Author Archives: Pranav Harish

CAS Reflection – Running, Yoga and Cardio in Summer (Activity)

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These 3 months were once more characterised by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it quite hard for us to go back to our normal sports such as tennis and badminton, due to continuation of restrictions. Therefore, it was up to adapting our exercise routines once more to fit in different ways of exercising both from home and from outside when the restrictions eased up a little bit as well.

I think that the biggest difference these 3 months have made have been in the advent of consistency and consistent, balanced exercise; from practicing home cardio workouts with online YouTube videos, which was easy enough due to being used to it from the April itself, I was able to diversify my exercise schedule to include parts of yoga as well, and ended it with gymming and running too. I think that over time, the stamina and endurance I have built up as a result of meeting my goal of a consistent exercise schedule has helped me learn what muscles to target when, and what muscles to give a break when it is required. This time in quarantine has given me a chance to be more aware about how such fitness routines can impact my body, and I hope to use these lessons of recovery, stamina and perseverance when I am back on the tennis and badminton court hopefully soon as well.

 

Tarot Card Reading

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I interpret these three cards as being a journey of my 18th year of life, and my transition to adulthood in a way. For me, the lady seems to represent my mother; and how she has taken care of me through my young and adolescent years. The next card seems to represent to me the idea of a gentleman through maturity; rather, the journey I will go through to become a mature, respected, and well informed young gentleman. Finally, the last card seems to show me what I believe should be my priority right now; finishing high school on a high, and graduating with good academic achievements. The book shows me the importance of reading and revision, and how, for what I wish to do in the future, critical reading and such will be a skill most desired. 

CAS Reflection – Being in the Humanities Magazine (Creativity)

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LO 1 Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Being in the humanities magazine for grade 11 was a choice I made due to me being able to identify my strength of being a good critical reader and writer. I thought something like being part of a magazine would be a great place for me to put my writing skills to practice, seeing as my 3 HLs are all essay based subjects as well. However, being part of the activity also made it so that I was able to make a lot of identifications of my own weaknesses and where I could improve in not only the way that I write, but the way I work in a team. We were slotted into roles such as editors, layout team, etc. with everyone getting the chance to be a writer. Being someone who is keen about writing and who feels confident in such a skill, I was keen to take on the role of editor and did so with confidence. I was able to edit several articles that were written by members of our activity, and talk to different people of different grades and see what their thought process was about while they were writing the work that I edited. I think that editing others people work was key in giving me insight to my own writing process; for example, recognising something good that someone else did with the way that they wrote something gave me ideas of my own for the kind of things I wanted to write about. It was a beneficial process in that I was able to draw inspiration from reading and editing other pieces of writing.

I think that the biggest strength of the magazine was that there was a strong sense of collaboration between everyone. By splitting up everyone into different organisations and different roles and responsibilities, it was easy to see how each different department had to work together until putting together the final product meant everyone was working with everyone else. It was easy to see the benefit of such collaboration, seeing as we were able to come to a consensus about a number of things, such as the layout team’s designs, the formatting of articles, deciding on article titles and a lot more. In the end, everyone came together and made it a team process and this was the most important take away for me, to see how such teamwork was beneficiary.

CAS Reflection – NYAA Gold Award

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Over the past year of G11, I have been a part of the NYAA Gold Award. This award has required me to be consistent in my reflection process of the different components of healthy living, community project, service and outdoor education. I have been using my sports involvement of tennis and badminton as well as continued exercise routines during quarantine, my involvement in the Voice of World NGO cyclone awareness video for West Bengal in India, my outbound expedition trip to Tioman as well as my involvement with the Bedok Salvation Army elderly daycare centre as evidence for my involvement in this award.

There have been definitely been challenges in undertaking this process; I have had to persevere and constantly remind myself to log and capture evidence of these activities, as well as challenge myself to be completely reflective of any and all processes that I undertake during my involvement in this award too. I think that being a part of this award has also helped me become a more well rounded individual, and brought a sense of balance to my life at school. It ensures that I have taken part in issues of global significance and taken the incentive to play my part in doing so, while at the same time it has given me the opportunity to plan and undertake my own CAS activities. Furthermore, for projects such as the awareness video and the expedition, it has shown me the benefits of collaboration in the enrichment of myself as an individual, and what working with others can bring to the table for the whole group as well as for the individual.

I do believe that I have come out of NYAA a more well-rounded individual, and that the lessons I have learned through my participation in G11 will transfer through to my continued involvement in Grade 12 as well.

Here is a link to my mid-stage reflection.

Here is a link to my NYAA portfolio section, which entails all of the activities that I have taken part in over the year of G11 and hope to continue into G12.

NYAA Healthy Living Reflection – July 2020

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This month, there came an easing on some of the restrictions; this meant that public facilities such as the pool and gym were now open for use, and I was able to start going out for runs although they were just in my condo. This month was really just being focused on consistency and the ability to space out the kind of exercises I do and what parts of my body I wanted to target in specific. Running helped with cardiovascular fitness, which to me felt like an overall workout of pretty much the whole body. In the gym though, I was helped by my dad who has a lot of experience with gym equipment, being an avid gym goer over the years, and was able to understand how certain exercises with certain equipment can impact certain parts of the body as well.

I think that it was clear to see the progress that I was making with my running time; with consistent exercise and practice, I found the times decreasing over the space of the month and I saw how repeated targeting of a certain exercise meant that over time it would be much easier to do. It definitely also helps in that it is a stamina booster for exercises in the gym, which are more of an anaerobic exercise requiring short bursts of energy. As per my goal of learning about targeting certain muscles with certain exercises, I think my time in the gym really helped me with doing this. It was clear to see that I was making progress over the month, and it is a skill that will be extremely useful for the future.

 

CAS Final Reflection – Music Soundbeam with Bedok Peacehaven Day Centre (Service)

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LO 1 Identifying own strengths and develop areas for personal growth

LO 6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance

LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

 

The final 4-6 months of service in grade 11 were rather unusual; due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Firstly, we had to remain in classrooms for the time that we were in school and could not visit the shelter due to safety restrictions. However, this meant that this was great time for personal reflection and group reflection; we were able to effectively discuss and determine what some flaws and strengths were, both for the group and for ourselves. I was able to understand what my strengths were, being part of a service as such, as well as identifying areas for improvement such as communication and better time management when it comes to planning activities and ideas. Furthermore, after we were forced to go online I feel that having such conversations became a lot easier, even though we had to be online; I think that it had come to a point where we trusted each other enough as service group to recognise where we lacked and where we could do better in a lot of scenarios. Being online consisted mainly of discussions regarding some touch ups of the website, which was my job as communications chair, as well as plans for next year. Here is a link to the website that I developed for the service.

Being able to have such discussions were fruitful in that we were able to go back home and do some more research for the next sessions to really see the places in which we could make the biggest impact. In other words, we felt that we were engaging with the issue on quite a big level, because we poured time into researching the biggest issues faced by our target audience as well as brainstorming some of the best ways that we could help with this issue. Our service leadership team was the one meeting constantly and staying in touch over the online period, so we were able to talk about some plans that we would put in place in order to correct some of the mistakes we had made for our 12th Grade experience in this service. The biggest part of this was really doing some good research that helped us engage with the issue by bringing more awareness to us about it, but also by finding ways to bring more awareness to the community.

Commitment and perseverance were like no other in our service; everyone was more or less always there and on time as well, and when we planned to meet online to discuss things such as how the website should look, or what sort of systems we should implement for the next year, our leadership team was always committed to giving ideas and having great discussions.

Nothing was more important than collaboration in this process, in my opinion; without such a strong sense of teamwork, we would never have been able to experience some of the success that we did during our first year with this service. We understood how there can be so many benefits to brainstorming and experimenting in a group, because it gives us a chance to hear everyone’s ideas for what can be done for the service. It leaves us confident that we will never run out of ideas, and we will always have a good team to back us up with brainstorming and implementation of certain activities. I am really looking forward to continuing this service next year as well, for my NYAA award.

 

 

 

CAS Reflection – ITP Percussion (Creativity)

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

LO 4 Show commitment to and perseverance in your CAS experiences

Learning how to play the drums in 11th grade was something that was completely new to me, as I had only really had experience in playing the guitar and the bass. I had no idea what it would be like, or how easy/hard it would be for me to adapt to the instrument; I have a history of playing instruments and reading sheet music, so skills such as those definitely made it easier for me in the long run. I think that it was an unfamiliar experience for me that I was able to make familiar with a lot of practice and perseverance; sometimes, it can really feel easy to give up and quit when you can’t really get a song or a certain sequence right, but I think that I showed perseverance, and adapted the drums into my schedule as a regular practice during the day to come out of this experience as a much better drummer and a more well rounded musician. By building on a previous experience of starting to learn instruments and using my knowledge of sheet music, I was able to make various connections between the drums and other instruments that I know of already; I think that it was great I had a foundation to go off of when starting my process. Playing the drums has helped me in other areas as well, such as standing in for the drummer during house band rehearsals if required, or joining the percussion ensemble where I am eager to try new instruments that the drums have given a good foundation to learn and experiment with. I will really be looking forward to continuing the drums in Grade 12 and beyond, and I think that any musical skill is a good skill to have.

CAS Reflection – End of Humanities Magazine (Creativity)

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4. Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences.

Coming to the end of G11 saw the end of my tenure in the humanities magazine. It was something that I felt very passionate about doing, and thoroughly enjoyed my opportunity to write a double feature for the first magazine of the year. We were able to show commitment and perseverance in the way that we were actively creating material for the magazine while also spending time selling and distributing it to the school public. I think we recognised well the role we had to play as the creators of the magazine, but also those who were distributing the magazines around too. It was perseverance and commitment on our part to spend some of our own time, especially during events such as the 3 way conferences, to sell the magazines to parents and students alike.

7. Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions.

Finally, I think the biggest lesson learned was recognising the ethics of choices and actions taken, especially on a public forum like a magazine. I was really able to understand the conditions that are placed on a writer in terms of how they have to be aware of their target audience, while recognising certain sensitivities that might not be as explicitly on the surface as others. There are certain nuances when it comes to sharing one’s perspectives in a magazine, and it was really helpful to understand the different ways in which certain language might evoke different responses from different people.

NYAA 3 Month Reflection – Healthy Living (May to July)

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These 3 months were once more characterised by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it quite hard for us to go back to our normal sports such as tennis and badminton, due to continuation of restrictions. Therefore, it was up to adapting our exercise routines once more to fit in different ways of exercising both from home and from outside when the restrictions eased up a little bit as well.

I think that the biggest difference these 3 months have made have been in the advent of consistency and consistent, balanced exercise; from practicing home cardio workouts with online YouTube videos, which was easy enough due to being used to it from the April itself, I was able to diversify my exercise schedule to include parts of yoga as well, and ended it with gymming and running too. I think that over time, the stamina and endurance I have built up as a result of meeting my goal of a consistent exercise schedule has helped me learn what muscles to target when, and what muscles to give a break when it is required. This time in quarantine has given me a chance to be more aware about how such fitness routines can impact my body, and I hope to use these lessons of recovery, stamina and perseverance when I am back on the tennis and badminton court hopefully soon as well.

NYAA Community Project Section Reflection – Learning, Recording and Sharing in June

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The next section of this community project for me would be learning how to use the software that I would use to record my piece, as well as actually learning the song to the best of my capabilities. I think that the best way for me to show my involvement and perseverance, as well as dedication to this project would be to really show that I was dedicated to learn and grow as a musician myself through this process because I feel like I have an easier time playing certain styles of music as compared to what we had chosen to do for this project.

The best way for me to learn how to play the song would be by, of course, listening to it, but also finding a lot of tabs online to use which I helped communicate to the other guitarists everytime I found one that I thought was easy enough to read and learn from. It was important for us to stay in tandem with one another in terms of how we are going to approach this, because it is important for a band to have good cooperation to make sure that the different parts flow together, but also since there were people dancing to the music we were playing it was important that we actually had uniformity in the music so that it would not be hard for the dancers to follow along. It was a huge team effort in the end, and I think that making sure I could communicate the way in which I was approaching the song to the rest of the band and making sure that we were all on the same page about something was really important and key in the final product.

After actually figuring out how to play the song, the next best way in which I would help the most through this musical element would be through an efficient recording that would help the editors as much as possible, so they could spend more time on the bulk of the video editing for the dancers. Saying this, I had to learn a bit about the Logic Pro software, and did so through YouTube before recording. I was able to learn about all sorts of effects that I could use to amplify the sound in certain sections which made the final product sound extremely good and of a well recorded quality.

The last part of this process, was in fact to get the recording done and sent into the Kolkata GC. I think that the hardest part was having to use a lot of takes due to making mistakes at certain parts, this being a completely new process to me, but I think that I was able to overcome my difficulties and actually produce something of good quality. I was able to get this done and send it in to the GC, where they would then put it together with the other tracks and make the video. The recording process took some time as a result of me not being completely aware of the different features of the software, as well as making some mistakes occasionally, due to not being completely comfortable with the song yet. However, I got it done and the last part was all but to record the video in tandem with the recorded audio track; this was easy enough and did not take much time. Then, all I had to do was essentially put my video and audio in the Drive folder as requested.

My final task was to actually spread the publicity and get the links for the GoFundMe as well as the Voice of World FB page to spread around through my different contacts so that I will actively be contributing to raising awareness for some of the problems that they are facing as a result of the cyclone. I think that the easiest way to do this was to share the link to the Voice for World website through WhatsApp, and I also was able to get help through my parents in the form of them also forwarding the donation link and website link to their friends. I think this was one of, if not the most important ways in which I contributed to this project, as I was able to get the message across to quite a few contacts who did not have any idea about this organisation as well as the Kolkata GC, so it was good that I was able to spread publicity and awareness to try and collect donations in some form, if not actual monetary donation then I think awareness of the issue and contemplation about what one can do to help is a stepping stone in itself.

Here is the link to the Voice of World website, and here is the link for the final version of the video.