Creativity
Guitar Exam
I have spent the past few months practicing for my upcoming Grade 8 guitar exam in 2018. The requirements for the exam are to play 3 pieces, performing a range of different scales and doing an aural test. At the moment I am working on the 3 songs that my teacher has selected for me to play in the exam. As these songs have the greatest weightage in my overall grade, I have to dedicate a lot of time to each one, going through the piece section by section and addressing different components like the speed of the music, the volume at which it is played and the part it plays in the overall melody, the effects of which are known as dynamics. Therefore I take around 2 months working on each of them, practising around half an hour to an hour everyday to make sure that I have memorised the music and can play it smoothly and fluently. While this is a challenge, particularly when I’m having trouble on a certain section, it is the part of the exam that I most enjoy as it gives me the chance to show my ability on my instrument as well as the fact that I really love the sound of the pieces that I will be performing. This experience relates to the 4th CAS Learning Outcome, as I have been dedicating a lot of time overall each week towards completing my pieces, even when I have a lot of other work that I need to complete and not a lot of time to do so. I hope that this commitment and perseverance will allow me to do well in this component come the day of the exam.
First Semester of STEM
I have recently just completed my first semester as one of the chairs of STEM Club. Being part of this club so far has been so much fun and I am so proud to have had a leadership role in it. So far some of the topics we have discussed in our weekly sessions include space colonization, eugenics, nuclear weapons, coding, and artificial intelligence. It really seems as though we are beginning to achieve our goal, with everyone in the group becoming actively involved in the different conversations that we have, and so far everyone has been very accepting and encouraging of all the different opinions within the group. At the moment we have 10 members besides the chair, all from different areas of the high school and from different social groups. Yet through STEM we have been able to break these barriers to have some really insightful conversations about topics that we are all passionate about and we are now all very comfortable and at ease around each other. As the second semester approaches, we are shifting our attention to an individual task for each member rather than just discussions, with each person completing some form of digital presentation to be uploaded to a website that we have just created. This presentation can be about whatever they are passionate about within the fields of STEM and will address the nature of their topic and its impact on our world. While myself and my fellow chairs are still not 100% positive as to what this will look like, STEM being a collaborative group will look to the opinions of others as well to decide how best to approach this next stage in the year. This relates to the 3rd and 5th CAS Learning Outcomes, as this entire CAS experience is organised by myself and two of my peers and is also acting as a CAS experience for others, as well as the collaboration we have been able to achieve between different people with shared interest.
Applying Music Theory to Practical
Last weekend I sat the ABRSM Musical Theory Grade 5 examination at the Suntec City Convention Centre here in Singapore. I have been playing the classical guitar for more than 5 years now, having learned, rehearsed and performed pieces largely for the ABRSM guitar exams. After many years I have finally begun preparing to take my grade 8 exam, the last level before I can begin to work towards a music diploma. However before I can take this exam I had to complete up to grade 5 in musical theory. I have always found this a very frustrating and tedious requirement, as it involves learning about so many different classical instruments that does not include the guitar, as well as memorizing hundreds of different keys and sequences and terminologies that I have always found of little use to me. Perhaps the most agonizing part is having to memorize such an extensive amount of content, only to be asked a very limited number of questions in the final exam, such was the case this year. While I am now finished with music theory, my regular guitar lessons will be ongoing every Saturday, with the aim of passing grade 8 and therefore reaching diploma level next year.
However, my perspective on music theory changed entirely this year. This is largely because of the fact that I have reached such a high level of guitar, so all of a sudden every single bar of music is full of annotations and directions and symbols that I would have been completely unfamiliar with had it not been for my learning in musical theory. This relates to the 4th CAS learning outcome, as I found that my perseverance enabled me to apply my learning in a very useful way. Thanks to my extensive understanding of musical theory, I have been able to enhance my practical application, using the definitions I had so tediously memorized and experimenting with them in real, audible music. As a result I feel that I am a far more complete musician, and hope that I can use my new skills and understanding to become even better in the future.
CAS Supervisor: Aemilio from Aureus Academy, Singapore (admin@aureusacademy.com)
Starting STEM Club
This year I have had the opportunity, along with two of my peers, to create and lead UWC East’s very first High School STEM Club. The term ‘STEM’ stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, with the abbreviation often used to refer to career paths relating to these respective fields. Furthermore, the aim of STEM club is to create a platform for those passionate about one or more of its elements to further explore and discover them alongside peers with likeminded interests.
This process was initiated when my friend and fellow leader contacted an organization called STEM girls, a group that aims to empower women to pursue careers in the fields of STEM. She proposed to me the idea to start a club here in UWC based on their movement, something I was very excited to be a part of. There was already a group in dover functioning on the same ideas, but we tried to hold this with indifference in influencing our personal approach in any way.
With the inclusion of a friend of ours who we knew to be interested in STEM as well, our progress towards creating this club began. Our ideas and aims for the group changed drastically from beginning to end, the most influential of which being the decision to change the club from STEM Girls to just STEM. I was particularly adamant on making this change, as I felt that boys experience the same isolation as girls in school when it comes to discussing their interests in the fields of STEM due to existing social stigmas. After all, our underlying cause throughout this whole process was to create a club distinct from such stereotypes, where the the limitations of high school life should not be a hindrance to those who would like to express their interests with others.
I have long since had a distaste for the way that groups like the Science and Math Clubs here in UWC have created an incredibly competitive and knowledge-based environment, for I do not feel that passion is a measure of intelligence nor the extent to which people are willing to dedicate all of their time and interest. For example, both of the other student leaders of this group have taken two sciences and math at higher level, whilst I have chosen to pursue english as my third higher level subject with the intention to diversify my subject package more than anything else. I do not feel this makes me any less capable or interested in the field of math. Many of the math based clubs in school require students to take HL math, but I strongly disagree that there should ever be a criteria for someone to do what they enjoy. Therefore it became a primary aim for us in the structuring of this group that we would attempt to create an environment that is attainable and inclusive to everyone involved. In the end, we were able to formulate the following plan for the year ahead:
– Group discussions. In these sessions, we will discuss as a group a particular topic relating to a field of STEM that will be introduced and described to everyone by one of the leaders. These topics will be relevant in current affairs and be debatable and ethically questionable in nature, allowing us to consider different perspectives and understand the moral and otherwise responsibilities that one may face in a career relating to STEM. For example, the first session will be on the controversial topic that is eugenics and genetic manipulation, which falls under the science category.
– Begin, write and publish/present reports. this will be an individual research task that we will assign to each member, in which they will have the freedom to choose any topic related to STEM, describing this topic in detail, considering its controversies and relevance to STEM in the modern day and finally discussing and justifying their own stance towards it. While we had initially planned for this to be in the form of a report, we are now inclined towards allowing everyone to publish their findings in any (creative or otherwise) digital manner they please.
– Host panel talks during the final weeks of the academic year
CAS Supervisor: Mr. Yorksmith (MYS)
CAS Learning Outcomes: Learning outcome 3, learning outcome 5
Linked here: Details regarding the club (session dates, timing, etc.)