CAS experiences

 When I began the IB, I’ve felt anxious about the CAS element – especially about the service component. I’ve had some previous experience with such actions to make the world better and they’ve never appealed to me. This is mainly because I’m quite an introvert and a shy person and I prefer to spend the time on my own; I also feel poor and stress a lot when I’m under a certain obligation to other people. While I recognize that those features are not something to be proud of, I simply have to explain why I felt a certain way about CAS. But then the CAS actually happened and it was entirely better than I’ve imagined. CAS programme gave me a lot of freedom to create my own idea of it. In the end I realised that the activities I’ve undertaken were actually mine – and that is what gave me the spirit to pursue all of those projects.

My CAS experience made me realize that I’m not the best at critical assessments of my own work. While I often find myself being overcritical towards my own skills and achievements, I also tend to describe many of my features and the activities I’ve pursued as “fine”. This word, which doesn’t convey any specific message, implements that everything is good the way it is and after 18 months of my CAS activities I disagree with such implication. There is always a room for improvement – and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think I’ve learned to appreciate more a critical analysis of my own convictions and ideas. I’ve also found out that while I’m quite organised when it comes to studying, I’m more forgetful when it comes to storing and preparing the photographs and plans for my CAS actions. It happened many times that I had a beautiful picture of some meal or an interesting idea to include in my activity portfolio and I’ve lost it because I didn’t make a note about it. This way I began to learn to be more careful when it comes to the ideas and to always write them down (which I still forget to do sometimes).

I’m usually struggling to come up with a creative idea by myself, but when I finally do, I feel even more satisfied. In such a manner I came up with a plan how to accomplish the components of creativity and service. I very obviously struggled before finally setting up the gourmet.bean Instagram account but I did it nevertheless. This is the one activity that will probably stay with me for longer than just for the time of my IB course. While sharing my vegan recipes (and the recipes of other creators as well) with the world I developed my favourite passion and skill – cooking. At the same time I learned a lot about the art of constructive argumentation. I’ve read and watched a lot of vegan passages on many different subjects and I finally realised which claims are dear to me and which I don’t truly approve. There are many strategies in the vegan community to convince the others to shift to a plant-based diet as well and while attempting to do so, I discovered my own convictions in terms of this dispute. While creating my kitchen diaries I decided that it’s good to be vegan on your own conscious terms, without listening to the crowd murmuring that if you’ve accidentally consumed some powdered milk in your crisps, you’re a failure – because that simply is not the truth. Eating non-vegan food is not a failure. Choosing to eat a vegan meal is just a good and wholesome thing you can do to try and help the environment and the animals. Being on a vegan diet should not be a struggle and if you mostly eat vegan foods but you really care for that pizza with cheese, you should eat it and feel fine. We should do such things that are possible in our current situation an that’s fine. I’m glad I made such amendments with myself.

What’s more, I’ve developed my language and vocabulary skills when it comes to the English language – this is certainly a nice and surprising side effect of writing the recipes and describing my yoga exercises in this language. Yoga classes were another experience which allowed me to challenge myself and to develop new skills at the same time. When I’ve began to exercise with a group in September 2018 I had some expectations of how the classes look. After the first one, I realised that I have yet a lot to accomplish. The CAS journey of learning the new yoga poses and improving my posture were really fun but sometimes I struggled when I couldn’t bent my leg in a certain way after a long time of practising or even when I had to attend the class when the weather outside was miserable. I have to admit that I often preferred to stay at home when it was freezing cold and pouring rain but I’ve made a decision that I will exercise regularly. And I did, which is one of the biggest surprises that CAS caused me.

At the beginning of the IB course, my idea of the CAS project was pretty vague. I’ve struggled with it for some time but at some point I just change my previously established plans for the new ones, as I found the matter that I cared about so much. I’m really glad that the CAS experience allowed me to commit to the matters that are sincerely important to me. While pursuing my CAS project, I had the ability to discuss the issue of conscious voting with the others and to understand better why some of us choose not to participate in the local elections. I also had the possibility to challenge those convictions and to constructively and informatively debate over them. Frankly, I’m proud of the posters I’ve created with my friend because they accurately delivered the message we wanted to send. I’m equally proud of the fact that this project pushed me to recognize the ethical issues of such campaigns and the danger of bias in such matters. But when it comes to the issues of global significance, I’m also satisfied with the work I’ve done on my vegan Instagram account with the recipes and food ideas. I didn’t expect anyone to try those ideas so I was extremely beaming every time some classmate, friend or a stranger told me they liked my recipes, they wanted to try them or that they actually did recreate them. As I’m very committed to the social, political and environmental issue, I’m glad that CAS allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and do something about it.

What I find interesting is that while I didn’t take part in many group projects, CAS made me communicate with others a lot. I participated in the Write for Rights campaign alongside with my school peer, which is an example of learning about the benefits of collaborative work. But such examples are quite obvious. It was much more surprising for me how many conversations were initiated by my creativity and service account with the vegan recipes. Those discussions, usually with my friends, taught me how important it is to convey the arguments in a non-aggressive way, without insulting or pressuring the other person. It took me a long time to master the skill of appreciating a different point of view and I’m still learning to respect the suggestions of other people while I’m in a fervor of pursuing my agenda. After the months of interesting conversations I think I learned how to communicate and how to listen better. However, there is always a place for improvement, especially when it comes to fiery discussions. I still find it easier to write down the arguments than to articulate them aloud.

Over the past months I’ve learned a lot about yoga. I’ve also learned a lot about my own body and its strengths and abilities. I practised many different yoga poses and attempted to try those which I haven’t knew about before I began my CAS journey. I’m positively satisfied that I now know the limits of my shoulders, feet, legs, arms and back and other body part which I didn’t thought could exist before I felt them while practising yoga.

I didn’t execute all of the plans that I’ve made, but I was able to alter those plans afterwards, which doesn’t undermine the fact that the outline of goals and aims helped me draft a course of this experience. And, while at the beginning of the planning process I wanted to set up some goals for myself in terms of improving my yoga skills and certain yoga poses, after a few months of practice I’ve realised that it is more beneficial to me to set up a goal to keep exercising and to take care of my health. During this CAS experience I’ve also learned that I have to create a fine mindset in order to enjoy the activities in which I participate.

This is the first time in time life when I can admit that I pursued a physical activity quite regularly and I think that’s a nice achievement. Despite the many time that I’ve wanted to quit the routine of practising yoga, I’m genuinely grateful that I had something that pushed me and didn’t allow me to abandon yoga.

Throughout the last two months I’ve found myself exercising less regularly, as the final exams and deadlines are using up most of my energy. However, I’ve managed to complete some compilations of yoga exercises, some of them meant to “relieve the stress”. To be fair, I don’t think they’ve made me less tired and tense, but they definitely allowed me to release myself from the routine of sleeping, studying and completing the written assessments. I definitely think that it’s good to exercise even if you don’t seem to have the time for it, just for the sake of moving your arms and legs and stretching your back for a while.

This school year I’ve decided to practice yoga at home. This decision was due to the fact that I’ve entered the very tense and tough times (I’m having my matura exams in May this year) and I simply can’t afford to spend two hours (this is how long it took me to attend the classess – an hour of yoga and an hour of transport) a week on attending yoga classess, especially during the weekdays. It’s very unfortunate as the atmosphere of those classess has been so friendly and encouraging, but it’s the best thing I could do for myself right now, to maintain a sane mindset and to have the ability to rest for a while after school. Nevertheless, I couldn’t give up on this activity as it allows me to meet the CAS requirements 😉 but also to keep my back straight (or at least to keep it less crooked) and to prevent my body from becoming stiff and lazy in a unhealthy way. Physical activity really is important both to my mental and physical health.

For the last few months (since September 2019) I’ve practiced yoga once a week at home. Most of the time I train with a Youtube creator, Adrienne, who uploads amazing yoga guidelines on her channel (Yoga with Adrienne). I often practise with her videos from a „40-60 min Full Yoga Practices” playlist and I’ve also found some other routines, shorter ones, which became my favourites, e.g. „yoga for anxiety and stress” or „wonder yoga!” from a „30 days of yoga” challenge. Some of them are more relaxing, some more demanding, but they are all delivered in such a calm and comprehensible way. I certainly don’t regret this choice.

The main challanges and aims for me this school semester were two things:

a)      to remain systematic with my weekly yoga routin and to be consistent with this wish;

b)      to take care of my health, especially my back, and to strengthen and stretch my limbs a little.

I’ve also wanted to earn happines from my activity and to make it as positive as possible. And I can tell now that it’s the activity that’s very enjoyable to me and which also makes me feel better physically.

 My activity „attendance” in 2019 was as follows:

1st, 7th, 15th, 22nd, 29th September,

4th, 12th, 19th, 27th October,

9th, 16th, 22nd, 23rd November,

1st, 7th, 12th, 21st, 25th, 27th, 28th December.

This month I’ve practiced yoga once, on the 4th of January 2020.

On 30 November 2019 I took part in the Write for Rights campaign organised by my classmates at our school. This was the second time I took part in this project as I participated in the same Write for Rights the previous year; however, this time I was much more aware of the significance of my actions and I was also more involved in the process of letter writing.

This event has been initiated by Amnesty International years ago and it allows all the people around the world to write letters on behalf of prosecuted human rights’ activists. My input in the project was to write as many letters as possible, defending the activists I’ve chosen from the suggestions of the organisers of the event. I’m proud to say that I stayed in the school auditorium for a few hours and managed to write about 12 letters overall. I felt really good afterwards, as I believe that such actions have a positive impact on many communities; I also felt that I did something important to help the others and it was truly reassuring.

During the event, I’ve shared my excitement and engagement with my classmates. The vibe of the whole action made it really enjoyable to write so much and to communicate and discuss our letter with the others. It was really nice to work together on such an important case. In fact, I regret not getting involved more in the experience of designing and organising such event. It was an important lesson for me that if some matter is dear to me, I should commit to it as much as I can because I really enjoy it. 

The image belongs to: https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/write-for-rights/

The last few months of the 2019/2020 school year have been really harsh for me. Although my posts on the recipe account were quite regular in September, this month it looks worse. While I’m struggling with the many assessments and preparing for the exams and tests I really miss the experience of sharing the new recipe ideas with the peers who enjoy them. I have yet to fight the overwhelming reluctance towards any activities other than sleeping but I hope that I will soon get better and less tired and come back to posting the recipes regularly.

For the last seven weeks I’ve participated in a CAS project to point out how important it is to vote consciously and to raise such awareness, especially amongst the youth in my school. I’ve been truly invested in the progress of this project as the matter of social consciousness and responsibility is very important for me. I’m very happy with the outcome of the survey that we have conducted amongst our school peers. I’m also really glad with the visual aspect of the posters that I’ve helped design and print. The message presented on the posters seems to be really thoughtful and balanced, as I wanted it to be. As this CAS project was service-centred (although it included an element of creativity as well) I developed myself in terms of social advocacy by creating an awareness campaign in an important social matter, in terms of research as the project was conducted on the bases of national statistics and the statistics created by our survey, and in terms of indirect service, as I believe that the awareness and knowledge about the significance of elections can change the others for better.

This project allowed to me to achieve all of the seven learning outcomes.

LO1 (Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth): While pursuing this project, I’ve developed my organisation skills and collaborative work skills. This was an interesting and important challenge for me, as I usually prefer to work alone. I’ve learned how to communicate with others to learn more about them and their thoughts – especially through the experience with the survey. I’ve also developed my skills in terms of careful analysis of data.

LO2 (Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process): I’ve participated in such a campaign for the first time in my life and for the first time I’ve created something in advocacy of a significant social matter – something important not only to our school community but for the whole nation. The fact that at the beginning of the planning process I had no idea how the survey and posters will be received by our school peers and how the whole campaign will turn out made it a pretty challenging project.

LO3 (Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience): This learning outcome was completed by the multiple consultations with the project’s supervisor and by planning all the steps and elements of the project at the beginning of work by analysing the criteria for a good CAS project. I’ve also posted a data table with a brief plan of the goals and steps of the project.

LO4 (Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences): The idea for the project came out of my own interests and engagement to a certain social subject. I’ve attempted to document the project experience regularly and I was actively involved and inspired throughout the whole experience.

LO5 (Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively): I rarely do work in a group so that was a new experience for me. I think it’s a huge advantage that while working with someone else, you can divide the tasks by adjusting them to your actual abilities and skills. It was also more fun to have someone to share with all my ideas and thoughts on the subject of our project.

LO6 (Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance): I definitely believe that conscious voters who understand the impact of their choices and actions are the most important component of each and every community and nation. The awareness in terms of participation in the elections is therefore an issue of global significance.

Recently we’ve been preoccupied with creating the designs of our posters. My project partner was actually creating them but I was helping with coming up with the ideas. We sent our poster to the printers and this week I’ve visited the printer’s to collect our posters. Today we went to hang the posters in our school. In the following post I will set a picture of me and the posters hanged on the walls. 

Since the timeline of this project depends on the time of the parliamentary elections, we began our work as soon as possible to finish with the campaign on time. This week the preparation element of the project has began. Together with my classmate we came up with the questions for our questionnaire and began to draft the message to be put on the posters. As he’s more experienced in the creation of digital posters we’ve decided that he will be responsible for the actual project of the posters. However, we are planning the visuals and the message together.

This week, we’ve also discussed the details of our project with our CAS project supervisor.

The questions for our questionnaire are as follows:

1. Are you 18 y/o?:

2. Are you going to participate in this October’s election? If you’re not 18, would you like to or not?:

3. Are adult members of your family going to participate?:

4. Regardless of your age, do you have a candidate or a party that you would want to vote for?:

5. On a scale of 1-5, how difficult is it for you to decide on a candidate?: 

6. Do you read agendas and election-plans?:

7. Do you watch debates held on television?:

8. Do you do pre-election quizzes/tests/official political alignment surveys?:

9. In general, do you talk about the election with your friends/family?:

This month I’ve began my CAS Project experience. When it comes to the idea of the project, I came up with it a few months ago, when I turned eighteen, which is the voting age in my country. I’ve been extremely excited to participate in the first elections in my life and those happened to be the European Parliament elections of 2019. I’ve been feeling a desire to contribute to the many social matters for a very long time and when it actually happened – when I actually had a possibility to have a real impact and a say in some matters – I realised how important this case is to me. I already knew that the voter turnout in my country is quite low and I was particularly interested in the percentage of the youngest people enabled to vote who actually participate in the elections. The unimpressively low numbers have always outraged me. This is how I came up with what I want to do for my CAS project – I want to encourage people to vote and to explain why it is so important and meaningful.

Today I’ve met with my classmate who decided to pursue this project with me. We have already agreed that a campaign that we want to do should be a poster campaign in our school. We began our meeting with a discussion about the reasons why we think such campaign is needed. We also drafted the method of pursuing the campaign and our initial goals. We decided that there is no need to choose a leader in our group, therefore, we both are determined as project leaders in the project’s documentation.

The investigation that we agreed to pursue the following weeks is the social analysis of the issue (to broaden our idea of how the people don’t want to participate in the elections by discussing it with our families and friends, observing the available data and interviews in this matter, looking into the statistics available and getting to know more about the historical examples of the significance of local elections).

When I discussed the idea of my CAS project with my CAS coordinator (which happened in May 2019) I suggested that it’s best to do such campaign just before the actual elections, and so it happens, that in October 2019 the parliamentary elections will be held in my country. Such important event really confirms the need of the social campaign while the statistics show the quite low voter turnout in my country, as I stated above.  Me and my classmate also decided that in order to deepen our understanding of the need – the need to raise the awareness in terms of conscious voting – we will conduct a questionnaire amongst the population of students in our high school. We decided that the questionnaire will refer to the reasons why people don’t vote in our country.

This project allows me to challenge the following areas for personal growth:

-          overcoming selfishness, as I want to encourage everyone to vote instead of advocating for my own political and social convictions;

-          critical analysis of data;

-          development of my skills in terms of organizing such campaign, the posters, the questionnaires, communicating with other people and so on.

My attendance at weekly yoga classes is confirmed by my activity supervisor. The proper documentation was handed to my CAS coordinator.

Precise dates of my yoga classes attendance during school year 2018/2019:

12th, 19th, 26th September 2018,

3rd, 10th, 17th October 2018,

7th, 14th, 21st, 28th November 2018,

5th, 12th, 19th December 2018,

2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd January 2019,

12th, 19th, 26th February 2019,

6th, 13th, 20th, 27th March 2019,

3rd, 10th, 17th, 24th April 2019,

8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th May 2019,

I’m now 6 months in the experience of creating and sharing the casual and the fancy vegan meals and recipe ideas. I find this experience one of my favourites as it consists of my two favourite things – caring for the planet (by committing my posts for the theme of vegan lifestyle, that is good for the environment and that is infinitely better for the animals) and cooking (which has always been the passion that haven’t left me since I’d been a child). I’m happy with the posts I’ve shared so far and I’m glad that they are becoming more and more varied and colourful. What drives me the most in creating this CAS content is that I’ve heard a lot of lovely comments from my friends about it. Some of them claim to have been trying or attempting to try some of the recipes I share. I’m really involved in this experience as I truly want to convince people that even the smallest change in lifestyle – e.g. one plant-based dinner a week or a vegan snack instead of a dairy one – are significant and that they cause a lot of good.