My first year of high school has been a stark contrast to all my other years of education. I began the year in high hopes, after building momentum academically the prior year. However, I was oblivious as to the stress that would arise further on in the year as a result of the importance of the 2 year course as a whole. I had to develop sophisticated strategies in order to both maintain improvement in my academics, as well as progress in all of my other extra-curricular activities. This balance and task proved rather challenging, but with advanced planning and goal setting, I managed to find out the optimal way in which I could do my extracurriculars as frequently as possible, whilst doing all that was required for the course and more. This plan helped greatly and led me to increase my skills academically and in my extracurriculars, however it did come at the detriment of my sleep. Sleep time is something that I am likely going to strive towards raising in upcoming years, as not only is it important for my sports but it is also scientifically proven to be beneficial to memorisation, learning and focus.

Aside from academics, my highest prioritised activity is swimming. The past two years, I have dedicated myself to the swimming programme here at East, and have managed to improve exponentially as well as learn a lot from the experience. I am currently swimming 8 sessions a week which is about 19 hours of training. One thing I have learnt from this is just to be disciplined. Often beforehand, I would consider many things “optional” even if they had to be done, such as homework and would find a way to escape those chores. Swimming training has made me much more focused and determined when it comes to everything I do. Simply having to get out of bed at 5 in the morning, 3 times a week to go to training before school makes you understand that sometimes things have to be done to improve, even if they may not be satisfactory in the short run. We live in a competitive world, and to do better than others, you have to be able to make sacrifices that most people would not be willing to make. Swimming has also taught me the importance of honing specific skills and making conscious actions and decision when undertaking any task. I swimming, you may take 20 strokes in a lap, and we may swim 400 laps in a session. When you multiply that by 8 sessions a week, you receive a very large number. Yet, it is very easy to let those strokes go to waste. In swimming, every single repetition and stroke needs to be an attempt to improve from the one before. Small things such as trying to keep your elbow high, breathing low and doing underwater kick after each turn are the things that make the largest difference when it comes to a race. Having the concentration to be able to utilise all the strokes you take, as opposed to half of them causes such a large difference. This is not as easy as it may sound, due to the fatigue and competitiveness that surrounds training but is a skill I have gained, and aim to improve in the future. I would also like to translate this skill into other areas, such as my academics as I believe it would further my learning hugely.

Another characteristic that I have attempted to engage and improve is leadership. I have taken on roles in MUN and Surfaid (GC) in order to gain understanding as to what it takes to lead. MUN has enhanced my delegation skills exponentially. The need to be able to take lead, and win the right to lead over people was the first thing I learnt in MUN. The main way in which this had to be done was by earning people’s respect, which could be done in no way other than having work done, and exerting yourself in the conference. In Surfaid GC this year, I took on the role of chair. This was my first experience having to have the responsibility of an organisation and activity that large on my shoulders. It taught me the importance of organisation, as I never realised the amount of preparation each individual session and action took in order to be effective.

I think the experience that shaped my most this year was the exam week. The exam week made me have to bring all of the skills that I mentioned above together. I had to be critical in my learning, and had to make sure every single minute that I spent learning was effective. This is as I still had to continue my swimming. However I still had to drop some swimming session in order to focus on my academics so I had to ensure that every single stroke that I took in training was optimal to my improvement. This was also a great experience in terms of goal setting and the planning that is involved in order to reach my goals.