Creativity
In my second semester of 12th grade, I did a cooking blog and I took part in Skype polish lessons. During these two experiences, I was able to demonstrate and take on challenges and develop new skills, show commitment and perseverance, demonstrate engagement with issues of global importance, and demonstrate skills in initiating and planning a CAS experience. I was able to demonstrate and take on challenges in my cooking blog and polish lessons. In cooking, there are many problems that arise such as the lack of a certain ingredients due to shop shortages or seasonal objects. This makes cooking specific dishes impossible unless you improvise to overcome the problem. In my polish lessons, the biggest challenge was always the lack of time I have due to the large amount of time commitment my higher levels require. To solve this I had to plan my day more carefully and work more effectively during my study time. I showed commitment and perseverance in both of these experiences as I have been doing both of them for almost 2 years and polish lessons I have been doing my entire life. I demonstrated engagement with issues of global importance in my polish lessons. The biggest reason why I chose to take polish lessons is that it would allow me to better communicate with the orphaned children in Poland drive. The aim of this was to use my polish skills in order to communicate with the caretakers and the children and understand what they really need. Lastly, I was able to demonstrate my skills in initiating and planning a CAS experience by doing a cooking blog. Here I had to do research, then plan on how to do it, and only then could I go to the shop and buy my ingredients and then prepare the dish. This process took a long time because of my other time-dependent things. These two activities how have taught me a lot about myself and have taught me a wide variety of skills I would have otherwise never learned. Such as how to cook certain dishes or how to speak and write polish at a semi-academic level.
Action
In my second semester of 12th grade, I did FIS varsity boys rugby for my action section of CAS. Throughout this experience, I had to identify my own strengths and areas for growth, demonstrate and take on challenges and develop new skills, show commitment, and perseverance, and lastly demonstrate my skills to work collaboratively. I identified my own strengths and areas of growth by asking my coach what I can improve on. This gave me a good idea of what I am good and bad at, thus giving me room to improve. To improve my skills as a player I decided to pick up professional rugby in a club and work daily on my skills. I was able to demonstrate and take on challenges many times throughout my FIS rugby career. One of these times was my first day in practice, this is because I had never before played rugby and thus I did not have much of an idea of how to play the sport. This proved to be a large challenge for me which I overcame by hard work and attentiveness in practice. I showed commitment and perseverance throughout the whole rugby season by attending the team meetings and all of the practices and games. Lastly, I was able to demonstrate my collaborative skills by simply playing the game. Rugby is an extremely team dependent sport, as such this made me constantly work in a team. Rugby has shown me many things throughout my time playing it, such as that I prefer to play sports that allow me for greater interaction with other people such as team sports. It also showed me how to manage my time through tough times of the year in such a way that will allow me to meet my academic standards and also be able to play sport at school and at the club. Rugby has now become a very big part of my life and has shown me how to communicate better with people thus helping both my academic and social life.
Service
In my second semester of 12th grade, I did Poland drive for my service section of my CAS. During this activity, I had to demonstrate and undertake challenges and develop new skills, show commitment and perseverance, demonstrate my skills in working collaboratively, demonstrate engagement in issues of global significance, and recognize and consider the ethics of my choices and actions. There were many occasions in which Poland drive experienced major setbacks. The first one was our inability to travel to Poland because of a lack of a chaperone, which ultimately canceled our mission for half a year. In order to counteract this, however, we conducted a variety of different projects in FIS such as the Keller clean out or the Apple fest in order to gain finances. I have shown commitment and perseverance in this experience by committing to it for the whole 2 years of my IB career. I worked collaboratively with all members of the Poland drive in firstly our mission to travel to Poland, I was supposed to act as the translator, and secondly, in the Keller clean out in which I helped to clean out Poland drive Keller with a number of other Poland drive members. I showed interest and engagement in issues of global significance by part taking in the Poland drive and its noble cause to help orphaned children and bring joy into their lives. Lastly, I addressed the ethics of my choices and actions by doing Poland drive over all other service groups not because it gave me CAS but because of its noble cause that aims to help abandoned children. If I could go back and change anything I would have taken part in the leader group of Poland drive so that I would have been able to take a more active part in helping these children. Poland drive has opened my eyes to the bigger problems in the world and has humbled me for being able to be raised in an international environment.