For the 2018/2019 school year, I have decided to join the Blue Dragon GC once again. I have been involved with Blue Dragon since taking a service trip to Hanoi in grade 7 and 8, and officially joined the GC in grade 9. Despite rejoining the GC, this year will likely be different from my previous experiences, as there will no longer be a exhibition due to legal reasons. This provides new challenges, but also new opportunities for change, as the GC will need to find a new event to raise both awareness and money. I plan to remain an active member of the GC, and may even run for chair to play a larger role in Blue Dragon.
Author Archives: stanl35240@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg
EE Writing Day Reflection
During today’s extended essay day, I completed a lot of work. I began writing my essay’s introduction in order to work towards the May 22 deadline of 1,000 words. However, I spent most of my time conducting additional research using school resources. Thanks to the supervisors, I learnt about using different types of sources as evidence for my essay. Prior to this, I had only been using historical books as evidence, before learning that I could also use documentaries. This was useful to learn as I now have access to even more sources to use as evidence for my essay. My next step will be to start applying my research by continuing the writing process so that I can write 1,000 words before the May deadline.
First Reflective Statement
I immediately knew that I wanted to write an EE topic on any historical event in Vietnam, in order to learn more about the history of my mother’s country. I focused this down to an event in the Second Indochina War, which was refined into researching about the Tet Offensive. I brainstormed ideas with my history teacher to reach my current research question, which is about the causes of the Tet Offensive. In order to minimize any bias I find in my information, I am planning to use historic books from both American and Vietnamese authors. By using a research organization document that my supervisor recommended me to use, I am able to structure what I am learning, which will help me format my actual essay. I have hitherto finished a fair amount of research, and plan to continue researching, before starting my draft in a couple months.
PSE Reflection: Gender Bias
In the past few PSE classes, we have been exploring gender equality and gender privilege/bias.
In what ways do I see gender privilege/bias in:
My Family: I believe I am quite lucky when I say that generally speaking, my family treats both genders equally. My sister and I are both encouraged to play sports, study hard but also do household chores. However, there are still some gender biases present. The main gender bias within my family is that my dad and I are expected to do any lifting or moving furniture. Additionally, I usually help my dad out with any projects involving fixing up the house, although he has offered to teach my sister how to drill and learn useful fixing skills. The main gender privilege I experience is that as a male, I could stay out significantly later with any friend I want. Even at my sister’s age, I had more freedom outside the house (specifically at night). My sister has an earlier curfew, and all her friends have to be “vetted” my parents. This isn’t to do with age; instead it happens because as a male, they expect me to be safer outside the house at night.
My Community: As a school, I think UWC is a very equal school when speaking of gender. Males and females are treated more equally than what might be expected in other schools. The main bias I notice is that it is easier for me and other guys to joke around with our teachers. I feel extremely comfortable in joking with certain teachers, even joking about each other. However, I notice that this is not usually the case between teachers and female students. Considering the potentially more extreme bias that could be present, I still feel really lucky to go to a school that treats both genders equally.
My World: Although gender equality is slowly becoming a reality in many countries around the world, gender privileges and biases are definitely still present in many countries, including Singapore. Females are generally discriminated against, with males holding many privileges, especially in the workforce. Females are usually expected to have domestic roles, whereas males would be expected to be the primary breadwinner. This is an issue that needs to be resolved, and I feel like there is a global trend towards gender equality, which will likely happen worldwide within the next few decades.
During our final activity last week, I was given a role and asked to step forward when answer questions about self-determination, education, safety, etc.
My Role: The card I received was being a publicly gay man in the Singaporean Army. I finished relatively high compared to some other demographics, although I was at a significant distance behind people such as “Straight Male Politician”. While my character may not have had freedom of sexual orientation as Singapore is a conservative nation, he would not be discriminated for much else. He would have still had a full education, money to support himself and potentially a family, and have most of his human rights met.
In your view, what are the drivers for social mobility in society? In what instances to do gender limit that mobility?:
The push for social mobility in society has been happening for many years now, with suffragettes demanding the right for women to vote, to the modern day where people are pushing for agendas like gender equality and freedom of sexual orientation. The primary driver for social mobility would be that people want to be treated equally, to be treated as fellow humans. Luckily, many people also have the motivation to protest for these rights and many governments are listening to their constituents.
The main limitation gender has on this mobility, is that those with privileges do not want to share it with everyone. Everyone likes to have privileges, but if everyone else has that privilege, is it really special? Having an advantage in life by simply being born with a certain gender and sexual orientation makes it seem that they deserved it. Although not losing any rights, losing advantages will still feel like a loss, and many people do not appreciate that. This problem likely stems that many lack the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
What can I do to combat negative gender stereotypes or tackle gender bias?:
Although I am one singular person and therefore my impact may be limited in scope, there are certainly some positive changes I can make. If I ensure I don’t use any gender stereotypes, I will naturally treat others of different genders equally (although I feel like I already do this). While I can change the way I treat others, I unfortunately am unable to change my family’s pre-existing gender biases. Although my parents are relatively progressive thinking, the rest of my family is extremely conservative. For example, my Vietnamese grandparents expect my sister to learn skills like cooking and cleaning instead of playing a lot of sports. While I may not change their stance on this, I can still ensure that I remain a good person.
Model United Nations (IASAS) Reflection
Link to the reflection: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H9OpWbq_D1yFyiLYag7UdQDscHoLV6wA/view?usp=sharing
Learning Outcome 6 was referenced in this reflection.
Service: Memoirs of a Pioneer Generation Post-Interview Reflection
Video Reflection is in this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nldESFMu54AUrLMriUUxhC5y1bW0smy5/view?usp=sharing
Learning Outcome 1 was referenced in this reflection.
Personality Type
After taking the Myer-Briggs test I found my personality type to be an INTP. I found this to be a fairly accurate assessment after reading up on the personality type, coupled with its strengths and weaknesses. Although there were some discrepancies, most of what I was reading truly reflected me and my personality.
The strengths of a INTP that I identify with are:
- Open-Minded
- Enthusiastic
- Objective
- Imaginative
I believe that these are some of traits which I would consider a strength in myself. I specifically consider myself to be enthusiastic, especially when I am passionate about a certain subject.
The general careers INTPs enjoy are focused around Law, Business or Engineering. I am extremely interested in law, and aim to study that in university. That being said, I am steadily enjoying learning about business more and more.
A famous person with an INTP personality type is Bill Gates. Although Bill Gates is a famous technological developer, I believe that it is possible I could share a similar personality type.
Service (Memoirs of a Pioneer Generation) Nov 8 2018
Service has been incredibly fun this year. Although personal fun may not be the goal of our service, it has been a side effect of what we do with the elderly at Evergreen Centre.
Our end objective of the service is to compile a short book about the lives of the the elderly we work with, who are part of Singapore’s pioneer generation. However, before we can interview the elderly on their lives, we need to build a rapport with them, in order for them to feel comfortable sharing stories. We are aiming to build this rapport by talking with them while playing games such Bingo or Jenga.
So far, we have already interviewed a couple of senior citizens and are still working on building up a rapport with the others. Some of them have even started to teach us how to play games that they enjoy.
I believe I have demonstrated Learning outcome 3 in this service. Before every sessions, my group and I have to plan our desired outcome for the day’s service, in order to reach our final objective of compiling the stories. Everything we do has an important purpose for helping us achieve our final goal.
End of the football season Oct 26 2018
On October 26th 2018 I played my final match for the 2018 football season. Although the league hasn’t quite finished for all teams, the UWC team has already played all of its competitive matches. I have to admit, this season was quite fun, if not successful. Our team this year got along really well with each other, and I have befriended some students in grade 12 thanks to all the training sessions and matches we participated in together.
While the season was certainly enjoyable, our team only had one win this season, where we beat our rivals Dover. The rest of our matches were often hard-fought only to finish with defeat. We worked really hard together as a team in the matches and it was disappointing to see all our effort achieve so little. We used our wish for success as a drive to work hard in our training sessions. I often pushed myself far beyond what I thought I could do during these sessions, and I believe it has paid off with my goalkeeping skills improving.
I believe I had achieved learning outcome 5 in this activity. Learning outcome 5 states: Students are able to identify, demonstrate and critically discuss the benefits and challenges of collaboration gained through CAS experiences. In order for me to play well within the team, I had to work well with my teammates. In the initial matches, me and my defenders seemed to lack chemistry and we could not work out an effective system of communicating to each other while the ball was in play. This resulted in some unnecessary goals conceded or forced me to make difficult saves. In the following matches, we discussed with each other on how to improve our collective defence and agreed that as I was the goalkeeper, I should be in charge of coordinating the defenders. Although we still conceded some goals with this system, they were because the opposition’s attackers deserved it and not because we could not coordinate.
I have really enjoyed this football season despite it’s toughness and defeats, and look forward to playing again next year.
Model United Nations Conference 1 (MUNUWC)
The preparation for my Model United Conference (MUN) conference began 2 weeks before the conference itself. On the 13th of September I received my delegation for the conference – An advocate of the USA in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The case in question was regarding US attacks on Iranian oil platforms during 1987-1988.
As there are two advocates representing one nation per case, I worked with a partner throughout this entire process. For this particular conference, my fellow advocate happened to be a good friend: Thomas Mclaughlin.
In the initial stages of preparation, Tom and I had to research the context of the case, as our ICJ case was based on a real case brought to court in 1993. Although the case may be real, we are not allowed to use any official ICJ documents as our evidence, nor could we copy past arguments word for word. We had to therefore find our own evidence and craft our own arguments.
After acquainting ourselves with the context of the case, Tom and I began researching for reliable and unbiased pieces of evidence which would be able to support are arguments in the conference. This process took numerous hours, done both in school during our MUN training sessions, or at home, done over Skype calls. Although our final documentary manifest consisted of 14 pieces of evidence, Tom and I had finished up with nearly 50 sources of information. These pieces of evidence included documents of treaties (such as the 1955 Treaty of Amity between Iran and the US), news articles, interviews and photographs.
Asides from researching for evidence, Tom and I also needed to find two witnesses for our conference, and create a memoranda which detailed our arguments, prayer for relief and statement of law among other things. Looking for witnesses who had convincing pieces of evidence to bring to the court was not that difficult. Finding people from our school who wouldn’t mind pretending to be witnesses for our case was the tough part. Being a witness in a MUN ICJ case can be quite time-consuming and stressful, without bringing in large benefits to yourself. Many people whom we asked, declined the opportunity as they weren’t prepared to spend time on helping our case. After over nearly an hour of looking, asking and persuading people to become witnesses, we finally found two students and MUN delegates who were not only willing, but keen to help.
Our witnesses were both students in Grade 9 who had only done middle school MUN conferences. Their names were Nimisha Iyer and Areeb Latifi. Thomas and I began prepping them for their roles during our MUN training session only 2 days before the start of our conference. We prepped them by handing them witness transcripts we wrote and giving them relevant information to bring them up to speed regarding our case. Our preparation of Nimisha and Areeb also included conducting mock interviews and cross examination, until we felt they were ready to testify during our conference.
The entire preparation process for the MUNUWC conference was quite a difficult process. Although I achieved all of the learning outcomes during this process, the primary one I will look at in this post are Learning Outcome 2 .
Learning Outcome 2 states that “A new challenge may be an unfamiliar experience, or an extension of an existing one. The newly acquired or developed skills may be shown through experiences that the student has not previously undertaken or through increased expertise in an established area“.
Although I had attended around 4 MUN conferences before the preparation process for this year’s MUNUWC, I had never took part in a ICJ case before. In MUN, the procedures for ICJ are vastly different than that of other committees, as ICJ sought to recreate a courtroom scenario.
For other committees all that is often needed for preparation is understanding of the issue, a short 1 minutes opening speech and some clauses to add to a resolution. ICJ requires immensely more preparation than other committees as we have to produce a Memoranda, Witness Transcript, Documentary Evidence and Stipulations document. Additionally, our opening statement had to be 25 minutes long. Even with Tom and I splitting the opening statement in half, I still had to make a speech for 12 and a half minutes.
During the conference, I thoroughly enjoyed the high level of debate between Tom and I, and the advocates for Iran. We were all analysing every word and argument for flaws, and were prepared to object to any statement that shouldn’t be said. Additionally, I had to be careful with my own word choice to avoid any objections.
While questioning the opposing witnesses, Tom and I formulated an effective strategy. By working in tandem and asking continuous questions and follow ups, and interrupting answers that didn’t help us, we were able to poke holes in their arguments and even cause some slip-ups. In our spare time, we would write new speeches, create new arguments while preparing rebuttals. We had to constantly create new strategies and arguments in order to keep our opposing advocates off guard.
Despite our best efforts, the other advocates won the case, as it ultimately came down to their real-life country actually having more evidence. In the real-life scenario, the US was genuinely going against international law with little evidence to justify their actions. Although I do not want to downplay the good debating from the advocates of Iran, the fact of the matter was Tom and I had to make do with inferior evidence.
Even though we lost the case, we both won the best advocates award. This was an exciting moment for me as this is the highest achievement someone can get in MUN, and I was proud to have won it with Thomas. We had worked really hard for weeks and our efforts paid off.
As evidence for my work, here is a google folder with all our documents.