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 11^th 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 6^th 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.