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.
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