After two years of new experiences, taking part in a variety of different activities and working together with my fellow IB peers, it has finally arrived to this: The final post...
As I have said previously in my older posts, The International Baccalaureate programme was whole new experience to me. The IB is far different from any of the other international syllabi I have done in the past and one of these differences is CAS. CAS has truly changed me as student and as well as a person. If someone were to tell me that I should do an after school activity, I would probably choose a couple of sports like Cricket and Tennis and be done with it. However, CAS made me challenge myself. It required me to do activities that involve Creativity, Action and Service. I have barely ever taken part creative or community service related activities in the past so this was a real challenge for me because I needed to go outside my comfort zone. I can honestly say I am glad I did so because I've been able to see so much more potential in me that is not just in the Action category. It was exciting to do activities that fall in to three different categories and so I really tried to give my best effort in each of them. I continued to play Tennis as always and then later joined SAISA Badminton in grade 12. But I also took part in two community service activities; Recycling and Sustainability, and SOS Orphanage, and two creative activities; Drums and a leadership role in Cricket. I have become two things I never thought I would be; a musician and a leader!
Since I have already made a final reflection on Service, I will only reflect on Creativity and Action in this post. Initially for Creativity, I started to learn how to play drums in the beginning of grade 11. The first few lessons were exciting and strange at the same time. I'm used to seeing drummers on YouTube who would rock out and play amazing drum solos! However in my first lessons, I wasn't doing anything even close to what I consider drumming. However, as the lessons progressed I realized that the beats were actually starting to come together. More lessons passed and I was beginning to play all kinds of beats such as the Rock beat, Punk, Waltz, Cha-Cha, Mumba, "Funky Town", Baila, Oriental and so on. I had developed a new skill and that was drumming. Recently, I even started to learn how to read sheet music; another new skill. It was in drums that I learnt the importance of patience as well as perseverance. If had lost interest and quit in the first few lessons then I would not be here today trying to play along to some of my favorite AC/DC and Nirvana songs. I showed great deals of perseverance and commitment to see that I would carry on playing drums for the remaining two years. In Cricket, I did my first ever leadership role along with my co-leaders, Shwetank and Shubanshu. This was a fun new experience for me because I learnt to plan and initiate activities for each Cricket session and take part in the sport as well. Every lesson, I grew as a leader and I was seeing my true potential for the first time.
Going to my Service activities was something I really loved doing and looked forward to every week. In grade 11, I took part in my first service activity which was Recycling and Sustainability. In this activity, we went around the school collecting paper from all the recycling boxes in each room and then took it down to the recycling place to sell it. It was fairly simple task but it was a great community service at the same time. Unlike most of the other service activities in OSC where service was provided to people, Recycling provided a service to the environment. In Recycling, I was directly engaging with an issue of global importance. This service was important because keeping a clean environment and to be an international school that recognizes the global importance of recycling is very honorable. Later on from semester 2 of grade 11 till now, I took part in SOS Orphanage. This was very different from what we did in Recycling. Children from the SOS Orphanage Village in Colombo would come our school every Thursday. We then proceeded to teach them English, math and gave a presentation on a particular country. The highlight of the activity was the swimming session. We would all go down to the pool to teach them how to swim and guide them through it for the next hour. On lazy days, we would have a game of piggy in the middle (monkey in the middle). SOS was really fun because we learnt to communicate and engage with the children, as well as just have fun with them. Service required teamwork and I feel that I have definitely been able to work collaboratively with others to give the children a great experience here at OSC.
IB CAS may have ended here, but the Creativity, Action and Service in me will continue to grow and thrive. I hope to continue to play drums, try out more sports and certainly try to take up a leadership role in a community service in the future :-)
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