Audio recording

The first two terms of G12 has finished, and huge academic workload is over, except for one or two subjects. It has been extremely challenging for me to keep to the workout plan throughout these two busiest terms of IB, however I tried my best at sticking to the plan, and I managed to do it. Of course, I missed one or two gym sessions after school when I had simply too much academic work to handle sometimes, however whenever this happened I made sure I fill in the blank day by attending body pump or fitness training sessions offered by the boarding house after dinner time, from which I felt proud of myself for strictly sticking to the personal fitness schedule that I set at the very beginning of G12, about 2 months ago (LO4).

Over the 2 months of training, I developed various training skills which not only help with the training itself but also ones that are applicable to other parts of my life. For example, I learned to set goals and methods I will use to achieve the goal, and most importantly, sticking to it until I achieve it. I was a complete newbie 2 months ago when I couldn’t go to gym and train for solid 60 minutes without my professional friend or a coach to guide me through the whole training session, but now I can say it is a piece of cake, going to gym myself and enjoying the 60 minutes following the very unique routine that I make everyday when I arrive at the gym (LO1). This skill I developed over the last 2 months has been helpful, as I was once rushed with 4 different internal assessments to finish within 40 days, and I made a full timetable about which one to finish by which day, how much time I will allocate on this one IA, etc., which I stuck it onto the wall and strictly followed the plan throughout the whole time and managed to successfully finish the task that only seemed absolutely impossible at that time.

As such, starting personal gym training, and keeping up with the plan was difficult, but I believe that this difficult training has paid off already, and I will continue training until the last day because I know that this will pay off again later in my life.

After grade 12 started, I was flooded with enormous workload which I struggled to handle throughout, however I always attended every 0-WES sessions as I still had the responsibility as logistic manager and senior student to guide and train the new members from G11, lead the service until the last week of term 2 before handing over the leadership positions to the new members.

My G12 colleges and I were responsible for being the leader of our new projects that we were carrying out during the difficult COVID times. Our 3 main projects were awareness campaign on disposable masks, cleaning up the school lost and found (which its existence is unknown to the majority of student) and lastly the school paper waste trail. I was the leader to the paper trail group, and I actively contacted the school waste manager, arranged the meeting with the school waste management facility, and completed the project with the final report analysing the school’s paper waste management system which were in fact ineffectively managing the paper waste. This whole project, although I was the one guiding and teaching the new members how the projects are done in our service, 0-WES, it was definitely a challenging experience to completely lead a whole group by myself whilst making sure the G11’s are following and engaged into this project, since at the end of the day, they will be the one leading these projects on their own (LO2). I was always aware of my lack of leadership skills, and I thought this opportunity was the best one for me to practice this specific skill that I always wanted to develop, and I believe that I learned few techniques to lead others throughout this experience, for example making relationships based on trust, and then making sure everyone’s opinions are respected and considered when making decision as a leader (LO1). Moreover, through this experience I successfully demonstrated my ability to plan and conduct a fruitful CAS project from the bottom, and further developed my skills to launch new ideas and refining them to be able to achieve the goal of the service, even in these special circumstances where outdoor activity and collaboration with the local partners are limited (LO3, LO4).

After completing such exciting service project for the final service activity as G12, I felt somewhat disappointed by the fact that I will soon leave the service and hence no longer will be able to contribute to promoting sustainability goals around the Tampines area. As a student who is also deeply interested in studying in the field of environmental sustainability in the future, over the last three years in this service I learned and understood the true value of this global issue, and I believe environmental sustainability is crucial for the long-term development of human society. Therefore, I decided to stay in this service even after this term which the G12’s are supposed to hand over the leadership roles and focus on academics, as I truly wish to further promote the aims and values of this service throughout the last year of my high school (LO6).

I hope this decision to stay will provide me with the few extra months to further absorb the values of the service, and grant me the opportunities to ensure that this service continues to fulfil its goal over the next few months with the new leaders.

After the COVID-19 outbreak, infection cases in Singapore have lowered, and the first term of Grade 12 started safely. Ever since the lockdown happened in G11 and HS Yoga with Meditation could not continue, I went back to my home country for safety, and started to think what I can do to make up for the lost physical activity over the break. Pandemic situation was also same in South Korea, therefore the public gym was closed, it was recommended by the government to stay at home instead of going for running or sports. During this challenging situation, I decided to purchase home-training equipments like Kettlebell and suspension training kit so that I can continue my physical activity at home. Since I lack professional knowledge regarding anaerobic exercises, I primarily researched different exercises I can do with these equipments online, and then I called my peers and school gym teacher to ensure that I am doing the right thing, through which I developed a new skill to exercise effectively and efficiently to maintain good health and wellbeing (LO2, LO3).

After the school started, the school gym was open everyday after school, which inspired me a new way of continuing my physical activity. Luckily, a friend of mine who is well-equipped with prior knowledge regarding weights training from years of gym workout was willing to help me get started with my gym training. Learning different exercises and efficient workout techniques from this friend other gym coaches at the gym was a totally different experience to what I have been doing (home-training), and I quickly picked up these techniques and I was able to adapt to gym training (LO5), and currently I am able to plan out an effective workout routine myself and stick to this routine for a solid 60 mins training session, and I am strongly dedicated to this self-managed home training (LO1).

I wish to continue my training journey not only throughout the school year, but also after I graduate, since I see the true value of training in terms of developing the self-management skills.

For our project week, we originally planned to do activity-project in Bali, doing different activities like trekking, kayaking, scuba diving, etc. However, we decided that although doing all the activities would provide us with valuable experiences, it would be over the budget we are given, and hence agreed to cancel these activities and started looking for other options in Bali. After hours of researching, we found one entertainment package where we can do animal spotting through trekking or scuba diving, which we thought as a group that it is a great option (LO2). Therefore, we switched out activity-focused project to service-activity-combined project where we could investigate the ecosystem at Bali Barat National park (Pejarakan Village, Northwest of Bali, near the National park), whilst doing physical activities (LO3). Moreover, we thought this experience of animal spotting and investigating ecosystem will be extremely valuable for everyone, as the topic of ecosystem and habitats are closely related to the global issue of environmental sustainability, which is becoming a more serious and significant problem in the 21st century due to rapid industrialisation which is destroying many habitats. Through this experience, we will be able to directly observe the beauty of nature that deserves to be protected, and also see the human impacts on the environment, which would hopefully inspire all of us to later participate in any form of environmental protection activities (LO6)

Now that we have the general plan, it was time for us to write out a detailed trip plan, including forms of transport, accommodation, travel insurance, local partners and safety assessments, etc. We decided that we should use the advantages of having a group of 6, and split the roles so that each member is responsible for something in the trip, and I decided that, as a only student in the group who is genuinely interested in medical studies, I will be responsible for researching all the nearby hospitals and clinics available. Everyone else took one leadership role, for example general trip needs manager (accommodation, transport, etc.) or medic (who will take first aid training), which definitely lifted huge burden off everyone, and made the whole planning process easier and faster (LO5). Below shows the result of my research.

Through the whole process, I’ve developed my skill to research information that are not easily available on the internet, which already is useful skill to be equipped with as this skill helped me with data researching for my Extended Essay, and I also practiced to work collaboratively as a group, which used to be one skill that I was lacking: collaboration and building a trustful relationship where I can leave one task to another member responsible for it (LO1).

Unfortunately, despite the complete plan with detailed trip information, we were unable to go on this project week trip to Bali due to COVID-19 outbreak which has lead to lockdown of many countries, including Indonesia.

I joined HS Yoga with Meditation in Season 3 of Grade 11, with primary aim of finding mindfulness and wellness during the difficult first year of IB, which I have been struggling to adapt with the new academic programme.

At the beginning, I was hoping to learn the different poses and yoga routines which I could bring back home and use it for self-mindfulness everyday, and the lessons taught me a great yoga routine composed of 5 different poses, which is Sun Salutation. This simple yet effective routine I learned over the first 4 classes was actually very useful in helping me finish the day with enough time to relax and reflect on things that I’ve done in that day. I started to find this yoga/meditation routine extremely helpful and stress-relieving, therefore I began to do it on my own everyday or every other day, instead of only Tuesday when I had the Yoga class. I sometimes finished the day with 30 minutes of quite meditation, which was also extremely helpful relieving the academic work stress. Like this, I started off with simple aim to just have meditation day every Tuesday, but ended up having relaxing yoga/meditation time everyday before I go to bed, and started to actively engage in Yoga (LO4).

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore, the school had to go on lockdown, and therefore the yoga class could not continue anymore.

Today we have just completed our very last meeting in this academic year. We have simply posted what we have been discussing for the past few weeks onto our service portfolio page, to promote our service in these tough times.

The link to our portfolio is here, and I have pasted my personal reflection on my 2 years in 0-WES below. (Link):

I joined this service last year in G10 as I was quite curious how Singapore deals with all the waste produced, knowing that Singapore doesn’t produce anything themselves. I quite enjoyed how we actually have recycling trips and get to physically see our accomplishments, which was unusual in my previous service and GCs that I participated in G9, so I decided to continue being a member of this service this year again. I took over the logistics role to better be able to connect with this service, and I wish to continue to be part of this next year too. I felt the bond growing stronger between the local Singapore community and myself over a series of local trips to Tampines, and have learned to collaborate better with new people, which I believe will come useful later in my life. By the end of next academic year, I aim to achieve high environmental sustainability around the local community by promoting recycling and also recruit new young members who will keep the service going even when I graduate, as the mission of this service is really essential for the sustainability of Singapore.

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak in Singapore, the school shut down, and our service was put on pause for few weeks, until only 3 weeks ago when we began to have weekly online meetings to discuss our plans for the rest of the G11 and after we come back in G12. We predict that going back to pre-COVID19 status will be impossible in a short future, meaning that we will no longer be able to contribute to the sustainable economy around Singapore by physically helping out at local events, which used to be our most favoured method of promoting recycling within the local community. It is still possible for some of us staying in Singapore to contribute to local recycling days, however we understood that doing so will allow us to achieve our service goals, however it would be unethical for us to put the Singaporean citizens under the threat of COVID-19 for our own sustainability goal (LO7). However, this shouldn’t mean that our service will stop working towards the global issue of environmental sustainability around Singapore, so we as a group decided to improve the digital portfolio of our service, which will help us get in contact with new local NGOs that may be willing to do something during this hard time of the global pandemic. We have written a questionnaire for every member to respond to, which will be combined together to write a description of our service’s missions, goals, partners etc (LO4).

WE have already had 3 virtual meetings to discuss these, and it has been quite successful as we had a solid 90 minutes to only talk to each other about our passions and commitment, which was rare back when we were doing offline meetings, due to various realistic reasons including people chatting while others are talking about work, or not having time to discuss the missions of the service as one big group, since some have gone for a local service trip. I feel like I have further learned and understood the value of collaborative work during the online virtual meeting (LO5), which I wish to utilize this in other areas to form stronger bonds with other people.

Today I attended the last sumo robotics session when we briefly reflected on our chaotic journey over two seasons. I would not say my learning experiment in this club was perfect as it was quite unusual (not many clubs change their whole project mid-way through the term), however, I strongly feel that the positive impacts this twist had easily outweighed the negative. One example would be showing me my limit, providing the experience of giving up, teaching me this extremely unpleasant feeling of failing. Over IGCSE I have participated in multiple activities such as Digital Arts club, TechXperts, and MasterChef. All of them were great, however they were all packed with easy tasks that weren’t enough to help me push to my limits, hence I only ended up strengthening my basic skills. However, this club provided me with rather different learning opportunities. Introduction of Arduino, one of the most complicated but popular coding program, initially caught my attention and got me engaged. Although at the start I had to regularly ask for assistance with this completely foreign program, as I progress and start to understand the system, I was able to develop few codes myself and finally push to the limits (LO2). Nevertheless, I, a fresh newcomer to this field of programming,  was not yet prepared for such a complex project. I eventually realized it is now at the point where my learning becomes less time/effort-efficient without the basic coding skills that act as a firm foundation. That is when I moved onto this new, less challenging kit that better suits coding starters like me. Although this twist in the club activity forced everyone to rush through two projects in a short period of time, the fruitful and unique learning opportunity that Sumo Robotics brought me covered up more than enough for it.

After the quick reflection + suggestion for next season time, we spend time doing a mini robot tournament, fighting each others’ robot, which was simply relaxing and joyful.

We started building the new kit and I was too excited to try this new kit, as I researched more about it before that class and I discovered that I can connect the robot to my mobile device via Bluetooth and control it remotely. As I was putting the components together, making my own code using the information from the booklet, and inserting it to the device, I became more and more passionate about this new project, since I felt like this kit suited my level of coding/building skills, and I was actually learning the basics of electronic from this so I knew that, if I pursue my practice with coding, I can someday master the more complicated coding skills by slowly building onto this foundation. Moreover, I realized that my skill of understanding a completely new material is relatively better than others, as I was able to finish building the robot, get it to connect and function perfectly before anyone else (LO1). I even figured out the specific function of the kit, which is resetting the robot without having to unscrew everything, that is not even written in the guide booklet, and it really helped everyone to get started with the Bluetooth connection.

However, I also realized that I lack the skill of critical thinking. The robot was moving poorly as the wheel was too slippery hence it kept on drifting sideways itself, but I was not able to fix this problem until everyone else was done and one of them came up with the idea of grinding the wheel and putting a rubber band around to maximize friction. Thinking back, I have had this problem for a long while, and I really should start practicing this skill (LO1).

After the session, talking to another member of the activity about all the Arduino works, I felt slightly depressed about the fact that my past few weeks of learning Arduino coding went to waste, as there were no components of it required to build the Kitronik robot. However, knowing that there is still a big challenge called Arduino that I had to give up on, I strongly feel like I want to dig deeply into the world of coding some time in my future, as I would get the feeling of huge accomplishment to the fact that my coding skills have improved.