Culturama is sadly over, but I had a great experience and I have overcome my challenges. During my last reflection, I mentioned that I was having trouble with the traditional dance, however, I feel that I have strengthened this part of my dancing skills by learning a variety of moves and constantly practicing them. The traditional dance was quite unfamiliar to me, however, I persevered to learn it and I believe that I successfully acquired this new skill. This was quite important for the success of our dance, because, for instance, if I were unable to do the dance correctly, then that would ruin the recordings since it would look odd, therefore, destroying the mood of the performance. I believe that I now have more knowledge about Indian dance styles and forms.

In my opinion, my new knowledge can help me choreograph traditional songs for Indian festivals especially Diwali and Holi. I believe that this skill is quite transferable to my personal life, since I am an Indian, and I am always surrounded by festive seasons in which my family and I dance. Overall, Culturama was a great learning experience about my country’s dance styles.

I’m at the back of this image.

I have been in Tech Tinkers for the past 2 years and this year, I am very excited to be the Chair of Tech Tinkers. As the Chair, I have various responsibilities such as planning sessions, carrying them forward, and collaborating with other members in this service in order to obtain success. Tech Tinkers is an environmental initiative (service) where we refurbish old unused electronics and further donate them to local and GC partners in order to meet their technological needs. In this service, effective collaboration and communication are crucial skills in order to meet our goals.

We have had a couple of sessions, and I believe that I have collaborated well with other members of the service in order to convey what I feel is important to accomplish. However, at times during sessions, larger collaborations may be limited due to the social distancing measures and the number of people per group. This is a challenge that cannot be overcome at this point in time, however, as the government reduces its measures and allows larger group collaborations, this will no longer be a problem. In spite of these measures, we do have small groups, in which each group is assigned a specific task in order to increase productivity. For instance, before the October break, we had met most of our goals for donations to our local partners, and we will continue to work on these in the next few weeks.

As an individual, I believe that I should include more members and take into account their perspectives on big decisions such as the preparation of brochures etc. Currently, the leadership team is in progress of making brochures in order to increase the number of donations we receive by spreading awareness around our school community. However, for this process to be more inclusive of the other members, I feel that showing them the brochure and getting their opinions about the brochure will increase our overall collaboration towards this action.

I have been playing the piano for approximately 4 years, and currently, I am preparing for my Grade 5 Theory Exam and Grade 5 Practical Exam. I was going to do these exams earlier this year, however, due to COVID-19, my exams were cancelled. As a result, I will be taking my Grade 5 Theory Exam in December, and my Grade 5 Practical Exam sometime next year.

For the Theory Exam, there are some concepts that I am comfortable with and others that are challenging, especially, since the ABRSM Board has decided to change their syllabus and add new things into the syllabus. I have approximately 1 month to learn the new concepts, which is going to be a stressful process, but I believe that once I learn the concepts and start doing more practice questions on the new concepts and the concepts I find challenging, I’ll be able to overcome my challenges and convert my weaknesses into my strengths as well as become more confident.

For the Practical Exam, I would normally have to go to a music institute and give my exam, however, with the ongoing COVID-19 situation, I am required to send in videos of my pieces which may sound easy since I have already prepared for them, however, the ABRSM Board have asked to learn one more piece. I think learning another piece is going to be quite hard especially because I have to balance everything else, however, the extra time until next year provides me the opportunity to improve the playing of my previous pieces and I can record at any time.

I really hope that I can balance the preparation of my piano exams as well as my school-related work and other extracurricular activities.

Kolkata GC is a service that works with Voice of World (VOW) in Kolkata to support the underprivileged community with a special focus on the mentally and physically disabled. Through this service, I have not only learned that there are 30 million physically and mentally disabled people in India, but I have also learned that 15% of the world’s population is disabled and half of them cannot afford health care. This is a significant issue because more than half a billion people cannot afford to support themselves financially and medically due to their disabilities.

Every year, the GC plans a dance showcase called Kahaani to fundraise for the cause, additionally, the GC fundraiser by selling Indian products during Family Festivals and other school events. However, this year, the process has become tougher because there are only a limited number of people that can be in space and therefore, we cannot have a large audience. As a result of this, it is highly likely that the GC will not be able to raise a lot of money. Since I am the head of the Finance Department in the GC, it is my responsibility to ensure that we raise as much money as possible through different strategies. As a result, I believe that my contributions to this GC as a finance officer will have a large impact on our goal of supporting the community at VOW.

Picture of the Finance Team

I have been a part of the Science Society since Grade 10, and I joined this year because I had a lot of fun last year with our discussions about recent discoveries and past discoveries. Additionally, I had a lot of fun during the HS Science Festival last year and I’m really excited about this year’s event.

We have had a couple of sessions, and I believe that our small group collaborations have been really good since we have really good discussions on the discoveries and information presented to us every session. Additionally, before the October break, we did a practical on extracting DNA from strawberries. Every group collaborated in this practical including the leaders which was quite fun since they were able to give insight on how the process works, and the different solutions used. Overall, the sessions have been quite collaborative, where every table group gives their opinion when exploring different scientific ideas. Although there are strict social distancing measures, all members have verbally expressed their ideas very well, and we haven’t faced any collaborative challenges yet.

In my opinion, my goal is to propose more ideas of practicals and events in order to have a mixture of days that are heavily packed with information and days where we do practicals in order to balance and maintain the interests of members. In general, I want to make a valuable contributions with other members this year.

Video of the whole group practicing