Starting off the new year The holidays are over, and with it brings the last leg of the NYAA. I’ve already completed the requirements for healthy living, and my final reflection for that will be at the end of this post. However, my service goal is still ongoing, and so in this post, I’ll be detailing some of the new changes as well as my reflections and reactions to them.
Service Since the Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore service was cancelled, at the beginning of the year I was challenged with finding another service that aligns with my goal.
My goal: To make those with disabilities in Singapore feel more accepted by society through volunteering for them, communicating with them and building a relationship with them.
Thankfully, however, there are plenty of organisations that the school partners with that deal with this issue! Finding a new service that would apply to my goal, therefore, wasn’t very difficult, so I picked ‘Fitness with Hougang Care Centre’ as my new service. This service, through student-led fitness and wellness related activities, helps those in Singapore with mental disabilities and conditions, such as dementia or schizophrenia. (I’ve already talked about how the term disability can be applied to many many things, so it should lose its negative connotations.)
This service I feel connects to my goal because I think that wellness is also an essential part of acceptance and empowerment, which will help those at the Hougang Care Centre feel like a real, important part of society. The fact that sessions are student-led encourages communication and relationship-building skills, so I think that part of the service allows me to progress towards my goal.
And in the few meetings we’ve had, I’ve tried to get to know the service and the specific actions it takes to maximise my impact. We even had a guest speaker from the Hougang Care Centre come to one of our sessions and talk to us about what the people at the centre need, enjoy and how best we can help them – through being energetic, communicating clearly and showing our passion. I think this also connects to my goal.
However, since I am switching service, I feel a little burdened knowing that this was not what I originally intended, but bumps along the way are normal, and I’m ready to put my all into this new service.
Healthy Living Now that I have completed the requirements for Healthy Living, I’m free to look back and reflect on how it went for me, as well as some of the things that I would like to continue with. I think that doing NYAA introduced me to a lot of new things that I can continue doing to improve my own wellbeing and quality of life.
I feel that music has really become an essential part of me since I started the goal, and I find myself turning to it whenever I am in doubt. Even though music is quite academic for me, I also found that it could be part of my leisure life. I also learned lots of ways to deal with the pressures of academic music, like finding pieces that I truly enjoyed to play and discovering my true music taste, or finding new exercises that I can do to improve my technique and therefore make me a lot more confident in my abilities, lessening my nerves. I did a lot of performance, inside and outside of school, and this has also boosted my confidence. It has shown me that I can forgive myself for making mistakes and accept that even though I made a mistake, it is definitely not the end of my path in music.
So, I think that I will continue pursuing music, whether as a hobby or a career, and take these skills that I’ve learned and continuing to use them in life, applying them to my exams as they approach as well as my career aspirations and inside service!
Conclusion Even though the end of NYAA is approaching, I will take all the things I’ve learned from Healthy Living with me into the rest of my life, and I will continue to put my all into service as I always do. I’m looking forward to receiving the award!
Above I’ve inserted the recording of my reflection for the end of the year. A couple of things that I want to add:
Firstly, this reflection focuses mainly on the past. Below are my plans for progress toward my goals over the summer and in Grade 10.
I’m thinking about also volunteering at CPAS (Cerebral Palsy Alliance Singapore, where I do service on Mondays) with my family to gain more insight into other age groups who have to cope with Cerebral Palsy and what more I can do to help the kids as well as other people. I’ve really wanted to introduce my family to the service that has taught me so much.
I’m planning to continue learning the guitar as well as the piano, and at some point pick up the violin. It’s a lot, but learning new instruments is really fun and I love being able to play a diverse range of songs. The guitar has been so much fun and I’m hoping that the violin will also offer a wide range of opportunities for reducing stress, learning about music and enjoying and relaxing myself.
During the summer, I’ll be trying to access music and instruments as much as I can. Since I’m visiting one of my closest friends, who also plays the piano and her father plays the guitar, I’m hoping I can get some valuable practice and performance time in then.
At the beginning of Grade 10, I’m going to be doing a large ensemble, which will be my first large ensemble performance. I’m excited to see how I’ll react and it’ll give me more performance practice.
I’m planning to take my Grade 8 exam perhaps in the middle of Grade 11, or at the end of 2020. This means I can start working towards my diploma towards the end of G11 or in G12, and that means I might be able to teach in university.
That just about covers it! Thanks for reading and listening, and I hope you, my reader, have a great summer!
Since this month was short, and I was ill for half of it, I’ve combined both my reflections from Service and Healthy Living into one!
This month in Service… I’ve felt a lot more comfortable interacting with the students at CPAS this month. Despite the fact that we’ve only had so many sessions, I think that the impact this service has had on me has been profound, and I realise that I’ve obtained such important practical knowledge that will help me for the rest of my life.
Something that I’ve found really intriguing is that the students won’t laugh whenever we laugh, they would only laugh when they themselves simply found something funny. It makes sense, also, when they laugh at something. Their sense of humour is as simple as the rest of us. Perhaps one student will flick something off the table accidentally, and another student will find that funny. There is nothing else that affects their sense of humour, only them. However, lots of psychological studies take place where people tell jokes that aren’t even funny, but the fact that other people are laughing makes it funny, but this isn’t the case.
This makes me think. There is no such thing as a disabled person, is there? We are all disabled in some way. I wear glasses. One of my friends sprained her wrist. That counts as a disability.
All in all, I think that I’m really starting to see these kids as individuals. I’ve been really striving to stop thinking of them as ‘Kids with Cerebral Palsy’ but more as just ‘kids’ who I’ve been spending time with and who I’ve been making friends with.
This month in Healthy Living… I’ve been giving my practice schedule a lot more thought. In piano masterclass, we’ve been focusing quite heavily on skills and technique. I’m no virtuoso, but I know that my skills and technique definitely need working on, as I’ve never really given them the attention and priority that they deserve. This means modifying my practice schedule in some way to include more workouts for my fingers but also to give some structure to my practice.
One of the modifications I’m thinking of making is time. I don’t practice for long at all. Most of my practice sessions are from 20 – 40 minutes, and with exams around the corner, I don’t have time to practice every night. So, I’ve been thinking of rigorously timing myself for exactly 40-minute practice sessions at least 4 times a week. This gives me lots of time to work on my skills as well as my pieces. Practicing a lot more at home also means I run the risk of listeners, which will help curb my performance anxiety even more. I also think that putting a schedule in place will restore some order to my practicing life and relieve the element of chaotic, stressful practicing.
I’ve also been thinking of buying a ‘piano finger exercises’ book to warm up my fingers before I start playing pieces and to further develop my virtuosic side. This will help me feel confident about playing more difficult pieces; I want to show myself that I have the skills to be able to execute this piece perfectly.
In conclusion, I think that I’m going to work towards my goals in the best way I can while approaching exams and the end of the year. Please look forward to my end-of-year reflection in Grade 9! Thank you for reading!
This month in Masterclass we’ve been doing a lot of practicing our pieces. I’ve been finding it really challenging as I don’t know if I have enough time to fully master the piece before performing it. Practice is a really important thing for me as the more I practice, the more confident I will be in the performance and the better the performance will go. I’ve had multiple experiences with performing in the past where I wasn’t prepared enough, and that definitely really impacted my performance in a way I didn’t want it to, so I’m really worried about the piece I’m playing in March as perhaps it’s not prepared enough.
I think acknowledging this is really helping me as I now fully realise the implications of not being able to practice enough. I think this will definitely help me manage future performances and practice schedules for that to help make me a lot less stressed about performing. I’m thinking about using google calendar to set up a practice schedule as well.
I’ve also been doing some practice for the upcoming March performance in my ITP classes and also learning some theory and new pieces. I’ve been learning some new scales that perhaps I will be tested on, and I’m definitely gaining more control over my fingers and becoming more confident in playing. It’s been really enjoyable and de-stressing as I finally get to play pieces that I like (since I’m finally at that level) and I’ve genuinely enjoyed playing the piano this month. It’s been very relaxing.
I’m nervous for the performance upcoming in March, but I vow to continue practicing hard until the performance to make sure I can give the best performance possible.
