I think that my CAS experiences in G11 were, looking back, really meaningful and interesting to do. Some of the activities I did were outside of my comfort zone and something I had never done before, while others were continuations of an interest I had in earlier years. Initially, I found the experience presented to be quite daunting and often fell behind on my reflections since I forgot to consistently update Managebac. To counter this, I decided to start actively ensuring that after each activity, I was briefly reflecting on the experience which I could later combine into a reflection. Going into G12, I think some things which I want to improve upon is trying out different reflection styles since I have primarily stuck to writing as opposed to other media formats such as video and audio. As a whole, I am looking forward to continuing and concluding my CAS experience this year in a positive way and continue pushing myself to try new things.
I think that the impact of my commitment to this service this year has benefitted the group as a whole because it means that we have a constant presence between sessions and ensure that we are meeting deadlines and able to have the most effective impact. I think in terms of collaboration, it has also definitely benefitted from all the commitment from students coming to each session because we have been able to develop closer relationships with students from different grade levels. Some challenges we have faced have been a few disruptions due to MUN and Grade 11 mock exams, decreasing the number of sessions we have left to continue raising awareness and make an impact. We plan to overcome this by trying to achieve as much as possible in the time we have and remain conscious of the option to continue projects into next year if necessary.
As of now, I think that I have improved in some areas such as my organisational and collaborative skills because we have had the opportunity to communicate regularly with our service partners, giving us a chance to learn from and improve as each session goes. We also work very closely with each other to plan and deliver sessions so that we are interacting with the residents at a high capacity. Despite this, one area which has been challenging has been the technical difficulties that come from doing sessions online. Due to COVID, the elderly are considered a highly vulnerable group, so we can’t visit and do sessions in person. We may work around this, however, since Phase 3 has enabled us to visit the center provided we take a COVID test prior, so we may overcome this challenge in the near future.
(I have blocked out the face of the resident for privacy and safety)
Something I found challenging in this activity has been planning and organising sessions because since what the student I tutor Chinese in learns different content and has different tasks throughout the weeks, it can be difficult to adapt my lessons so that they are relevant to the student. One way I have worked around this was choosing activities which can be contextualised depending on what the student is doing that week, having a more flexible lesson plan which is easily adaptable. I think that I have also collaborated with the other student mentors to think of new methods to engage the students, especially when we feel that the activities are getting repetitive.
I think that my current study habits have some good elements, but also some areas to improve upon. I think some good aspects of my study habits are the skill of active recall which I use when making and revising my notes, as opposed to reading them in order to learn and memorise. Despite this, one new thing which I plan to use for my mock exams is not typing notes online and instead, using physical paper and pen. Since active recall has been shown to be better when using physical notes as opposed to online ones, I think that it could go a long way towards making sure that my long term memorisation remains consistent. Another skill which I plan to implement for mock exams is long term recall, studying over longer periods of time instead of in the few days leading up to a test or exam. I think that this skill would be really useful when revising for mocks to ensure that I have longer retention of content.
Reflecting back on this experience, my planning changed as the activity progressed because we were informed shortly before recording our performance that we could only use acoustic instruments due to some changes in the direction of the performance. As a result, we had to adapt our plans and do our best with what we already had and make the most of our rehearsals prior to change our performance, an example of how we overcame an unexpected challenge. I think that a risk I took during this activity was choosing to even audition because prior to this, I had very little experience performing in music showcases as I never have before. As a result, I chose to step outside of my comfort zone and try something new so that I could experience for myself what it is like to perform in a musical sense.
My involvement in this activity has allowed me to improve in some areas such as collaboration and awareness. Because this activity has been about working together to produce a musical performance, the experience has allowed me to further develop my collaborative skills of negotiation and compromise. I think that an area which I want to continue to develop and improve upon during the rest of this activity is an increased self-awareness of what skills I can bring to the table and which areas I want to continue to work on individually and as a group. Since we have been rehearsing the same song since the beginning of this experience, it has been difficult to remain motivated since the performing can feel repetitive. I have tried to maintain my motivation and commitment by focusing on one aspect of the performance that I want to specifically target to work on so that each time I am still doing something new but also improving as a whole.
Reflecting back on the experience after our final performance, collaboration was a key aspect of how our outcome came out well. We were working not only with our dance leaders and execute the performance as to how they envisioned it, but we also collaborated with our fellow dancers so we can learn from each other and work together to perform. I think that because our group collaboration was so strong, it also translated into backstage where we would help each other with makeup and getting ready, but also to practice the dance and provide support in case someone was confused about a step. I think that ethically there was a dilemma because since we were one of the last performances, we had to buy dinner from outside and bring it into school since the canteen was also closed. This presented an ethical issue because by ordering from outside, the sustainability of our order wasn’t very high. To overcome this, we decided to walk and buy food from Tampines Mall as opposed to ordering it from a food delivery service such as Grab in order to save some of the carbon emissions needed to transport the food to our school.
I think that I showed commitment and perseverance in this activity so far because since the performance date is coming quite soon, the number of rehearsals we have had has increased a lot. As a result, it has been difficult to commit to all of the rehearsals and persevere even when I may not have enough time for the rest of my work, increasing the stress I was feeling. Therefore, I tried to commit to as many rehearsals as I could and even when I might have been running out of time, continue to allocate my time as best as I could. We engaged with issues of global significance because the dance showcase, Kahaani, is in support of an organisation in India called “Voice of World” which supports differently-abled children. By participating in this dance, I donated some money to support the organisation to provide online learning and support throughout the pandemic. This is an issue of global significance because the rights of differently-abled individuals are often exploited in countries without proper materials to support them.
