanage', I had the opportunity to experience both these learning outcomes.

Action allows us to bring out that animal inside of us! In most other high school education programs, the action aspect is almost completely forgotten and they would focus solely on the academic aspect of education instead. I feel that this would only make us very lazy human beings. Sports or any other action activity such as Dance is something anyone can enjoy and something anyone will enjoy if they remember to give their 100% to the activity that they are even mildly interested in; for me this is tennis, which I have shown interest in over 5 years now. I really like to play tennis because it not only allows my body to push itself to undertake a particular challenge but also. my mind as well. I would never give up tennis for anything, ever because it is simply an amazing feeling to win a match or to know that I gave my 100% to at least make it a good match if I lost. Over this year only, I've been able to refine a lot of my strokes, such that to making me feel confident enough to actually take part in a tennis tournament that will be happening over these few weeks.

Finally, Creativity. Being a very math and science oriented person, I would say that I thoroughly lack the creative side of me. I am definitely not a very artistic person which I learnt through my time in art class over the past few years and so I decided to simply stop it. However this year, with the introduction of IB and CAS, I thought I would try to improve the creative side of me which I know is there within me somewhere! but, through a different medium which is music. Music is something I love and I know that I would actually work hard towards learning music as well as possible if I was to actually do it. That is why I started learning how to play Drums; which has been both very difficult to do as well as really fun to do. As I have said in my previous posts, this learning process is quite slow for me. Nevertheless, I am improving my drum skills even if it is at a relatively slow process. So, I hope to improve on this and hopefully be able to grasp beats much more easily and quickly in the coming future.

Overall, CAS is about doing something important or worth while that could really encourage us to work hard on getting these activities done and in my opinion; I would say that CAS is that one thing, that separates an IB student from any other student and would love to continue doing CAS more and more in the coming year.

Tennis: SSC open grade 'A' tennis tournament

The Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) is holding a tennis tournament open to anyone who wants to take part in it at the SSC tennis courts. The Junior divisions (ages 8-18) began its qualifying rounds on the 6th of May for players taking part in the Singles matches. I will be taking part in the Doubles matches which will begin later on next week (the schedule is made the day before the matches for the day that follows so I would need to check in with the official website for m matches).

This would be a great opportunity for me to address some of my CAS goals, which is to take part in a tournament as well as try to gain some kind of position in the podium. Since I am taking part in a doubles tournament, this gives me the chance to work collaboratively with others, undertake a completely new challenge, and show perseverance and commitment to try my best at the tournament.

tournament schedule and other info can be found in this link: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/event.aspx?id=5F193CA1-E3D5-4E35-84B8-FF35350E5C4B&event=10

New Community and Service activity: SOS Orphanage

At the start of this new semester, I decided to change my CAS activity from Recycling and Sustainability to SOS Orphanage. The reason I switched was because; since Recycling was based on service to the Environment, I wanted to try out an activity program that provides service in the Human aspect. This change would allow me to increase the awareness of my strengths and areas for growth, since I would be seeing how I would cope in a different environment entirely.

In SOS Orphanage, we bring the kids from an orphanage and we basically try to teach them various skills such as; Swimming (which takes up the majority of the time spend in Service sessions), English and also teach them about different countries, in order to give them a global perspective and to actually give them an insight as to what is out there, since these kids have never had the opportunity to travel to other countries like we have. I try to plan and initiate activities during the group sessions, such as by making sure teach them new words on one day, and maybe grammar the next. Because there are a large number of kids who come here; we are divided in to separate groups consisting of at least one of us from OSC and two of the kids from the orphanage. This way, we have the chance to get to know them better and teach them much more easily and effectively as opposed to teaching them all together at once. Fortunately in my group, I have a partner, Hyung Suk, to help me in teaching the kids. I am given the opportunity to work collaboratively with him, in order to teach them effectively. My group consists of Me, Hyung Suk (from OSC), Sandaruwan and Madu.

During SOS sessions, we are meant to stay with our assigned kids from the time they arrive to the moment we get in to the pool; in the pool we are to attend to all the kids due to safety reasons. Hyung Suk and I teach them English through ways they like to learn, and this is through drawings. I have asked them draw a picture of their liking and then after that, label all the objects that are seen in the picture in English. Since I can also speak Sinhala like them, I am able to teach them English words quite easily.

After this, we go down to the pool area where we teach the kids some basic swimming techniques. We try to teach them to be confident to take on the open water, as well as assure that they learn all the techniques needed for swimming as well.

I feel that I have made a good decision by joining this CAS activity because it is something that tries to educate under-privileged kids in an international community, we teach them things that are outside Sri lanka and also where our country is in our world. Kids being orphaned is an issue of global importance, and being able to work, teach and simply have fun with them in the pool would surely mean a lot to them, since they are not given as many opportunities as we do.

me (on the left) helping out one of the kids to swim

group photo of the OSC students in SOS