HS Yearbook 2019-20 Reflection 2

By the end of the process, especially for our team, there was a huge sigh of relief and intense reflection on the journey we had been on for the past couple of months, just trying to get the mind-numbing press agency-level work done. Looking back, a huge amount of collaboration was shoved into this project because not only did we have to connect with our teams own members, but had to coordinate with other teams such as photography and even answer to the chair at the same time! Truly a test of our multitasking and adaptability.

 

Even some fun along the way?

Yes! of course. During the photo sessions when some people didn’t show up, we had free time to kill and since it was the last shoot on a Friday, nothing much to do. So, we decided to dress 2 mannequins up with said persons’ faces on them to have a hilarious joke that actually aligned with their superlative category win (Late to graduation). Although this was a joke we can recognize that this was quick thinking gon our part instead of complaining to the upper echelons and missing the entire opportunity to take a photo to fill that space. Relates to LO2 or LO3 and overall growth mindsets.

Below are the pictures for your enjoyment!

 



The remaining (actual) photos are here

Outcome?

The outcome is an actual magazine which our whole school will read and it will immortalise us, the graduating class into half its pages. I feel like taking this activity this year really was a personal interest as well just to understand how and to be properly remembered in the yearbook’s pages. The yearbook will be published later so there is nothing to show currently but rest assured it’s coming!

HS Yearbook 2019-20 Reflection 1

How was the investigation?

Like all other activities, the school system was used to register for sign-ups. The vast number of clubs on the school directory and convincing 1 paragraph descriptions of each one really helped me decide which activities I wanted depending on how much I wanted to exit my comfort zone. This allows me to pursue the CAS learning outcomes in a SMART way. From an entire past year’s worth of experiences under my belt, I decided in a reflective and balanced way that when I move to G12, I would take something that puts me extremely out of my comfort zone but at the same time being something I was passionate about, but never got the chance to do before. So I chose the yearbook club/committee. Mainly my train of thought went over to LO2 which was assessing risks and taking them because I believe that a growth mindset is extremely necessary to survive and thrive and today’s world.

 

How did the preparation go?

I would say that preparing for something as big and taxing as the yearbook club was simply every past IB leadership, creative or innovative event I have ever attended. To highlight one of these for clarity, we can take the example of the Group 4 Project where we had to efficiently collaborate with peers from different sciences and come up with solutions in only a limited amount of time. Combined with some past speeches I had given at my school, it gave me the final confidence and push I needed to convince myself by saying “Yes, today I will commit to a new challenge!”.

Other preparation included reviewing the past works of all the teams that came before us. Other preparation was the assignment of teams, which were assigned by the committee chair and co-chair. There were many teams, each having many students, along with teachers helping moderate and rationalise the process.

The teams were:

  1. Senior Pages – MY TEAM
  2. Photography
  3. Design
  4. Media
  5. Miscellaneous

The team names themselves clearly stipulate their roles. Each team had their own Google Drive sub-folder in the main Yearbook folder in which they could keep track of their individual progress and report to the chair with solid evidence of work. This was also the main place for planning and schedules.

Complete Link (might not be accessible to everyone)

Some of the planning documents (Senior pages team):


Action

The planning and the action usually went hand-in-hand since we were such a big committee dependent on so many students submitting work on time so we had to change schedules or swap around a few things even at the last minute which really proved our resilience and adaptability to bran new challenges, this again relates to the learning outcome of collaboration.

I want to explicitly state that throughout this process we were extremely cautious of our environmental impacts and did most things online while minimising carbon emissions through transport by usually encouraging people to take the school bus or only stay back on days they can carpool with other students. Relating to LO6

LO7 of ethics was also an actual major concern since certain topics or themes or representations were not allowed on the yearbook as at the end of the day we were a school and had to maintain our dignity. Many debates ensued about certain ouns which were on thin ice or certain students who did not want to be nominated for certain superlatives because of social reasons or other concerns.

The last image shows some of our superlatives and winners for you, the reader’s amusement!

I believe we spent an exceptional amount of hours even outside normal meeting times to get this going the correct way so learning outcomes 3 and 4 have mostly been met.

AMGD Club S1/S2 Complete Reflection

Investigation

The sign-up for this activity was also done through the school system. My motivation for joining this activity was honestly purely personal preference rather than anything. Although some of the Learning Outcomes have indeed been met, it was purely organic and not anything specific that I was trying to achieve. For many years now, I have had an active interest in Anime, Manga and Japanese Culture; in my previous school, there was no outlet for me to have meaningful conversations with like-minded people. When I realised that I had the opportunity to interact with other people of the same interests, I did not hesitate to take that opportunity. I would like to emphasize that the purpose of this CAS experience was mainly for personal growth but also for me to be actively aware of nuances in other cultures as well as build everlasting bonds with people who understand and respect our mutual interests.

 

Preparation

Our roles and responsibilities were clearly defined from the start and there was not much debate about it mainly due to the fact that we were a small club. The leaders assigned themselves as this club was only recently formed and daily activities were being morphed every month until the right balance of various types of activities was found. The rest of us (apart from the leaders) were given the main responsibility to always engage with activities to the best of our abilities. A clear plan of action was formed with certain activities in mind distributed over a few months. Some of these activities were:

  1. Seasonal recommendation sessions – Where we recommend new anime and manga to each other amongst 4-6 genres that are most preferred by our group
  2. Trivia and factual quizzes – To test our knowledge and to show others our personality so we can connect and include everyone better
  3. Individual presentations – A way in which we can all speak our minds and varying opinions without judgment but instead meaningful discussion afterwards.
  4. Jeopardy (Theme; Japanese Culture) – We split ourselves into 2 teams and enjoyed ourselves while collaborating without team members and increasing our perceptions of the other team’s thinking styles.
  5. News and Announcements about Anime events In Singapore – We were well informed about any new merchandise that was launched or a specific event coming to Singapore, we even decided to go together to one of these events (below)
  6. C3AFA 2019 – This was an Anime and Manga event that cam eto Singapore in 2019, we made plans to go there as a group and enjoyed the immense culture and fun events there, we even bought some stuff!

Action

All of the above activities mentioned were carried forward on a weekly need-to-know basis since we were only a small group and plans were easily changeable, this was the aspect of decision making that cam einto organising our club activities since on some occasions we couldn’t make it to the club as it was during lunchtime. Luckily all of us were very decisive people and changed and if we felt that everyone was not present to enjoy what we were originally going to do. Not many problems arose in our club but when it did it was something minor and we had a proper discussion with the person who was experiencing the problem and easily solved it.

Slides were made every week for that week’s agenda, which are on our website. Other h=things on our website include our recommendations, our favourite Japanese music, our favourite genres, our best quizzes and much more!

Link here – https://sites.google.com/view/amgdclub/about?authuser=0

Learning Outcomes:

From the above reflection, it can be inferred that the following learning outcomes were achieved:

  • LO1, LO2, LO3 and LO4

Images and other evidence;

Unfortunately, while I was doing my individual presentation, I forgot to ask someone to record it, honestly because I was having too much fun giving the presentation and didn’t have time to think about recording it. But other some other pictures are below.

At C3AFA

Club Members Photo Above


Merchandise

Yearbook S1 Reflection (Grade 12)

Investigation

The sign-up was done through the school system while browsing through the system I noticed this wonderful opportunity to design the school yearbook. I always wanted to design the yearbook and wanted to take this small risk and start designing it during my final year.

Preparation

We planned the schedule of what pieces ro design, I decided to join the senior quotes and a references section in the yearbook which is a very important responsibility> So we had to design the typeset and printing formats as well as superlatives and senior quotes.

Action

Currently, we have decided on the superlative categories after painstaking deliberation. We have also decided on the printing and typesetting formats and colours. We have to now decide on 2 questions to ask every senior and record their answers under their name and picture. Each student will get half a page so we have to decide on what goes on each section. We have to start voting on people for each superlative category and also arrange for photographs with adequate props. Then we have to receive each student’s (Grade 12) indivuidual photo for the regular pages.

I think I have achieved LO2 because I had to come out of my comfort zone to actively collaborate with people and make sure my voice is heard which went smoother than I expected it to go. I think I also achieve LO1 which is my strengths as I am good at graphic design and good with technology already, I am a great addition to the team in facilitating any digital hiccups that might arise

CAS initial interview – 12/11/18

The initial CAS interview was a good chance for me to collect my thoughts and get a taste of my first reflections for all my activities. From this interview I hope that I can learn how to, perhaps improve my planning and reflections for the next time (Intermediate interview)

Here is a recording of my interview. Conducting the interview is my CAS advisor Ms. Parkin.

 

Photos are also art – Photography Reflection 1

`”A single photograph can change the world”, this is the first thing we learnt. The creative aspect in photography is how one can express themselves, and the world differently, compared to how it is normally seen.

The more technical aspects that we learnt were:

  1. Aperture
  2. Shutter speed
  3. Telephoto and wide angle lenses
  4. sensor sensitivity
  5. background
  6. foreground
  7. different angles of taking photographs
  8. how to reflect and block light
  9. how to take portraits in different situations

Acquiring technical skills along the way, certain individual creativity areas were also explored, mainly in pairs, we shared our individual ideas on charts with the following labels;

  1. Reveal
  2. Investigate
  3. change
  4. support

Mainly these were topics with which we could relate to, exploring ways in which these objectives could be achieved in different aspects of school life for example: To reveal the importance of the cleaners and cooks at our school through photos, because without them school life wouldn’t be possible.

 

Out and about, testing different backgrounds, foregrounds, and lens types

I feel that during photography i show many skills, both latent and active such as: perseverance- being patient until getting the correct photo; Personal influence- my photos all have a pinch of my touch, i can recognise them amongst many others, personally I feel it reflects my personality. Along with my friend Armaan, we seek to take the best photos in our own different ways but at the same time, we aim to improve ourselves and constantly give out suggestion and reflect at the end of the session about want went well and didn’t go well so we can improve ourselves and plan out ahead. I would like to say that photography was a casual hobby that i used to do a long time ago and now i have realised that upon re-visiting it, i have again found out why i like it so much- photographs are art and aim to convey emotions rather than what’s actually in the photo, this makes the impact. I undertook photography because it shows my strengths. Each day i go home and aim to give myself a reflection, be it short or long, it is always thoughtful, i feel that there are some things that show my strengths- like the creativity aspect. and others that show my weaknesses- in the area of advanced camera settings.

Always, I aim to actively participate in photography and undertake the challenges, rather than being passive. Every week I enthusiastically engage in activities, and once a week at home I review what i had learnt with my own camera. Sometimes I come up with new ideas to take better photos and thus share that with my peers while we are out and about snapping photos. Also I use logic rather than memorisation of the different aspects of the camera for example the different settings needed to take: telephoto, wide-angle, portrait and motion shots. I aim to challenge myself as shown by the different techniques practised above

#LO1 #LO2

 

Yoga is life – Yoga with meditation reflection 1

My goals for taking this activity:

  1. To live a healthier life and have a daily healthy routine, both for the body and the mind
  2. To be able to manage stress and day to day problems as well as understanding how to relax
  3. To bond with my family over yoga and to spiritually connect with the people closest to me

My aim and reason:

I would like to achieve great techniques in creating a reliable outlet for stress and anxiety, but at the same time have fun and stay healthy! I would like to achieve this because i feel like once i learn such techniques, i can reflect upon my life before and currently and have a reliable comparison of how much more efficient i have become in my day to day work.

——-Subsequent thoughts and outcomes after almost 1 season—–

Here is me in the standard ‘padmasana’ (meditation) drawing energy with my hands

From the young age of 7, I found yoga to be quite relaxing and i also liked it because it helped me connect with my grandfather, to this day we always do some yoga together whenever i visit him in India. So I feel that I have a certain passion/strength in doing yoga however not in the technical standpoint, I realise that I cannot do everything and therefore aim to push myself because it is fun.

I would like to improve some of my skills here, like balance coordination and stamina. Mainly i can see my strengths lie in meditation and concentration because during meditation i find myself in deep focus. And generally in my everyday life, i am a focused person. Yoga has also made me realise that i lack stamina and physical ability hence i strive to use my mind to overcome these challenges and eventually improve my all-round yoga. After 1 season of this activity i have improved a lot in my endurance and coordination as shown in the below image where i am doing a pose known as the “Downward dog”, initially it was hard for me to do it right but since then i have greatly improved to make it perfect/almost perfect

The most challenging part of this activity, in my opinion is the synchronisation .one must achieve with their breath and movements, this is the true meaning of yoga A fusion of the breath/mind and body. Mainly to overcome this, i realised that it would simply take time, so slowly week by week i tried to focus on syncing my breath more and more. my method was that: first i synced my breath for 5 consecutive movements only, then i tried increasing that numbers to 7, 10, 13 and so on. and right now i am getting a hang of it so now i am able to sync my breath for most of the longer flows of motion (routines). The measure of my progress is usually the number of consecutive physically demanding exercises i could do without getting tired and since the beginning of this activity i have upped the number from maybe 1-2 to 5-6 which is a good improvement. Lastly, there is a lesson to be learnt while doing yoga, it is not only for the activity at school but also for daily practice at home to improve one’s life. Although to be honest I don’t practice it everyday, i have a habit (even befor this activity) generally to reflect on my day and clear my mind before i go to bed, this can be considered as meditation hence a part of yoga. Also on weekends I practice the ‘sun seritation’ for 10-15 mins. It is not much but it does have its benefits also

#LO1 #LO2