The time has come where I will be heading on a new journey, away from the daily life that I have experienced over my time here in Sri-lanka. My friends and I will all now be going to different places throughout the world. Reflecting on the past 2 years of the IB Diploma Programmed, I feel as if I have accomplished something big and that the effort I have put in over these past 2 years will finally pay off. All the countless nights I had spent finishing up an assignment along with the highly dreaded extended essay, I feel very proud of what I have been able to achieve and how I have persevered. Throughout, I have made many mistakes and also learned from them a lot which I believe is the most important part. “To go up, one must come down at some point”.

The biggest part of this experience will be the life long memories I had created with my friends and all the trips that we had such as the WWW, DP1 Orientation and the Group 4 Field Trips. Those trips were full of adventure and class bonding and had gone by very quickly. Its unfortunate to think that these trips will most likely never happen again with the same friends and that we all will be busy in our own daily lives after we head to college.

I believe while these memories and lessons were an important part of this IB Programme, I also think that CAS had helped me to grow and improve myself in a variety of different way, interacting with my community and classmates while also working on myself.

Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth and  Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

Amongst the obstacles that the pandemic has imposed on the opportunity to do CAS, I had been able to adapt and still achieve this learning outcome. During DP1, I had tried out for the SAISA VOLLEYBALL BOYS team despite have barely any experience playing volleyball. I was in fact able to make the team and go to Oman to compete in the Boys SAISA Volleyball tournament, where we had achieved 4th place. While we had improved in comparison to the previous years standing of 7th place, I think that the most important part of doing this activity is how much it benefitted me. For instance, I joined the volleyball team despite have barely any experience, thus I had to catch up to my teammates who were were more skilled and knowledgeable about the game. I realized that I was very good at serving but also realized that my agility, knowledge of the game, and vertical jump were subpar in comparison to my teammates. Having only 2 months till the tournament, I had to work on improving my self at home, whenever I had the free time or straight after volleyball practice after school. I did many jump workouts along with full body workouts to prepare as much as I could so that I could perform the best as I can for the tournament. Concerning the pandemic and the school closure, I didn’t have the opportunity to improve myself by doing activities such as football or badminton .I took up on myself by adapting to this situation by working out at the gym in my apartment. In the beginning it was very difficult to start and maintain consistency but with effort I started to like the feeling of working out. I realized how weak I was and this motivated me to continue to work hard and get stronger. Noticing my quick progress as I was making due to my being a beginner, I was very content and shocked at the potential I had. I believe that I have been able to achieve this learning outcome by continuing to work on myself through doing physical activity as I found that to be the most challenging which mean that the rewards would also be fruitful.

Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience and Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

I am pleased to say that I had been able to achieve this goal very early on in my DP Programme journey. I along with my classmates from the economics class came up with the idea to do a Zoomathon in order to raise many for those affected by COVID. We met countless time during the week and the weekends on google meets to brainstorm and devise a plan on how we will be doing the Zoomathon and what we would need to do to make it entertaining. Each person had a different role, some took charge on being the hosts of the livestream while others worked behind the scenes and edited videos that were to be shown during the livestream. We were able to raise a whooping 500000LKR which we though would not be possible, in fact we surpassed that mark and fundraised even more than that. I was very proud of how we were able to get so much planning done to achieve a successfully outcome despite such a short period of time. I was able to improve my collaboration and thinking skills through this process and learned how to transform plans into reality. Reflecting back upon this, I am still very proud of what our Economics class had managed to do and the lessons and skills I learned but surely come handy in the future for me. Last year I joined the advocate in my effort to improve my team collaboration skills even further. Throughout my time in the advocate, I enjoyed engaging in discussion on how we would format the magazine and how it would look like. I heavily enjoyed working with Tanay and Satwik in creating the website for the Advocate Magazine which includes all the latest submissions and the previous versions of the Advocate Magazine.

Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

Coming into OSC and the DP Programme, I was very new to the idea of service and community work. I had joined the Gecko Net which was the service I partook in during DP1. I was surprised by how much I was able to learn in that service all thanks to my helpful colleague who taught me how to edit videos and how to film the footage. I gained a lot of experience by being a risk taker and offering to film and edit the Trailer for the Schools Theatre “Oliver”. Despite it being a very difficult task due to my lack of experience in filming, I was able to procure some good looking cinematic shots and then made them look even better during editing. I had spent many hours looking on YouTube on how to do a certain transition or learning how to use the video editing software “Premiere Pro”. After DP1, I felt that I wanted to try something new and decided to join the Reef Keepers Service. I was very intrigued by what they did and all the events they had done in the past and wanted to partake in such events. Despite the school closure, I showed commitment to interact with others in the service to brainstorm potential ideas and plans for events that we would hold after school would open. One such plan was to release new merchandise. I worked with my colleagues to produce a new design for the t-shirts and for other items such as bottle and hoodie. Despite my lack of experience in the service, I was able contribute and persevere in getting something done. Unfortunately, we realized that we would not be able to sell the merchandise due to the lack of time as School was closed so we decided that the merchandise will be sold next year, which I unfortunately would not be able to take part in.

Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance:

Over the 2 years, the biggest source of achievement of this learning outcome would be the Zoomathon. I was able to engage with my local community who had been impacted due to COVID and it was amazing to see how much we funds we were able to raise (Over 500K LKR) that was then donated to UNICEF. Our Economics class was able to bring the OSC Community together and raise funds while also bringing in entertainment with the help of the OSC teachers and other members. Most recently, I had joined a new initiative called Eco-Schools that would aim to transform our school into a becoming more sustainable. While I was there only for a short period due to its new nature, I was able to take the issue of sustainability that is very important over the world, we need to be able to preserve and efficiently use our resources without harming the environment further which could impact the future generation. Overall I was pleased with my consistent efforts to do something for my local community and also inspiring others to take on these initiatives in the future.

Overall, CAS has not only been a time where I can enjoy and do things that I like but I have been able to gain a lot of skills that have developed me into being more all rounded, a quality that will help me tremendously in the future.