Jezabel's CAS Blog

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...