The High School OSC chapter is finally coming to an end. and FINALLY my last CAS blog ever, Since August of 2018 I have been reflecting on all my creative, active, and serviceable actions. From SAISA Swimming and Track to learning how to play the piano and participating in the Colombo United Nations, to Teaching kids who don’t have access to a pool how to swim and raising money and awareness in a 5 hour long “Zoomathon” the DP years of my high school has been eventful and very unexpected, to say the least.

Covid19 hit my senior year of high school and forced all my classes to be online, on top of waking up at 4 am when I was in Czech to join my classes, it was a very interesting and unique senior year. However, that didn’t stop me from being creative, active, and trying to help the community in some way or another

Activity 

|LO1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth|LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experience|

Saisa Swimming

Saisa Swimming has been a favorite sport of mine ever since I can remember, it’s a sport that I plan to take to Uni and throughout my life. In the 7 years that I have been competing in SAISA, I believe my most memorable SAISA was TAISM 2017, where after 4 years of gradually going up the ladder in the SAISA starting near the bottom in Grade 5 ( 2013) finally not only did we win SAISA swimming, but I left with 3 SAISA records, winning the age group and many individual medals as well.  Beyond the medals and winning SAISA was an experience I will never forget, I got to meet new people, meet older friends and that joy of meeting my friends never went away, till my very last SAISA I was as grateful as ever to meet old and make new friends along the way. Additionally, I would like to Thank Mr.Turner, Mrs. Sue, Ms.Ramberg, Coach Akila, and Mr.Sharki for their continuous support and their ability to make me want to do better every single time I got in the pool.

Saisa Track

SAISA Track and Field and I have an interesting story, I remember as a young kid in grade 5 trying out for the track team, and when I didn’t make I was as sad as ever, and from that year onwards I was really discouraged from trying out again, till one year where for some reason I was like sure, ill give it another shot and to my surprise I made it, and I was so happy. The first year we did SAISA myself and the team went on to win for a 3rd consecutive time and for the time for I placed very well in the 2 events that I trained for very hardly ( ShotPut and Discus). Once again I would like to thank Mrs. Sue, Mr.Turner, and Mrs. Shriyani for always pushing me and supporting me even when I drop the baton once in a while.

TISSL ISSAC Swimming

TISSL ISSAC swimming was in my early days just another opportunity to compete and get used to competitions but as we got older, we realized that we actually had a shot of winning some of the events and to our surprise, we are now the reigning winners of the 4x 50-meter spring 2 years running, before the pandemic.

Service 

|LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experience|LO3 Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.

|LO6 Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance.|

Gecko Inc

The Gecko Inc Service group has been a part of my life ever since grade 8 when I joined it because my brother was the leader. This server has over the year taught me to be a kind and naturing person. It has allowed me to build my patients and my ability to communicate in ways other than language. But most importantly it allowed me to talk and bond with the kids I was teaching. Unfortunately, now I cannot see my friends, but I will never forget all the fun times I had in the pool. From when the kids first started where they were terrified by the pool, to when those same kids were jumping off the blocks without any assistance. It was an amazing experience and I will never forget it. Now during covid times, it’s obviously harder to teach these kids, so I hope that with the videos we have created and finished I hope we can help those kids even through an online medium.

Zoomathon

I would just like to personally thank every single one of the people who watched, took part in, and was part of the planning process of this zoomathon, it took us a lot of time and effort to make sure that it worked out, some times during that month we thought we weren’t going to make it but we did we pushed through and we did. I’d just like to say thank you, Mr. Rossberg, Mathisha, Rizqi, and Anuda as we 5 I believe were the backbone to this operation calling for upwards of 5 hours in a day to make sure we had everything in place. So Once again Thank you to the OSC Community <3 for raising over a Million Ruppess for those who needed it.

Creativity 

|LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively|LO2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process. |LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experience|

COMUN

UN Day

The UN Day 2019 celebrating recognized the SDG Goals, which comprised 17 goals that were made after the millennium goals, which finish in 2015. The new SDG goals are hoped to be completed by 2030. This year we focused on SDG goal 5 which was Gender Equality. The goal was to organize and present a presentation on Gender Inequality and more specifically on Gender Violence and Human Trafficking.  Harin and I had to plan an hour and a half presentation which was informative to the DP 1 and Dp 2s.  What Harin and I decided to do was start off with charades/ skits to start off with. the Skits involved 2 roles one that people would stereotypically associate with a male and one that with a female in a situation eg. Maid and Head house. We wouldn’t state which was a male or female and we just wanted to see how they play the skit just to test how they assign gender roles to different Jobs. One thing that I learned from the experience was how everyone in our modern society is very knowledgeable and very aware of the current societal issues we have in the world and made me very happy that people were aware and actively trying to make a difference, even the smallest of changes comes a long way.

Duke of Edinburgh 

The DOE trip, also another fun and fantastic trip, that I loved to do over the 2 years in DP. It was a small group of people I knew very well and those trips just made us closer. We got to learn important life skills as well as learn how to live on our own. Cooking our own food, learning how to set up tents, all life-long skills I will treasure that I learned. Furthermore, the trips were a great experience to learn how to deal with leeches ( ahah), at first I was terrified and every time a leach latched onto me it was a horrifying moment but as more and more got onto my hands and legs I got more used to just flicking them off without a worry unless u are Anargi who to this day is mortified of leaches.

Final reflection

To Sum up, DP and my experience as a senior would be difficult in 1 paragraph, put to give you the spark notes of it ( which I used way too much in English). It was confusing, stressful, fun, tiring, hard, amazing but most of all a very unique experience. I can assure you that I have had a senior year like no other. Having only spent around 4 weeks actually in school, I can say in confidence that It is nothing like I have ever experience in my life and I will remember my senior year of high school as the kid who was always falling asleep on the zoom calls and the kid who lost his tooth in P.E.