In the beginning of Grade 12, I remained part of LEI as part of an informal guidance panel helping the new chair settling into their role. One of the projects we have done is to organise and run a workshop helping the members of the various Environmental Initiatives get to know one another, get a better understanding of their EI, and begin goal-setting. Although I am quite familiar with organising large events, something that was quite new to me was what my teacher facilitator called “grazing”. This means not speaking as the presenter in the workshop but rather going around between the groups as they discussed and worked with one another to ask guiding questions, answer questions they may have about what they just heard, or deliver materials they need. This was challenging to me because I am not used to talking to groups of people and it was quite difficult having to be the expert in the room. However, I managed to get through it by asking the teacher facilitators for advice during low moments, observing what they are doing, and asking myself what kind of person I would want grazing if I were one of the EI members attending the event. I believe I managed to meet LO2 quite well because I got positive feedback from some groups that my advice helped them understand an activity better or I could successfully deliver to them materials that they needed but were missing from their table. I don’t think I will be doing much event grazing in the future, but I think that this improved ability to improvise socially will be useful.
In October, I decided to leave LEI. This was a slightly difficult decision to make, so it falls under LO7. On one hand, I wanted to stay because the group did not seem fully settled yet and the new chair did not seem that confident in their role. On the other hand, my mental health was suffering due to a lot of urgent IB deadlines I was behind on and university applications piling up . This meant I often would have very little mental energy to contribute to LEI sessions. In other words, not only was participating in LEI contributing to my stress, I worried that I would let the group down knowing that if I were given responsibility in a project I would likely not be able to put the work in. Thus for both my sake and the group’s I decided to leave. I felt weak to have to be the first grade 12 to leave (it is expected for grade 12 members to leave services within the first term) and guilty. But then I remembered that I am still leading GEP, and being an active member of discussions in class. I also reminded myself that the deadlines I was facing at that time were much more important than a high school service commitment.
This taught me that when things get really tough, I shouldn’t try to push myself and hope I can pull through, instead I should look at the big picture and focus just on my immediate priorities (my mental health, passing the IB, etc) and let go of everything else. My mental health and “productivity” is still quite low, but I think it would be worse if I had still stayed in LEI. I think I made the right decision.