Wednesday, 5 March 2014
Rebecca’s CAS Completion Essay
Rebecca’s CAS Completion Essay
Word count: 1864
Over the last two
years of the diploma program the main highlight has be the CAS program. CAS has
had a profound impact on my life over the last two year teaching me many
valuable skills, developing leadership skills, the ability to adapt to foreign
environments, handling pressure, time management, organization and much more. I
am thankful for the CAS program because it has opening up my mind to new
passions and exciting experiences. I believe my experience in the CAS program
has really enriched my life and helped me become a increasingly well rounded
person. Using the requirements of the CAS program: to undertake
new challenges, initiate activities, work collaboratively, show perseverance
and commitment, engage in issues of global importance, consider ethical
implications of their actions, be aware of their own strengths and areas for
growth, and develop new skills, I will demonstrate paragraph by paragraph in
this essay my fulfillment and development in each criteria.
Through the CAS
experience I have both increased my own strengths and improved my weaknesses. I
have always enjoyed leading and through CAS my leadership skills have been
effectively developed. Leadership roles such as Student Council President as
well as in Sports Leaders have taught be important lessons such as the need for
delegation, communication and patience while leading. I think the CAS
experience has also added on my own awareness of responsibility and dealing
with it’s pressure, Student Council in particular helped me understand this. At
first I found the pressure and the public speaking especially hard but after
numerous speeches to the whole school as well as different grades and the
administration I gained valuable lessons in remaining calm and muddling through.
I think the turning point in evolving public speaking from a weakness to a
strength was at my 11th grade trip to the Student League of Nations
in Geneva. At first the atmosphere of being at the United Nations and posing as
Saudi Arabia was rather terrifying but after I gave my speech but confidence
gained ten fold. Immediately after my speech the questions directed at me
began, having watched procedure all day I was blown away by the number of
questions I had to field, constantly having to remain in a polite register with
appropriate answers. Eventually I finished answering aggressive questions from
many states both friend and foe and received a round of applause from the
general assembly. I was immensely proud with my development in public speaking
and could never have believed I could have spoken so well in front of such a
large audience. In summation I am really pleased with the development of my
leadership strengths through CAS as well as my old weakness, public speaking.
CAS has challenged me
in many ways. I would have to say the biggest challenge would be time
management. Simply fitting in all my CAS activities into schoolwork, studying
and other obligations could be difficult at times. My attendance at the Amnesty
International local gruppe in Zurich would be one such example, often the group
would meet quite late on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening which would be quite a
pressure if for example I had a test the next day or a major project to work
on. However because I find the meetings always so inspiring and interesting it
was something I was willing to work extra hard to fit around my schedule. I would
also have to say that the number of new experiences also challenged me
immensely. My running would be an great example of a challenge to me, suffering
from Asthma from a young age running especially when I am stressed or busy is
particularly hard on my lungs and can lead to hyperventilation. Often long runs
and new goals in distance can be rather difficult to begin and this is where I
had to use my running buddies, Melanie and Ms Myanger to help encourage me. I
think I really challenged myself by competing in the Zurich City Race while it
was not the actually distance that was challenging, by that point I was running
10km regularly instead it was the pressure of the situation. Having never
participated in a race, I found it a new and rather scary experience but a
valuable one nevertheless. I had to adapt myself in this situation to try and
enjoy it as much as possible and remain calm. In the end it was a highly
successful race I ran achieving my personal best time. New experiences in CAS
have been challenging but have taught me valuable skills like remaining calm
under pressure and adapting to situations.
My key words in
planning and initiating CAS activities have been schedules. Enjoying leadership
positions often forces you to take executive decisions and thus take
responsibility for the key plans for the event. Often I put together bake sales
and other fundraising events myself using group emails and lunchtime meetings
to round a group up to reach a fundraising target. In the health issues
committee planning was particularly important in organizing a successful bake
sale. I think the responsibility to initiate activities was also a learning
curve having participated in unsuccessful events because of a unwillingness for
one person to take on the lead role. Sports leaders was another area where
planning was essential. Having a strong lesson plan was the best preparation
one could have in anticipation of teaching a primary PE class. While often
these plans would go out of the window as it took longer to teach a particular
skill to an age group it was nevertheless an important part of a successful
lesson. I found a detailed plan particularly useful in planning sports day.
While none of my group had ever planned and put on an event to this magnitude
before, the key to our success was planning for as many eventualities as
possible. In my CAS experience planning has been integral part of all my
successes and an obvious flaw in any failed plans.
Collaboration with others has also
played a key role in my CAS activities and in particularly in my Human rights
club at ICS. Hailey, Melanie and I all had to work together to plan and
initiate our activities. When selecting the human rights violation we wanted to
target our letter writing campaign at we had to smooth out a couple of
disagreements between ourselves as to who we should support. We also had to
work well as a team, each taking the responsibility to research about human
rights, write letters and organize their posting. While collaboration is often
not a strong suit of mine I found that working with Hailey and Melanie was not
only enjoyable but also effective in completing our letter writing campaign.
I think the activity I
have shown the most amount of perseverance and commitment through is my
running. While I had enjoyed running before CAS I had never been particularly
dedicated or regular in my running. I had also never pushed myself to see how
far I could go. The CAS experience has really allowed my to pursue a passion
and to vastly improve, not only my running has improved but also my approach to
it. I no longer see running as a testing experience but one of beating my own
personal best. Running for me has developed in a medium in which I test myself
against myself. Even on days when the weather is bad or I am feeling tired or
unwell putting in a run can often alleviate my mood and increase my
productivity. My preserving with running and committing myself to it I have
found a new passion.
In my CAS experience I
have also engaged in issues of global significance. While I am passionate about
Politics and International Relations my engagement with Human Rights in both my
Human Right’s Club and the Amnesty International Local gruppe I attend in
Zurich have really put me in touch with key global issues. Globalization and
migration were both areas that my eyes have been opened up too. As people
increase their movements around the world how are Human Right’s impacted? It
seems in my experience both in negative and positive ways. In some areas of the
world movement of peoples has lead to the development of minority groups who
are easily abused and mistreated while in other areas for example in Belarus,
increasing migration has allowed many political prisoners to freely start up
campaigns to pressure the government. Other areas I have dealt with issues of
global importance would be my participation as the delegate of Saudi Arabia. In
this role I had to do significant research into the country, its values and its
key issues. Writing a speech on Saudi Arabia’s position on surrogacy way
particularly interesting and allowed me to argue a position other than my own
thus developing my own awareness of both sides of the debate. In my CAS
activities engaging with issues of global importance has increased my interest
in Politics and International Relations and also developed my understanding of
many particular problems out world today faces.
I have also dealt with
ethical issues in my CAS experience particularly in the Health committee.
Participating in the health committee I often had to make decisions on how much
information to present particularly when the age of my audience was young. When
presenting to the 6th grade about breast cancer it was important I
did not include any information that would be too scary or worrisome due to
their young age. While often this type of censoring would not cross my mind it
was important all the same that the health committees presentations were
adapted to their audience. When planning “actions” in the Amnesty International
Local gruppe it was also importance to understand the ethical implications of
our “actions”. When raising awareness of human rights violations it is
important not to be overly provocative or inconsiderate. One particular event
that ethics had to be discussed was a event protesting the death penalty we
wanted to have people on the street play an interactive game to raise awareness
of the death penalty but we also had to take into account not being
disrespectful.
I believe a new and important skill that
has been developed directly as a result of my CAS experience has been
independence. Planning and initiating activities has been of my own doing.
Making sure I am doing enough CAS and involving myself in important and
challenging activities was a responsibility I think I have fulfilled. Learning
to adapt myself and present myself with confidence and friendliness in new and
frightening situations has been a challenge but one I feel I have undertaken. Being responsible for
others and myself has been key to the development of impendence in all aspects
of my life.
In conclusion I believe CAS has been an
immensely enjoyable and valuable experience. I have developed many key skills,
improved weakness and grown my confidence in foreign situations. All in all I
am thankful of the challenge CAS has presented and am pleased to believe I have
fulfilled to my own knowledge the requirements of the CAS program to the
fullest extent.
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