If you had told me, when I was writing my very first CAS post, that I’d be writing my final CAS reflection on the day before my last “official” day of high school, amidst a global pandemic that would move school online and cancel IB exams, I probably would have marked you down as some crazy conspiracy theorist that’s too imaginative for their own good. Yet, here I am, locked up at home, writing my final CAS reflection amidst the COVID-19 pandemic that’s managed to move school online and cancel IB exams. Clearly, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few weeks, it’s that the future is uncertain and no matter what you think, everything that seems important can be turned on its head in a heartbeat… However, although COVID-19 may have changed some things and created a lot of uncertainty about the future,  there’s no doubt that the last two years have played a vital role in my development as a student and more importantly as an individual. While some of this growth and development can be attributed to the academic rigors of the IB Diploma Program, much of it is the direct result of my extracurricular involvement in Creative, Active and Service pursuits. Therefore, while the future remains uncertain, I think it is of immense value to look back on the last two years, relive the certainty of the past and in turn consolidate my learning, growth and development.

Creativity

I kicked off the creativity aspect of my CAS journey last year by leading the team that managed the technology behind COMUN’s twenty-fifth session. This was my second year as COMUN’s head of tech and although building the points system, maintaining the website, designing print/digital marketing material, etc. greatly improved my creative thinking and technical skills, I find that the ability to communicate effectively, stay calm under pressure and lead a team towards a common purpose will be much more important in a world where technology moves at an exponential rate.

When my COMUN journey came to a close in early March, Milo and I set our sights on the “Film Fly Experience Australia” video competition. We used all our video making acumen and produced a video about “Artificial Intelligence for Public Good,” which is one of the best videos I have produced to date. After the Easter Sunday Bombings, at a time when the future was uncertain just like it is today, we found our that we had won the competition and would be travelling to RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. This experience too was a once in a lifetime opportunity that gave us the opportunity to flex our creative muscles, experience some cool technology, meet interesting people and get a glimpse of what university education would look like.

In addition to COMUN and Film Fly Experience Australia, I managed the tech crew at SAISA Girls Volleyball 2018 and SAISA Art 2019. We received a lot of praise for the pioneering work we did to introduce live scores on the website and livestreams, and produce high quality media from these SAISA events. Developing the technological infrastructure and leading the human resources behind these innovations inspired me to go a step further at the start of this academic year by building the SAISA Live App, which contains scores, media, livestreams and more from current and past SAISA tournaments. In addition to being the most complex development project I had ever embarked on, coordinating with other SAISA schools and leaving my legacy by getting this app in the hands of thousands across the SAISA community has been a really fulfilling experience. The fact that this app will live on even after I graduate only adds to this fulfilment.

Although I have been passively working with the Yearbook group as a member of GeckoNet by providing most of the pictures used in the yearbook, I officially joined the group this year to try and integrate Augmented Reality into this year’s yearbook. Integrating Augmented Content into the Yearbook has been a success thus far, but the prevailing situation has brought into question whether the yearbook will be printed at all. Nevertheless, even if the yearbook is published digitally only, the augmented content should be a great addition to the user experience.

In addition to the aforementioned creative pursuits, I have worked on many more smaller scale creative projects like the online bookstore I built for the Room to Read service group last year and I have been spending my time during this COVID-19 lockdown pursuing similar creative engagements like writing articles and developing a dashboard to track the disease. Over the course of the last two years, all of these creative engagements from COMUN to Yearbook have not only allowed me to develop my tech skills, but also allowed for tremendous personal growth in terms of leadership, communication, organization and management.

Action

Since the Action aspect of CAS has never been one of my strong suits, stretching myself to new heights in this dimension was one of my goals at the start of DP1. Since then, I have been playing golf regularly in order to stay active and add some balance to my life. In addition to giving me an opportunity to relax from time to time, participating in the Scanwell Logistics Junior Open back in December 2018 and the Prima Junior Open in January 2019 taught me some vital lessons on the importance of resilience, focus and mindset that can be transferred easily to other aspects of my life.

The Highlands Week Without Walls trip back in late January of 2019 was also an experience that pushed me in terms of physical fitness, strength and resilience, while giving me the opportunity to experience some of the beautiful landscapes within Sri Lanka. Moreover, the conditions on that trip along with the photography component taught me how to adapt to different situations as both a photographer and an individual.

A few weeks after this WWW experience, I got the opportunity to fulfil one of my initial CAS goals by travelling to Chennai, India as a member of OSC’s SAISA Badminton Team for 2019. Although SAISA Badminton was nowhere near as fulfilling an experience as leading the tech crew for a SAISA event or running the SAISA Live app, the team missed out on second place by just four points and I had a lot of fun developing my badminton skills and meeting some of my friends from AISD during the tournament.

At the start of this year, I decided to transfer some of the leadership skills I had gathered in my other extracurricular activities like COMUN and GeckoNet to the Action sphere by launching the “Batting Sports ASA” together with Arnav and Divyanshu. Cricket has been one of my favorite sports, and I had missed it ever since I arrived at OSC so starting up this ASA was something I had been contemplating for a long time. In addition to giving me an opportunity to play cricket and have some fun outside of the classroom, starting up this ASA gave me the opportunity to learn about other batting sports like softball and also to share cricket with others. The process of organizing the ASA and getting it up and running was also a good test of my communication, organization and leadership skills. I look forward to a final session of the Batting Sports ASA between now and when I leave for college when some normalcy is restored to our lives.

Service

At the start of DP1, I was appointed as the leader of GeckoNet–a service group that provides media and tech services for the OSC community–and over the course of the last two years we have been able to achieve quite a few things. Initially, I opened up the group from grades 9-12 to grades 7-12, which allowed us to growth from a team of just 6 to a team of over 12. This growth in human resources and a more obedient younger student group helped us to greatly increase both the quality and quantity of content we produce. In fact, in the last two academic years we have published over 60 videos and over 50 photo albums under my leadership, which is a marked improvement compared to the 11 videos we produced in the 2017-2018 academic year.

In addition to producing more content at a faster pace, we have managed to get more members of the OSC community to engage with our content through the development of the GeckoNet website and more recently the development of the GeckoNet chatbot. I built the GeckoNet website back in October of 2018, and since then it has had 393 active users, over 1700 unique page views and helped many a CAS blogger along the way. Seeing the growth of the GeckoNet website, I developed a Facebook Messenger Chatbot for GeckoNet as my CAS project. The aim of this project was to further engage the OSC community with GeckoNet content and also to improve the user experience when doing so.

The other major achievement during my time as leader, was GeckoNet’s expansion into the Primary School. In January 2019, the Primary GeckoNet ASA was launched with the aim of producing monthly Primary Gecko News segments that highlight the happenings in OSC’s primary school during the preceding month. I ran this ASA together with Ms. Mora and we did everything from training the students to publishing the final news pieces. Since the start of Primary GeckoNet, we have had almost 50 primary school students join GeckoNet and produce 7 primary GeckoNews segments.  Over the course of the last two years, all of this work has helped GeckoNet become a significant brand within both the secondary and primary schools. I hope that our next leader Calvin together with Vinuda and Praneeth as his deputies can continue the great work we have done and take GeckoNet to new heights in the future.

In addition to my work at GeckoNet, in the summer of 2019 I volunteered at the E.A.S.E. foundation to teach students on the autism spectrum how to code. This experience was quite unique because it helped me gain a new understanding of the unique problems people face and an appreciation for their resilience. Moreover, I feel that I contributed some real value to the students at E.A.S.E.; all the students enjoyed the sessions, and showed quite a lot of interest in Computer Science and Technology.

Final Thoughts

While I’m proud of all the CAS I have done in the last two years, and its impact on my growth as an individual and a leader, it wouldn’t have been possible without the teacher supervisors that guided me throughout the process and the teams of students that worked with me to make an impact. I have to specially thank people like Ms. Mora, Ms. Jasmine, Mr. Anto, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Turner and Dr. Leigh for giving me the space and guidance to achieve all this.

Furthermore, although maintaining this CAS blog seemed like a chore throughout the DP, I appreciate the fact that it gives me an easy way to look back and reflect on some of the experiences that have shaped me into the person I am today.