Last year when I did Culturama Cambodia, despite the change in pace and uniqueness of the dance, I didn’t feel that I had pushed myself to the limit in terms of dancing. Whereas, this year, I feel that I am going to. This is as the USA dance is usually the most competitive and hardest dance, so when I was able to sign up, I thought that it would be a great opportunity for me to see what I could do in the face of such adversity and dancing with such great dancers. I want to be able to push myself to the limit in terms of technique, dedication to the art, and I will be able to best do this in Culturama USA due to the amazing leaders and all the amazing dancers that I will be working with.
Author: chans69742@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg
Project Week Reflection (LO7 & LO5)
Project week was one of the best while most challenging experiences of my IB life. This is, over the course of 5 months, I and a group of 4 other students were able to successfully plan and execute a trip under budget to Cambodia for the course of a week. However, as mentioned, there were multiple challenges that we encountered throughout the experience. Firstly, as the first aid person in the group, I had to train for over three months to become a certified First Aid student. This allowed me to work with others effectively as all the other students in my project week group had to be able to rely on me throughout the week as I was the only person who had the skills to take care of them. Not only that but because each of us was specialized in certain areas for the trip, I also had to learn to work collaboratively with them to make sure that all of us were able to go through the week with no difficulties.
Furthermore, because of the Sri Lanka bombing, we were, unfortunately, unable to go to Sri Lanka and because of the very urgent short while of remaining time, we had to decide and plan the next trip to Cambodia. Therefore, we had to group together and plan very effectively, as if we didn’t plan properly, we wouldn’t be able to go on project week and therefore would be stuck in Singapore.
CAS Reflection (LO7) – Try for Cambodia (Middle)
As I am halfway through the year, I am able to now understand all the benefits and skills that have come from me volunteering in the GC of Try for Cambodia. Furthermore, I am also able to understand the type of impact that I create for the people that we work with in Cambodia. In order to create an impact on these lives, we have had to plan activities such as the dodgeball tournament with grade 10 and 9 mentors. This planning took a few months as we had to find a good time slot that would work for everyone, while making sure that enough money was fundraised for the GC at the same time. Furthermore, we had to handle logistics such as creating a playlist, a schedule, booking the dodgeballs and the courts, and organizing the teams.
SEASAC Golf 2019 – 2020 (LO1 & LO3)
Throughout the first term of my 12th grade life, I participated in the SEASAC Golf activity every Thursday for an hour and a half after school, leading up to the SEASAC competition in Yangon at the end of November. This activity really helped me in regards of LO1 and LO3. This is as, for LO1, I was truly able to reflect and work on what I discovered where my weaknesses in my golf game, such as my short game, practicing with my coach every Thursday to make sure that I was able to get as close to the flag as possible when I was near the green. Furthermore, for LO3, I was able to clearly plan a CAS experience through planning how to execute my golf game collaboratively with my fellow golf members and coach. This is as we needed to make sure that everyone on the team knew the course in and out during SEASAC so that we could play as best as possible.
Reflective Conversation #3
As I started the EE with a secondary experiment and ended up doing a primary experiment far off from my original aim, it shows the massive changes and obstacles that I had to go through. For example, at one stage, my EE experiment was much too similar to that of one of my peers, and therefore I had to change it to the comparison of different preparations of garlic. I appreciated this experience, as it pushed me to work more in the lab to perfect my lab skills and explore an unique experiment. However, I feel that I was unable to explore the differences in treatments between antibiotics and garlic, and therefore, I would like to investigate this more next time. On the other hand, because of this EE, my research skills have also been greatly developed, as I was able to research and compare scientific data with my own and improve my own methodology in order to make it as precise and accurate as it could be. This can be seen with my improvements from the pilot study and the constant time that I spent in the laboratory between and after class.
Reflective Conversation 2
After submitting my initial draft, I have met with my supervisor and have decided what must be done next. So far, my research has been going well, however, one big point that I have taken away from this conversation is that I need a more diverse set of research and not just a lot of research-based on one topic. Furthermore, throughout my experiments, I have discovered that Amoxicillin is ineffective against E.coli, and therefore I need to change that variable. Not only that but as my experiment is too similar to another student’s, I will be changing my variables to comparing different types of garlic in order to see which is most effective on E.coli. However, this process has taught me a lot about bacteria and experiments and research in general, how to find and critically analyze sources and use them as information databases without plagiarising anything.
Summer Internship Reflection
Before that I went into the summer internship at Sustainability Living Lab, I had a very different idea of what was coming up than what I actually had. For example, some of the goals that I had for this internship was to improve myself as a leader and a collaborator with other people in order to work towards a common point. Furthermore, I wanted to understand how it felt to be in a busy workplace where everyone was specialized in their skill sets. Not only that, some objectives that I had were to create a malleable product by the end of the internship to show how I have progressed as a student, however, I was only able to create a doc which was presented to my bosses which represented environmental dates that the social media team could advertise on. Moreover, I visualized that the workplace would be bustling and that there would be people moving around and working everywhere, however, what I got was a more relaxed workplace where there was very little pressure and people could work at their own place, which I feel was beneficial and at the same time, disadvantageous. However, some strategies that I used were my data gathering skills from working on my EE, GPERs, and ToK. This allowed me to work effectively and gather different amounts of data very effectively and very fast. Therefore, I was able to complete my work sooner than expected every time I got new work from my bosses. Some mistakes that I made were, for example, researching enough of the work before my internship started. This is as I found out that I was not perfectly utilized for the internship as I did not know some of the materials that were needed to be packed and organized due to me not taking computer science, therefore the work that I did with those materials was not as effective as it could have been as I needed to double-check all the materials. Some advice that I would give for future interns at this organization would be looking at the company’s plans and events during the time at which the intern is at the organization, as it would allow the interns to prepare fully for the internship and be able to jump into the workplace immediately.
Grade 12 Plan
I want to make sure that next year I will have a good social and academic life, as I don’t want to get too pressured into one of the two, as if I do, I will not have a balanced and healthy life. Because of this, I want to make sure that I get the most out of each, as it will be my last year in the boarding house with all my friends and all the people I have spent my high school with. Not only that, but I want to be able to get all that I can get from the IB and the UWC experience as well, such as all the activities like orchestra and jazz band, which will be my last year for those activities as well. But I also want to be able to be on top of things such as my university applications, as I want to make sure that I can get into the university that I want and not be too overwhelmed by all the processes that come with it.
CAS Reflection (LO2 and LO6) – Yoga MINDS (End)
Throughout this entire year, it was a very enlightening experience due to many reasons. Firstly, there was my new experience of learning Yoga as a way to relax and breathe, and how this technique became very useful for me. However, I feel that the most important thing that came out for me from this service was for my ability to teach those with special needs, and the patience that came along with it. Because of these skills, I was able to greatly improve my own collaboration, communication, and leadership skills. However, more importantly, I was able to understand the difficulties that those with special needs need to go through on a daily basis. This is as we were able to see that whenever we tried to teach them new techniques and skills, sometimes it would be painful for them, even the smallest of movements, moreover, they would always get distracted, showing that it is very hard for them to maintain focus on one thing for a long time, so when they were able to focus at the end of the year, it really showed their improvement and our impact. Therefore, something that I can take away from this, is that I should always treat everyone with equal respect as I don’t know what challenges they are going through, and what they have to face every day, and therefore showing my engagement with issues of global significance, as I need to improve all those lives who don’t live as comfortably as me.
Project Week Reflection
Over this project week, I was able to have a very good and enlightening time. This is due to many reasons. Firstly, my group and I faced so many challenges throughout the planning of project week, such as having to change destinations in a very short period of time, due to the Sri Lankan situation, to also getting visas and tickets. So that when we arrived in Cambodia, we were able to have a very good breath of air, as we were able to have all the stress relieved off of my group and I. Not only that, but we were also able to have amazing fun and many learning experiences throughout the trip. For example, we learned a lot about Cambodian culture and history, such as the date of the Angkor Wat, and how the ancient Khmai people were able to tell the time by looking at the Sun’s location in the sky. Furthermore, we learned about the villages that we visited, such as the rice crops and milling processes that go on, and we see how much rice is actually made from each time they have to mill. This made us appreciate the rice that they provided us more, as we realized how hard they had to work to get it. Moreover, we were able to enjoy an obstacle-filled 6km hike up the thousand lingas river mountain, while picking up plastic waste and learning about the history of the mountain. Throughout this hike we spotted a scorpion and snake, allowing us to tactfully avoid them and get to our destination safely, which was the beautiful stream that led to the waterfall down the mountain and was able to soak for an hour before heading back. Overall, this trip was a very amazing experience for me, as it allowed me to immerse myself in a very different but still similar culture to my own, and see how I would fare will all the different ways of living that they have.