EE Reflection Three

Over the last year of researching and writing my EE, I’ve learned a lot about film. Through the EE process, I changed my mind a lot such as what my theoretical focus was going to be and the movies I was going to analyze.

Pros:

  1. The freedom I had with the topic I wanted to explore;
    1. Changed my ideas a lot, my initial idea was to explore Disney, whilst now I explored more action-based films such as Captain Marvel. 
  2. The topic I explored;
    1. The term: The Male Gaze is usually considered to have a negative connotation whilst after exploring the theory I found that the Male Gaze Theory is not something negative but rather just a theory that used to be more applicable. 
  3. I now have a better outlook on how characters are represented on screen and how that relates to the cultural context of the release time. 

Problems:

  1. How to structure the creative EE
  2. Understanding what the examiners want in terms of the assessment
  3. Analyzing Captain Marvel because of how recent it was, there was no content on it whereas there was a lot of film content on Vertigo

Ultimately, I’m happy with how my EE turned out.

CAS Learning Outcomes

LO1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

LO2: Demonstrate that they have undertaken challenges, developing new skills in the process

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in their CAS experiences

LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

LO6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

LO7: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions

LO1: Football 2019

LO1: Identify their own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

As I’ve previously identified in my Preseason Football reflection, throughout the summer I took the time to practice my free kicks as a way to prepare for the season and although that was a good goal at the time, throughout the season I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with ball-handling, as I am a defensive player I often don’t get to dribble through people but because we had more 7-aside games this year I was able to practice my ball-handling skills. As a strength this season it would definitely be my defensive skills, I’ve improved a lot over the past 3 months due to the feedback I’ve gotten from my coaches. Something I do need to improve on are my first touches on the ball, I’ve been improving on my heading skills but I do still need to improve on getting control over the ball with my feet. Often what happens is I don’t lean forward enough, which causes it to bounce up more than it would if I didn’t.

 

LO1: Demiurge Reflection 2018

LO 1: Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.

 

First of all, Aanya Malashetti, a good friend of mine invited me to join Demiurge. When I asked what the club does she responded with that they were simply a writing club. This completely made me not want to join the club as I don’t love writing that much, yet I forced myself to do it at first as I thought “it would look good on my CAS”. That is possibly the worst reason to join a club, but I did. When I went to my first discussion I realized that Demiurge is a writing club, that collects other pieces of work from around the school and posts it to the Demiurge website. This really intrigued me as I knew that there would be a ‘tech’ side to this club, therefore I took it upon myself to run the ‘tech’ department, making all possible changes to the website to make it feel less like a UWC school website and make it look like a writing clubs creative, innovative website. Throughout the last couple of weeks, I’ve improved my tech skills and furthered my understandings photoshop and adobe illustrator that I used to make the Demiurge’s logo.

LO2: Pre-Season Softball & Softball 2020 (NOT DONE)

LO2: Demonstrate that they have undertaken challenges, developing new skills in the process

 

This year in Pre-Season softball, the school decided to hire a professional softball coach for pre-season. Personally, this has made me grow as a softball player so much, over the last 2 months of pre-season softball I’ve hit the ball harder than I ever could and the coach has also taught us more about fielding through simple fielding drills which has not only made us grow independently but also as a team, we are much quicker at communicating with each other then we were before.

The coach has made me improve mostly on my batting skills, before I didn’t understand how the left and right arm should work together

LO2: Minds Reflection 2018

LO 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.

I’d like to start off by saying what my specific service does and what it aims to do: In 2018-19, our service group is committed to ensuring the happiness of our clients through building a relationship with them. This year, I’ve been elected as the chair of the service.  I specifically wanted to be the chair of this service because of the clients. I have worked with the mentally disabled before and therefore I’ve had experience with them. In the past, I have really enjoyed working with them because I know that when we (the service group) come, it’s the highlight of their day or even week. I’ve been really enjoying going to the MINDS center as the more we go the more people I recognize, last time we went a few of our clients recognized me and that honestly made me feel like I was actually contributing and adding to their lives, which is our main goal.

In conclusion, I’ve been given the opportunity to make other people’s lives happier and I am going to try to do so as much as I can, as cheesy as that sounds

LO3 & LO6: Project Week: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

In Grade 11, all students are obligated to participate in Project week, Project Week is a task that requires a lot of preparation and investigation. Students fly to a destination of their choice and pick two of the CAS requirements to do. My group decided we wanted to do all three of the CAS requirements as we wanted to maximize our time there, we were initially going to go to Bangkok Thailand to surf and help an organization there but sadly, our plan fell through as the organization wasn’t approved by the school due to safety regulations. After careful consideration and talking to some Grade 12s that did Project Week last year we decided we wanted to go to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to help out an NGO called Mission Impossible. They had hosted groups in the past but due to high demand, we weren’t able to go. After getting rejected again our project supervisor suggested looking into an NGO called ISF which is an organization that works with children that are disadvantaged. In the end, I feel like we truly did make an impact while we were there, the kids seemed to have a lot of fun and we were able to teach them a lot of games, we were also able to teach them simple math and English which the teachers there seemed to appreciate that we still added in that learning aspect.

 

LO6:  Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

The planning of our project week as Grade 11’s is crucial as it will determine whether or not we are actually going to be learning something and contributing to the community to where ever we are going. For project week we need to add at least 2 out of the 3 CAS requirements, my group and I actually want to be able to do all three as we want to maximize our time away, for Creativity we are looking at Pottery or a painting class, this will allow us to indulge in some of the cultures as right now we are planning to go to either Bangkok or Cambodia. As my group is made up of athletes we want to be able to do some physical activity as we are going to be going to such a beautiful place and we want to see the country by going on a bike ride etc.

As a group, we are planning on 100% working with some type of service or GC as we want to be able to make an impact on the people there. Right now we don’t know what we are going to be doing 100% but we intend to do something along the lines of working with children, where we are planning to go has a lot of poverty and this is a global issue, by helping out for 2 or 3 days at a school or childrens center we will try to impact their lives in the most positive way as we can.

 

LO3: Football Preseason

LO3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

As preparation for my ‘real’ CAS experience, Football U18A, I did preseason football, this gives me the opportunity to get my head back into the game as this activity starts in May and I hadn’t played football since November. Getting back into it before the season actually starts makes me more motivated, it shows me what I need to work on and what I can already do. Preseason football allowed me to pinpoint what I need to work on throughout the summer so that I can be as good as possible for when my season starts. Over this summer, for example, I was back in the Netherlands, which meant I had access to a football pitch near my house, this allowed me to practice my free-kicks and by practicing them every week I finally got confident and it really helped my skill level grow.

LO4: Softball Preseason Reflection 2018-2019

LO4-Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences. Students can articulate the stages from conceiving an idea to executing a plan for a CAS experience or series of CAS experiences.

I’d like to start off talking about my previous years playing Softball at UWC. Grade 9 was the first time I had ever hear of Softball since a few of my friends were trying out. After attending the try-outs in grade 9  I realized I had a big passion for the sport, I got into the B team that year and I was very happy with the result considering I had never played before. Although I was very happy I couldn’t help but want to be in the A team considering some of my very close friends made that team. Throughout the whole softball season, I continued to improve my skills in softball and also leadership. The next year, my hard work paid off and I got into the A-team and even made Co-Captain of the team, this whole experience taught me that if you really work for something that you want you will achieve it. Softball has been an amazing journey for me and even though it was a lot of hard work and dedication I really enjoyed the experience. Softball has taught me a lot about being a leader and how to make friends, it’s a team sport and I’ve always loved that aspect about it because someone always has your back.

Now to clarify how this has anything to do with the Learning Outcome, in grade 9 I set myself a goal to get into the A team, when I reached that goal I kept pushing myself more and more to see if I can reach that goal. In Season 3, which is the softball season, my goal is to develop my leadership skills even further and this will be an ongoing target/goal, that’s my plan for this season and I hope I at least learn something new along the way.