Jezabel's CAS Blog

(LO1) Horse riding was a massive challenge for me because although I have always wanted to take riding classes, I have always been afraid of failing or falling off. So this is a new skill that I have developed from my trip to Morocco. (LO2) It required a lot of commitment to take horse riding classes in Morocco because we were on holiday and I needed to wake up earlier to go to the stables so that I could ride on the beach either during sunrise or sunset. However, it was worth it. (LO3) I have rode on a horse a few times before in France but never took lessons as I had not considered riding horses seriously. However, I believed that it could be an area of growth for me and could be quite fun and interesting. Overall, I do not regret taking these horse riding lessons and if they are not too expensive in my native country, I would want to continue these lessons.

(LO1) Many challenges were undertaken in this activity as we had to make sure that our timing was good so that we could properly scare the students and make sure we were not seen. The skills that I developed was better planning in terms of making sure the assembly was set up properly to make it appear as a haunted house and fix the lighting as well. (LO2) Initiating and planning this activity was not that tough as the teacher was very helpful in providing us with the materials we needed. For the planning, my friends were always there to make sure we knew our roles in this activity. (LO3) Working collaboratively ensured that everything ran smoothly and that there were no issues regarding the activities as there were several groups of students that came to do the math challenges we had prepared for them in the haunted house. (LO4) The issue that rose up was that due to the math challenges, a lot of water had spilled around the tables and on the floor, making us worry that it may b...

My strength was the fact that I have been studying Spanish for over 8 years so I am quite good in terms of reading and writing. However, the areas that I can develop for my personal growth  would be my grammar skills and tenses, which I figured I could practice and revise while teaching my friend as I would need to review all the tenses and understand them thoroughly to be able to explain them easily to my friend. It was a great challenge and made me feel like a risk taker as teaching a language that is not my native language is quite hard as I would need to revise and work just as hard to understand what I would be teaching. The new skills I developed in the process would be better grammar as well as better understanding on the writing section in Spanish as at times, the different tenses would be very challenging for me. This service required a lot of commitment as sometimes I would find it too hard to continue teaching my friend as it was quite time consuming to not on...

Although I have been studying Spanish for around 8 years and I am taking it for IB as standard level which is my strength , it is quite challenging to read and entire book in Spanish as the vocabulary is much more advanced. Reading the novel 'Del amor y otros demonios' that translates to 'Of love and other demons' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a book that was extremely challenging to read. The story line is so developed that it was hard for me to keep track of the events occurring in the book and the emotions of the characters. I read this book on my phone using Amazon Kindle as I could not really find any Spanish books online elsewhere. The new skill I now have is that I have developed my reading skills in Spanish , this is helpful when we read articles in class. In terms of personal growth , I have developed as it has made me aware of the literary structure of other languages. I wanted to stop reading the book so many times, it was dark but also complicated in na...

In the Alps last summer, I went trekking with my Mum in Grand Bornand, we walked into the forest and hiked up the mountain to go hunt for mushrooms. The strengths I had was my awareness of my surroundings and my good attention to detail. For personal growth , I need to learn how to properly pull the mushrooms or cutting them out of the ground while keeping them fresh. Surprisingly, mushroom hunting was more challenging than trekking as I needed to research and study which mushrooms would be edible and which grow the most during the summer. The new skills I learned was my knowledge on poisonous and edible mushrooms this would be a helpful skill if I go camping in a forest in the future. However, trekking was also challenging  as we walked up to 10km in the forest and up the hill, it was very tiring and painful but I had promised to do this activity with my Mum once or twice every week for a month. I persevered and committed myself to this activity although I wanted to back out ...

  Painting was quite challenging as I had not done art in about 4 years now but it was always something I loved to do but was never good at. This was a challenge I wanted to overcome and take on. While painting I was surprised to the amount of research I needed to do to find out which colors I needed to mix together to get the color I desire. This gave me new skills when it came to knowing which colors match well together. My strengths are drawing and doodling so it was quite easy for me to do the outline of the painting but the areas I need to develop was the actual painting, to make sure I did not paint outside the outline and that the colors properly blended together. It took over a week to do this painting and there were other paintings that I did but had thrown away because I was not satisfied with them. I had continued to practice a lot until I did a painting that I was happy with. Painting little by little everyday was hard as I needed to find the time for it, it a...

As a kid I would water my plants by myself every weekend and would try to grow plants but they would always end up dying because I was not home a lot. I figured I would start trying to garden again after planting flowers in the Alps during the summer. The development in my personal growth is that I am able to take care of a living thing and be responsible for it. The challenges were that I did not anticipate to what point plants required extreme attention and care. Where it dies just as easily as it grows which was scary. The new skills I developed was the ability to pay attention to minor details and the fact that I was planting multiple plants made it more challenging as I had to make sure I could split my attention between these plants. The commitment was to water them everyday and it was quite hard as I would be constantly worried about my plants if I am coming home late so if I am going to the gym or leaving the house somewhere I need to make sure I water my plants first w...

Personally, I was never a fan of make up or had used it a lot in the past as I found it too hard and time consuming. My personal growth in this creative activity was the ability to feel comfortable using make up and to feel good when I am wearing it. It has made me feel even better when I go to events or go to the mall with friends as it makes me feel like the best version of myself.  I learned how to properly blend eye shadow and contour my face in order to emphasize the best parts of my face. There were many challenges , one of them being the fact that sometimes I did not have the brushes or equipment needed to apply the make up. The other challenge was finding the colors appropriate for my face. My goal was to become good at applying make up and be able to experiment with it to find which colors or products are the best for my skin and face. It took a lot of commitment for me because it is not something I necessarily enjoy doing and it is quite time consuming and an e...

    After performing in the Diwali Festival last year, I decided to do it again this year as me and my friends decided we would try a different style of dance to explore the dance styles embedded in Indian culture. Since I had already danced for this festival last year, I was less afraid to dance this year, this showed to me my own personal growth . Since that dance, I have participated in other dances as well. However, every dance style is challenging so that was the tough part of this years dance as it was more towards pop than traditional dancing which meant the music was faster. After the dance, at home I have tried practicing pop dance as I now find it quite fun. Commitment and my perseverance was tested as during this period, I have a lot IA drafts, EE and TOK drafts due so I found it hard to find time to practice with my friends especially when we did not have the same free periods. This is where it was beneficial that we were all working collaboratively , so we wou...

   (LO1) It took a while for me to feel confident enough to leave my comfort zone and go to the gym rather than workout at home because I was afraid to be judged by people who were  more fit than me at the gym. I felt more comfortable and reassured when I saw that everyone were focused on themselves and did not really care about everyone else or peoples appearance. I learned many new exercises from watching people exercise as well and then I would try the same exercise. (LO2) The challenge was pushing myself to go to the gym even when I was tired from school or the exercises were too hard which would mean some days I would be in pain such as cardio days.  (LO3) Commitment and perseverance in all honesty was the hardest part of this activity. As after school, after sitting in a school bus for an hour, when I got home I would just want to sleep but I always ask my dad to pick me up to go to the gym within 10 minutes of me getting home so I could not procrastinate. ...

 (LO1) Developed my strength of being capable of standing in front of a crowd. Better my ability to have enough confidence to be in front of an assembly and hand people their certificates. (LO2) Me and the other 2 people who had chosen to also help give out the certificates at assembly had all met up with Mr. Berry the ESL teacher to plan who would give out the certificates and when we would give them out during assembly (LO3)  The reason why I chose to do this service was because I knew it would make the kids happy and more comfortable to be on stage and accept this award if it is given by a fellow student (LO4) The challenge was to read the students real names correctly and also to recognize which students were which. It was scary to be standing in front of the entire assembly but now I feel like in the future, I would be comfortable standing in front of a crowd again. (LO5) I had consider quitting and not doing this service as I did not really want to be stand...

(LO1) I have not always been a strong swimmer nor have I ever liked swimming, so I decided to try and change that this year, in case I wanted to try to play water sports. Definitely needed to leave my comfort zone in terms of trying to swim every day for a week to try to be more comfortable with swimming, once I finished the one week challenge I had, I decided to make a different challenge which was to at least swim once every week. Up until today, I still swim once a week and plan on trying different water sports in the future or activities such as diving. (LO2) After doing this activity, I have now developed a new skill, I have become stronger at swimming, especially in the different strokes. I really needed to push myself because it is an activity that I never usually even think about doing despite having a pool next to my house. (LO3) Commitment and perseverance was essential in my completion of this activity. It was hard to continue doing this activity every day for a w...

(LO1) My personal growth was greatly impacted by this situation as I was shocked to what extent the country I live in, has a problem with the amount of homeless and street dogs. I was quite afraid at first when approaching these dogs as they could possibly attack me. However, after feeding these dogs for multiple days, it became less scary. (LO2) Even though it was scary I needed to commit to this service as I knew it would help the homeless dogs in my area to be provided with food (LO3) The global significance of this service is that people are not caring enough about homeless dogs who have diseases or are not getting fed. (LO4) I have recognized that it is unethical to drive or walk past homeless dogs without paying attention to them or acting like I can not see them just because it makes me feel sad. I should be actually doing something about this issue rather than ignore it. After seeing the dogs get healthier every week, it made me much happier about this issue.

(LO1) There were quite a few challenges during this activity. Since I went fishing in a small boat during the night with my friends and my best friends family, one of the concerns were keeping the boat balanced so that was a bit scary. The squid jig that we used to catch the squids were quite hard to use as they were not as developed, the ones we used were provided by local fishermen. So whenever I would throw the bait I would be scared that it would flip and hurt me instead. At one point I threw the bait and the handle attached to the bait fell into the water as well. I did not catch a lot of squids because I would check my bait too often as I was never sure if the movement that pulled the bait was a squid or not. This was one of the most challenging experiences in my life, at least when it comes to activities because I have not really found an activity that was almost impossible for me to do/have skill at. (LO2) I underestimated the skills that would be needed to fish for squ...

  (1) Going on a trip with my friends and my best friend's family constantly forced me to come out of my comfort zone due to the activities we did that I had never done before. I have thought of snorkeling before multiple times while on holiday trips with my family but never built up the courage to attempt this activity. Our entire group were in the middle of the sea when the tour guides said they anchored the boat and asked if we wanted to go snorkeling in the sea to look at corals and beautiful fishes. It was a fascinating thought to me but I was still afraid of going underwater with the snorkeling equipment as I was worried my glasses would fog and I would not see where I am headed. However, one of my friends who was also afraid of snorkeling and having to swim with the snorkeling masks and fin as we both heard it takes a while to get used to and comfortable with them. (2) I managed to push myself to go snorkeling, knowing I would be meters deep as well sea urchins that w...

(1) I loved reading ever since I was a child, nowadays it's hard to try to find time to read as I am quite tiring after I come home from school, after a one hour bus ride from the school. Although I wanted to grow personally in terms of trying to manage my time better which helps when trying to find time for everything the IB challenges you to do. (2) It was challenging to try to motivate myself continuously as the challenge in itself is to read as many books as you can. When I had 2 novels to study in English class and now a third it was very hard to continue the challenge as it was exhausting when my IA's were needing to be done. (3) Continuing the challenge although it was hard was a test on my ability to persevere with the challenge as I knew it would be beneficial to me in the future when I will need to read a lot of books in university for research. Also, it turns out the challenge provided me with a way to release the stress from immense school work as it gave m...

When I visited by sister, she talked about this pottery class she went to every week or two so I decided I would join her and learn the techniques of working with ceramics properly, with a teacher. (1) It was a challenge in its creative aspect, not so much in the technical one as I would often be unsure of what I wanted to create or at least how to make it unique from other bowls for example. It was unfamiliar to me as I have never done pottery before or been part of ceramic art as I thought it would require too much skill and I would not be able to do it. (2) My area for personal growth would be to be more patient and not rush the process of making the objects, as clay can easily be broken off when wet and when you try to go at a different type as your machine. (3) Continuing to commit to these pottery classes, it quickly became a hobby for when I would go visit my sister and it was therapeutic when I could work on my ceramics without the teacher as it made me challenge myself...

(1) I decided to help my friend learn guitar as I was taught how to play from a teacher a few years back, which motivated me to help him learn as well as it quickly became a passion of mine. I also wanted to develop my existing skill of playing guitar. (2) Teaching him was a challenge as it was hard to figure out which technique would make it easier for him to learn compared to the techniques I was taught when I went to my first classes. It was important for me to plan my lessons with him because even though playing the chords came natural to me, she was not as comfortable with the way to hold a guitar and the placing of his fingers on the strings so it would not hurt his finger tips. I taught him simple, easy chords then got him to select songs and I would plan how to easily teach him the chords. (3) I was committed to teaching him as it meant I was helping him achieve something he wanted to do and I wanted to provide him with as much help as he needed. (4) Surprisingly, I ...