Category Archives: CAS

This has been my 6/7th season running the Astronomy Club and I think that I have become much more comfortable in leading sessions and helping out other students during sessions as well. I think that the increase in my physics knowledge has also helped a lot as I learn more by covering more units in class.

This year, our club has decided to participate in the upcoming science fair organized by the Science Society. In preparation for the science fair, our team of around 10-15 has split up into small groups of 2-3 to create a project that they can display and explain in the science fair.  I felt that during this preparation stage, I was not very involved in any of the projects as the students themselves were leading their own small groups. Harit and I were only in charge of making sure that they are filling in the proposals, handing them in on time, and maybe helping them out with physics related stuff here and there. I think that regardless of what we are doing in the sessions, I can be a bit more proactive during the sessions, maybe ask the students if they need help with anything.

I actually didn’t have any intentions of auditioning for Culturama but my friends urged me to audition on the day of the auditions. Surprisingly, amongst the many other dancers that were auditioning, I was selected for the dance. I think that the Culturama experience was very rewarding and I am thankful that I ended up doing this activity. Unfortunately, my friend that also auditioned did not get selected so I was put in a group of students that I was not very close to, I only knew about 2 people properly compared to previously, in Kahaani where I was with most of my closest friends. It was a chance for me to get to know other people from my grade and also grades below.

Because I had done Kahaani before, I was a bit more comfortable with the process of preparing for a dance performance. As I was also doing football at the same time, I was very busy during season 1, along with all the school work, so I had to effectively manage my time to make sure that I don’t fall behind in any of the activities that I do. It took a while for me to actually set a time where I fully concentrate on learning the dance outside of practice sessions, but I finally managed to fully learn the dance in a rather short amount of time. I felt that after getting a good idea of the dance and memorizing the moves at a basic level, it got much easier from there to fine tune my moves and add more power as I got more confident with the moves. Something that I learned about myself during this experience was that despite the previous fears I had on stage, I really enjoyed being on stage and performing in front of a lot of people.

Initial

I tried out for football once again this year and played with the goal of being more confident on the ball. I think that I had lost a lot of confidence last season, having poor performances in the B team. I think my tryouts were not the best but enough to make the A team. I felt that my performance was still lacking, however. My next goal for this season is making the SEASAC team and also playing with some more confidence.

The main objective that I hope to achieve is a high level of stamina to last a whole game of top-level performance. I plan to go to the gym regularly to train my stamina and also build my physicality as I know the U19 teams I will be competing with will be difficult.

Reflection

To address the objectives that I planned to achieve in my initial reflection, I think that I tried to achieve them to my best ability. I think I started to regain my confidence after the first fixture where I came on as the sub after 10-20 minutes and played for the rest of the game. I could notice that my stamina had improved as I did not feel as tired as I would’ve been last year. With this improved stamina, I was able to keep my mind straight and play with much more thought compared to last year where my fatigue would blur my mind and I would be running around without thought. Unfortunately, I got a foot injury during training and I missed a lot of fixtures due to this. Also due to this injury, I was not able to go to the gym as regularly as I did and my stamina dropped significantly. After 2-3 weeks I returned to training and I felt my performance was very weak and in the first fixture after recovery I was benched for most of the game, coming on in the last few minutes. I felt that my performance started to get worse after my recovery and I, unfortunately, could not make the SEASAC team.

One thing that I can take away from this football season is that I have a rather weak mentality. If I start to gain a bit of confidence, I think that I can gain a lot of momentum from it, but if I face a difficulty (like an injury or a bad performance) I drop instantly and struggle to develop my confidence again. I think that I need to learn to forget about the negatives and always keep a positive mentality so that those small difficulties do not hinder my performance.

SWAT Analysis and general reflection on season 3/4 of this service.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TETexgOZltGV_0arvzIIaxGWkUFxhe8g/view

Final reflection:

In seasons 3 and 4 of the service the new activity that we started in season 2 with the spiderweb and sound beam became very familiar and I believe that our members were very comfortable working with the tools and also the clients. I feel like this season, in particular, I was able to build a stronger bond with the client as we always worked with the same client. Although my client was very shy and did not communicate much, I felt that there was a big change in mood before and after doing the activity. I felt that by sharing these activities that I do with the elderly online, this activity can reach a bigger audience internationally, helping elderlies all over the world.

During season 3 and 4 of Astronomy Club, Harit and I organized 3 major projects to try with our members in smaller groups of around 4-5. Although it seemed like a good idea at first, I think that there were lots of things that I could learn from the 2 seasons. One major issue was that most of the members did not know what to do and although they tried to ask other members there were only a few that had an idea of what they were trying to do. Because of the large number of people, it got very disorganized during the final stages of the projects and not much was achieved. I think that despite the failure, a major thing to take away is that I need to ensure that everyone is involved in the project and they know what they are doing. This can be done by having smaller groups, allowing the members to choose what they want to do or have more sessions beforehand informing the members about the projects. I think that these are some new skills that I developed as a leader and I hope that the next coming seasons will allow me to develop the skills even more.

Season 2 for the Astronomy Club went much more smoothly compared to last season as we broke out from the repetitive and relatively boring structure that we had which was just each group sharing a presentation about a topic on Astronomy. In this season we as a team decided to focus on building rockets out of plastic bottles and experimenting with different variables available to us (e.g. weight, shape, amount of water used, etc.). I think that this was a good decision for us as it intrigued more of our members to come to the activity as some members would not come to all sessions. This also lead to the expansion of the number of members and acted as a sort of advertisement of the Astronomy Club. From having around 7-8 people in our club, the numbers have doubled for Season 3 and 4 which opens up many more opportunities.

In terms of problems that we faced in the Astronomy club in season 2 was that at times we saw our selves distracted and out of schedule a lot of the times. I think that this was due to a lack of organisation and time management as if we had used a doc to keep in track of things we did and things we needed to do, we would have been able to use our time much more efficiently as we only have 1 40 minute session every week. A lot of members also could not come due to Kahaani dance practices during lunch which also could have been a source of the problem.

Focusing on the rocket challenge, it was a struggle at first to initiate action as our members were slacking and I saw myself slacking as well during our sessions. I think the process of actually forming the rocket was the only challenge as it took a lot of effort to gather material and put the parts together; however, after the construction of the rocket was finished it was a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience and the process of trial and error was easier as we would only need to tweak small parts of the rocket. The video below shows a trial of a prototype rocket model and is one of the first rocket launches. The process overall tested my determination and also leadership skills because I had to direct our members as the head of the club.

I hope that the Astronomy club becomes more successful and our next challenge of using the telescope should be a very interesting one and also another opportunity for development individually.