My service, Special Olympics Badminton, is getting ready for the most exciting event of the year… special Olympics. This event gathers athletes around all Singapore to play badminton and other sports such as swimming, football, basketball etc. Our badminton team started preparing for this competition from the first Thursday of May since the tournament is going to happen around the first two weeks of June. So far, athletes have been divided by their skills and agility into three groups: beginners, medium and advanced. Students have been also split up to assist the athletes in their training. I am one of the four coaches for beginners ( since I am a beginner myself) and, to be prepared for this role, I have been trained in the last session by another student who is very good at playing that taught me some basic steps and movements I can teach to my group. I feel that no matter what results our athletes are gonna score, what medals they are gonna win, the long process to get until here has been fantastic. As we are approaching the end of the year and the end of the service, I feel i have developed a strong connection with the all the athletes. Thanks to them have learned how much a simple smile can change a person’s day, because at the end of the day, no matter how much productive or studying you can be, the people that surround you, are the ones that make your day.
me
Dance showcase – Final reflection
It was great. The show is over and the audience is enthusiastic of salsa Cubana. As soon as I walked on stage I gave everything I had during those 3 minutes, really communicating joy and enthusiasm for this dance and the culture behind it. Our performance was really good, no mistakes, steps on time and everyone had a smile printed on their faces.As soon as we walked out of stage I heard screaming and shouting from the public and this really paid me off of all the effort we put in this event.
I was reluctant about joining this showcase at the start but I must admit now that it worth. I learned from this experience how to can be difficult putting together a show that lasts just 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Even if I joined and performed in Culturama, for this showcase I followed every step of preparation, since the beginning of the choreography until the outfit.
I am very satisfied of the work I have done and grateful for the great people I had the chance to work with.
Mentoring primary school. Season 2
I have enjoyed mentoring primary school since the beginning of the year and still now every time I got to the class is a moment of joy. I found I have I great connections with the kids, from who is shyer until who is too excited. I regret not having spent as much time as I wanted with them due to my personal organization that prevented me to go see them every week. During my last visit on the last week before the CNY break I promised them and the teacher I would bring them to a tour of the boarding house as soon as we come back from holidays.
I am looking forward to this and I am planning games and activity to do with them when they’ll visit the house.
Intuition: can we rely on it?
I consider intuition as a way of knowing that can be reliable only in situations where there are the right premises. We affirm that a problem or a situation can be either solved or understood using intuition when we come up with a conclusion that we just feel it’s right, apparently with no logical reasoning to support it. I think that intuition, as a way of knowing, can be distinguished into two branches:
Intuition as automatic reasonings = In some occasions, as in the example analyzed in TOK class, intuition can be defined as a very rapid reasoning that a person can elaborate, based on the many experiences he/she had on that area of interest. Because of the understanding developed in the specific area, he/she can quickly solve the issue by just looking at it, requiring no time to comprehend and analyze the controversy. I think this type of intuition can be very reliable and, if understood its reasoning, can lead to the same answer as a slower logical reasoning.
Inexplicable Intuition = There has been, at least once in everybody’s lifetime, a moment in which we just knew the answer, an instant where an idea appears in your mind faster than normal thinking, resulting as right. There is no logical explanation for such thing as this kind of intuition and therefore there is no right answer to what extent we can rely on it.
Ultimately I think intuition should play a role in our acquisition of knowledge only in some certain areas of knowledge, not all of them. Intuition can be easily associated with “The Arts”. How many time we heard talking about pieces of art, or pieces of theatre, or great scenes in films where the artist just felt the way the artwork needed to be addressed to. Intuition is required, in this case, to purely express feelings and emotions that would have been modified and forced if thought too much. On the other side, it is not recommended to apply intuition as a way of knowledge to Mathematics or Natural Sciences because it would be placed in contrast with the objective reasoning required in these areas.
TOK- Describe a time when you made a bad decision
I have always liked cinema theatres. On November I started searching for a nice cinema theatre to go to in Singapore because until that time I only saw mall cinemas or IMAX which I don’t personally like because they are too dispersive and crowded for me. Thanks to my researches I discovered a cinema near to the stadium called “The projector”. I checked online tickets prices for regular screenings and I found out that the price for one ticket is 15 but they have 5 Singapore dollars discount for students. The price for me would have been 10 dollars which, translated into euro, is equal to 7.5 euro. Evaluating that I used to pay 5 euro to go to the cinema in Italy I concluded that going to the cinema it’s way more expensive in Singapore than in my city so I decided to search my movie online.
Reflecting now, after have been listening to Dan Gilbert talks about mistakes we regularly make on evaluating odds and values, I understood I made the error of confronting this new price and students discount with what I was used to paying in the past without considering the context that that price had. This cinema in Singapore is the only one that offers no-blockbuster movies and it has no the same size as the other multiplex in the city. At the end, I now realize that paying 2.5 more euro to have a cinema like that it is not such an insane idea as I thought before because it is offering something unique between all others offers which make it gains value.
Analyzing the reasoning of my choice through a syllogism it is possible to better understand the mistake I did:
The kind of cinema I like costs 5 euro
The kind of cinema I like in Singapore costs 7.5 euro
Therefore
Singapore cinema is too expensive
Without context, this syllogism may seem right but the problem here is that I am only comparing the price with what I was used to paying and I am not considering the new context I am in now, that in this case is Singapore. For this reason, I did not go to the cinema for all this time thinking that this price was too much and I couldn’t afford 2.5 euro of difference. I have now understood that it is important to consider all aspects of an offer, comprehending the reason of that cost, not just only comparing with my little experience.
I think I’m going to the cinema this weekend.
Mathematic method
My mathematics experiences are not the best ones. Since I was in primary school I always found mathematics a nice subject but I was convinced that It was not for me. We were just two separate and far worlds. My mathematics education it started as classical Italian one consisting of learning a formula or a geometric theorem and, once understood and memorized, applied it to exercises that will make your test. This all finished with a simple process of memorization and exercise that not include a lot of freedom and flexibility in thinking. When I joined this school I understood since the first lesson the enormous difference in the approach of teaching and learning mathematics. From what I experienced here I can say that mathematics is not about finding the solution but the method to reach it. That’s what really stimulate your intelligence and improve your skills in reasoning. Because of all humans are different and every human being has a unique intelligence and way of thinking, millions are the solutions and the possible paths to follow to solve a single problem. To solve a mathematics problem it’s fundamental to use the mathematics method that is (for me very interesting and stimulating) characterized by certain rules, fixed in order to establish basic common logic thinking. These rules are called axioms that,as definition, are statements or propositions which are regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true. After agreeing about this, logic starts to guide the situation. In order to get to the solution, you need to find your own path helping yourself with logic, rules and formulas pertinent to the case. In some case the solution is easy to find, the problem is just in the way the numbers are written down that doesn’t make it is easy for you to comprehend, so it’s just necessary to convert those numbers in a form more understandable for you.
Having studied the scientific method it is now possible to compare it to the mathematical one.
What really differentiates mathematics from the other sciences is the fact that there is no practice in math: everything is just theory, there is no needing of physical experiments but everything could be proved on a piece of paper. If in the scientific method. The mathematical knowledge is purely abstract instead, the scientific knowledge studies the physical world that does not take place just in our mind but it comes from inductions from the real world. Comparing the logic behind “axioms and theorem” to the more scientific terms “observation and hypothesis” I think the main difference between them is that mathematics method, taking place in our mind, it completely depends on our perspective and own logic but scientific hypothesis are consequences of a visible objective phenomenon that, for sure could be interpreted through several ways, but it happens inevitably, not depending on you. This brings me to my conclusion: mathematics it’s a human creation. It’s a method which we can use to elaborate pieces of information as knowledge. It’s a useful tool we can use to unpack problems and create solutions but it is not in itself a
Equality Focus Group reflection!!
I joined the equality focus group because I want to understand more, throughout this year, about LGBTQ community and experience more of what happen around it.In my previous country, Italy, I’ve never had the chance to join a group like this because there is not sensibility for this community and there are still a lot of misconceptions and prejudices about people with different sexual orientations.During our meetings we discuss and explore about the definition of gender and sexuality, and I realized that there is much more than I thought! I’ve been raised following catholic and western values that restricted my mindset about the concept of sexuality and freedom.This group is very inspiring, it lets everyone express themselves and discuss about facts concerned sexual orientation. Being part of this community has opened my eyes to those issues and concerns that I ignored before.I’m building, thought the discussions and confronts we have, my own opinion about sexuality and I’m really happy that I can do it with wonderful and kind people as the Equality focus group ones.
The place that has shaped my life
Hi! My name is Lorenzo , and this is my first portfolio post. In this first article I’m going to talk about the place that has shaped my life so far. This place is Naples , the city were was born. I love my city , its culture, and the way people live here is unique and sometimes very unusual. This part of the world has actually shaped me in my whole character and personality from the way I relate to people until what I eat.
One of the many reasons I decided to start this UWC journey is because I want to experience different way of living and meet new people to better understand the world and how it works. Coming back to my city, the Neapolitan population is strongly attached to his culture so I have, as well, the tendency of preserve my native language and my own dialect. The eating philosophy is also another thing that my city has given me, people in Italy ( but specifically in the south) consider the meals as an important moment in the daytime where all the people reunites to share stories and get to know each other. For this reason , when I came here in Singapore , it was strange for me in the firsts days, seeing people spending just like 15-20 minutes on eating at lunch.
I’m exited to know cultures from all around the world and to live as best as I can this UWC experience.