Culturama Initial Reflection

I have never previously participated in Culturama before, but since this is my last academic school year at UWC I decided that it would be a nice opportunity and experience to join before I leave. I had a few difference dances that I was thinking about joining as a possibility, but the France dance was run by 2 of my good friends, and they expressed to me that they thought their dance would be a good fit for me.

I have been participating in practice for a few weeks now and I find the commitment really similar to Kahaani. I am finding it a lot easier not as I have had the experience of Kahaani last year so I know how a weekly lunch rehearsal(or more) can feel like even when you don’t feel like participating sometimes. Unlike Kahaani, in my Culturama dance I have a lot more friends and people I know, making the commitment part of the activity a lot easier and making the dance a lot more fun overall. I have not missed any practice for the first couple of weeks and we even had an extra optional practice that I attended since dancing is not something I am very good at, I feel a responsibility as part of the group to put my time in to make sure I do not fall behind and cause any trouble to my dance leaders too. I am very excited to keep working hard on Culturama for the next season, our dance seems to be turning out very well and I’m looking forward to seeing the final product !

 

 

Final Reflection

Taking part in Kahaani this year was overall, a really great experience and I felt really proud of myself in taking part and trying something I’ve never done before.

In order to properly participate and take part in the dance, weekly practices were in place at lunch, which like any other student, isn’t exactly I time in which you want to go to practice, but I managed to attend every practice and I didn’t miss a single one. Each practice session we would firstly practice, but we would also have to talk and figure out our formations and sometimes our dance leader would let us interpret her dance moves she showed us and we would be allowed to voice our opinion on which move we thought was best for the dance. I knew that, not having been part of an experience like this before, I needed to make sure I was on top of it and didn’t bail on practices, especially when my friend in the dance did start to skip practice. I really promised to myself that I had to go to each weekly practice, as I missed one because I was overseas, I really needed to attend the rest or I would fall behind. For me, I wasn’t very difficult to participate and try my hardest during practice as I wanted my first ever performance to be something to be proud of(LO4). I’m not a very good performer and sometimes I get stressed and heated under pressure. At the end of our ‘journey’, with the performance 2 weeks later, I had to take a trip to Holland, missing 1 practice, which put me behind a little bit as the new moves I couldn’t really grasp. I asked someone in my group to teach it to me, and I tried my best to practice as much as I could until I memorized it. I have always had a problem with dance as I find it hard to memorize the steps and the order, sometimes during rehearsal I would fall behind or miss a move, but thankfully, during the final performance everything went smoothly, even the extra finale dance as well.

I think I learnt a lot with this new experience that I will take further if I ever do something like this again, using the new skills that I learnt.

Initial Reflection

After taking a year and a half off of nor swimming, I have recently decided to restart swimming this year. I grew up swimming at the Hollandse Club ever since I’ve lived in Singapore which started in Grade 4. I was quite good at swimming as I grew up training around 2-3 times a week but I never found it that interesting or enjoyable to do, my main motivation was my parents as they kept me dedicated to the sport as I grew up by making sure I went to my training as often as I physically could, which is a good lesson of perseverance they could teach me at that age. Ever since I’ve restarted swimming I find it a bit easier to stay motivated than when I was younger as I find the exercise more rewarding as I did before as I am more educated on the positive outcomes of exercise. Before I took my break from swimming last year, I swam with a friend which was a good way for motivation for both of us as we both were never too thrilled about training, we would make sure the other showed up so that we could train together as it made it more bearable. I aim to train 3 times a week but especially during IB as the workload is increasing ,I find it more difficult to keep up with my schedule of 3 trainings a week. Another thing that motivates me to go to training is the feeling after of healthy fatigue, I’m generally happier after I do exercise such as swimming due to the neurological effects of exercise, this is another reason of motivation for me as I enjoy that feeling afterwards(LO4). During the past one and a half months, my mother especially has been helping me to stick to this schedule and motivate me, by just making sure that I go and don’t make silly excuses to skip a training. Although my mom is trying to motivate me as much as she can, I never really feel as committed as I used to, finding it harder and harder to tell myself that I should go to training rather than taking a nap for example. Another aspect of swimming I have been struggling with is the planning. As I am now much older and have been part of the team for a long time, I have more responsibilities now, meeting with my coaches and planning sessions, even planning how to teach the younger kids on the weekend. Coming in on Saturdays to teach infants how to swim, where I have to come early to plan with my fellow coaches(LO3).