CAS Diego Finkel

Following the guidance of our ESS teacher and our school’s industrial technology teacher, two friends and I built a greenhouse in the middle of the garden. Using some solid wooden sticks, plenty of nails and some scotch tape, we were able to provide our creation with some sort of structure. The sticks were laid out in such a way that they would arrange in a pattern of equilateral triangles which are geometrically stable shapes. We also minded that we would need to leave some space open so that people could actually get inside the greenhouse. Once that first step was finished, we placed a thick layer of transparent plastic on top of the structure and fixed it with nails to the junctions of the wooden sticks. This was particularly tricky because the plastic would often overlap, making it difficult for sunlight to penetrate it and also pretty unaesthetic. The result was more than pleasing.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sYN4XLQf5JM9Cw1y77IPzl0Fkdmsem_IisbUp0nWff0/edit?usp=sharing

My main CAS project has been to spread awareness of the dangers of social media among the younger ones. Throughout both of our DP years, 4 friends (Claudia Fernández, Claudia Jiménez, Lucía Muñoz and Teresa Lombardía) and I went through the whole process of planning and executing a major campaign to warn kids in our schools and help them develop healthier online interactions. First we carried out an inquiry among the target group (year 9s) to find out their preconceptions and opinions about social media. Once we gathered the data, we designed our project to effectively address any present or potential problem they may have online. Finally, we spoke twice to the kids with several months in between each talk to make them reflect about their use of social media. The photo above shows the post-its that the children wrote during an activity we proposed to them where they identified pros and cons about social media. I have also included a link to one of our presentations.

We ourselves learnt a lot during this project about the correct use of social media. All 5 of us concluded that the golden rule to have an appropriate conduct in these platforms is caution. We must always bear in mind that any action online will be recorded and cannot be erased. This means that a mistake can come back to haunt us, so we must act accordingly with prudence and circumspection.

Dragones de Lavapiés is a local football team in the district of Lavapiés, Madrid. I highly recommend visiting their website, but their mission could roughly be defined as combating racial and gender stereotypes through sport as well as to promote diversity and inclusion. Not only are they an affordable option for children from unprivileged backgrounds to play football but they also help with academic tutoring and teaching English to the kids.

Ukraine these days is a tough topic to speak about without getting too political but I will do my best in this reflection. Many Europeans are devastated to see the scenes in Kiev, Mariupol and Kharkov and I am no exception. I have been following the events since day one and I am currently undertaking several personal projects to help to the biggest extent possible. Among these, me and my family have applied to host Ukrainian refugees in our house and we are expecting them in less than a month's time. In more immediate terms, I have collaborated with initiatives to get food and basic necessities to the Ukrainian populace. In the photos down below you can see me classifying and packaging some of these products.

At this point in the reflection I would like to send a message without any intention of proselytising any ideology or political discourse. Mind the people. Remember that the Russian government does not represent the entirety of the Russian population and I would dare to say it only represents a fraction of the Russian diaspora. It is important to always have this in mind when debating about the issue and certainly when speaking to Russians or people with Russian roots. I am appalled about the armed conflict, but I am almost as disgusted with unjustified russophobia especially when it happens in my home country. I can “understand” it in the EU border states but not in Spain, thousands of kilometres away. It is our duty as European citizens to limit the suffering of innocent individuals. 

My peers and I had a nice basketball tournament. I played this sport when I was younger but my technique did get a bit rusty. 

I was really struggling with my HL Physics IA. The whole idea seemed confusing - I was expected to add an innovative component being a senior school student! The task was daunting, but now that I’m finished I’m happy to say I’m pretty satisfied with the result. I decided to add a CAS entry about it because of the sheer amount of effort I put into the creative process of this project, to the experiment in particular. Without getting too heavy into physics, the curve that I handcrafted at my house is a very special one with special properties that only take place if the trajectory is carefully delineated. The most interesting of these properties is the fact that the time taken by two marbles of the same mass to reach the lowest point in the curve is always the same regardless of where you release them. Fascinating isn’t it?

There is a tradition in my school that IB students are responsible for the organization of a breast cancer charity. We are split into groups and take care of several tasks surrounding this initiative; announcing the day of the charity, informing about this type of tumour and what the money will be invested in, making merch and counting the money up. I personally took part in the merch part and helped with the decoration of the crates where the money would be put in. The charity itself consisted in selling pink ribbons, bracelets and pompons for a few euros. We also encouraged everyone to wear pink clothes on October 19th, the International Breast Cancer day. 

Cooking time! Because my kitchen’s floor is made of a very delicate marble, cooking is really a pain in my house. Really, the only time of the year during which I cook on a regular basis is when I’m in another house during my summer vacations. This august during my stay at Côte d’Azur I took the chance to cook some fajitas!

Activity! This July I went regularly to the gym to stay active. At the end of the month I was actually quite in shape (August has been plagued by laziness though). I am a really skinny guy and it takes a lot of time and effort for me to build muscle. Not only do I have to put in the muscular stress, I also have to sleep well (and regularly, which I find especially hard to do during summertime) and eat A LOT (yep, capital letters there). 

My friend Hans and I decided to give a shot to one of humanity’s oldest pastimes - jigsaw puzzle solving! This was something fairly common among people our parents’ age but extremely rare in our generation. I myself had never tried it apart from those puzzles you solve when you’re 5 years old which aren’t even remotely difficult. Hans and I were feeling ambitious when planning this activity and went on with a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle! We had to clear a whole lunchroom table to make space for such a monster.

During one of the last days of school, I partnered with some of my non-IB peers to help with the indispensable task of watering the plants. Summer days are very hot in Madrid and some species require plenty of water to cope with the heat.

Origami! Inspired by some friends of mine who had previously tried this beautiful craft, I decided to take on origami myself. I was surprised by how unintuitive some folds were and I expected the difficulty of the task to be somewhat lower. That being said, I couldn’t escape the thought of the outstanding creativity and ingenuity the person that came up with the process to do the figure above must’ve had. I guess that can apply to any relatively complex origami figure. 

Some time ago I saw people get kicked out of a bus heading to Madrid due to lack of capacity at my school’s bus stop. It was rush hour and my school is in Molino de la Hoz which is quite far from madrid. Also, buses are sadly not as frequent there. All of those elements combined derived in a conflict between two commuters who argued about who should take one of the remnant seats based on who was there earlier. 

On a separate day, I had a free afternoon and managed to get a bus approximately 40 minutes before rush hour. To my surprise, it was almost empty. This highlighted two facts. One, the current time shedule is ridiciulously inefficient and travellers lose a lot of time for that reason. Second, the passenger saturation with the current arrangement can lead to multiple problems.

Because of this, I talked to other commuters to ensure that I wasn’t the only one concerned with the issue and I wrote a formal letter to the appropriate company running the buses of the A-6 highway. The letter is written in Spanish below. To synopsize I ask for an adaptation of the time schedule. Above is the reply I got stating that the company will study the situation. If I don’t see progress by the end of the year I will be ready to launch a signature collection to pressure even further on behalf of the citizens.

“Señores del consorcio,

I took part in another educational activity, this time for the very little ones. We basically wanted to help them learn about how vegetables are produced and the fascinating process of growing some crops. The event was separated into two parts:

The first consisted of a preparatory class when we gave the kids some basic notions about the nature of 5 different vegetables. I had the task of teaching them about cucumbers. I taught them about which season they should be planted in, how much time until germination and how much time until harvest. I also described the conditions under which cucumbers should  be grown; day and night temperature, amount of light and how many times a week they should be watered. 

The second part was much more entertaining for the children. We went to a vegetable patch near the elementary school building and ensured each kid planted an onion with our help. They shall keep track of the crops and record their growth these following months. Both parts were conducted in English to boost their language skills too!

Some months ago I took part in a competiton sponsored by the European Central Bank (along with some national banks of the eurozone) with 4 friends of mine. 

The program, called Generation Euro, was created with the objective to boost knowledge about the European Union and it’s institutions among young Europeans. We learnt about our currency and the complex system supporting it. We also gained a deeper understanding about the nature of the different EU organisms. To sum up, we learnt more about the Europe we live in and it’s economy.

Hans promoted an interesting activity for March 8th (International Women’s Day). We basically wanted to question the traditional sterotype of the female model and the male artist and share this with the younger ones, so we organized several talks with children of 5th and 6th of primary school.

The talk consisted of 3 parts. Firstly, a brief introduction to explain to the kids what is a stereotype and why it is important to identify it as one. We used examples and statistics about the male-female ratio of artists and models historically. Next, we asked the girls to do a portrait of the boys in class and lastly we decided together which was the best drawing.