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For my CAS project, I chose to create a presentation for Books N’ Cookies focusing on leeches. I’ve always been passionate about leeches, and I thought it would be a great way to share my interest with others as the finale of my CAS journey. Since I already had a lot of knowledge about leeches, I initially just threw a lot of information onto a Google Slides presentation, thinking it would do but when I went over it, I realized that it lacked engagement and was pretty boring, all things considered. To make it more appealing to my audience, I went back and edited the presentation to include jokes and memes, which I think made it way more interesting and engaging.

Here’s the video link!

So- I’ve completed my tutor training sessions and I can now hold tutoring sessions myself! With colleges now ending their test-optional policy, the SAT is gaining more importance. Before this, I was limited to only answering help questions on schoolhouse but now I’m able to actually directly interact and collaborate with the people I’m tutoring! This is a bit challenging for me as I’m not very social but overall I’m really excited about this!

I’ll be holding my first live tutor session this week and I’ll update this when it’s done!

So, recap, one of the activities that I chose for the activity strand of CAS was going on walks for exercise. I know, it sounds simple, but trust me, it’s not easy!

First of all, I don’t know what is going on with the weather lately but I am not into it. It really does feel like it’s been raining everyday since September began! And it’s raining as I type this.

Other than the usual stuff that come with it (like being depressed because the sky is so cloudy) this has meant that the chances to go on walks are limited by the weather. Sometimes I would plan to go for a walk after school, but then it would start pouring and I would have to cancel. Recently, this has been like almost every single afternoon. Like 4 o’clock on the dot, H2O starts falling from the sky at high velocity! And other times, I would wake up early in the morning to catch some sunshine, but then it would be too cold or windy to enjoy the walk. It was frustrating, but I learned to be flexible and adapt to the situation.

By that I mean, every time it’s sunny, I drop everything I’m doing and drag my parents outside to go somewhere with a track. Preferably somewhere I haven’t been before.

Going on walks for exercise has not only been good for my physical health, but also for my mental health. Walking helps me to relax and clear my mind from the stress of school and exams. I like pretending like my IAs are chasing after me for added encouragement/fun/strange coping mechanism. Walking has made me calmer and more mindful of myself and my surroundings.

This is me standing still for a photo.

This is a tree I found. The tree had lichen on it so I lich-ed it. (get it? lichen is pronounced a bit like liken so lich-ed it? Like liked it? – it’s a good pun.). Anyway, the tree reminded me of the DP science trip and I had a sudden urge to count the squares of lichen on the north, south, west and east directions of it but I abstained. Perhaps next time.

Here is a haiku about lichen to conclude –

A sunny day, I walk / A tree adorned with lichen I see / I must count the lichen

(I tried)

Creativity

For creativity this semester, I’m sticking with the Advocate. The Advocate is no longer an ASA but I’m turning it into a more individual project. I still have access to all of the submissions etc. so in my free time, I’m going to work on getting it into a more “literary magazine” form.

Activity

Ah, the good ol’ bane of my existence – I’m kidding (I’m not). So I rotated through a bunch of ideas for this semester from exercising to judo to actually that was it but I ended up landing on taking walks. Because that’s something I can reasonably count on me doing occasionally and isn’t that strenuous.

Service

I signed up for the Young Reporters for the Environment this semester!

I’ve been to Chitra Lane before. As a client though – my former doctor used to (still does I think) work/volunteer there so it was sometimes easier for her to take an appointment there, rather than a hospital. And considering it’s a non-profit, whatever extra cost is added on goes to a worthy cause rather than to a private business – so I didn’t have a problem with it either. But that was a long time ago and returning as an intern rather than well, a client (I’m going to keep using that word even though it has weird connotations because I can’t think of a better one).

This is bound to be an interesting experience so I’m going to be keeping a log here. I’m not necessarily going to write a play-by-play of every single day but I’ll try to record any significant days.

Log 1

So today was fun! A good start to my internship – I had two art sessions today and the kid I was assigned to was great (mostly)! We worked on completing a arts and crafts tree design thing that seemed awesome in my head but turned out uh, less awesome but she seemed to have fun and despite messiness (oh glue, how I hate you) it went alright! That’s all that matters. Working with kids who can unintentionally be a bit unpredictable and having stuff accidentally topple over (especially considering this was in the ART room) was certainly hard on someone who’s a bit uh,

So this is the photo I managed to take before uh, I was no longer able to. That’s on me. Taking a phone out in a room with 4 kids who may not be the best at understanding boundaries (I wasn’t/am not the best at it either so I’m not too annoyed) and are essentially tech-starved may not be a good idea, future Lehan. And then I had to fend people off my phone at random occasions during the class so that’s to say that I’m not going to bringing my phone there anymore. Photographic evidence is going to be sporadic and rare (sorry, Mr Lockwood!).

That was what we were trying to paint green and paste into a tree. Sorry for the blurriness – this was uh, mid-incident.

Log 2

Today was intense. In a good way but also in a bad.

So today was generally laid-back. In IT, I did a thing with R which was basically me inserting a table into word and him copying the numbers from the calendar onto it (with me also doing my best to keep him focused) and it was really good! I high-fived him at the end which is entirely character development on my part, I hated high fives a couple of months ago but I’m now growing partial to them. Art was alright too. The bad part was how after Art, I got lost (darn my non-existent sense of direction), ended up at a pool and then got progressively worked up and a teacher mistook me for a student which brought up tons of insecurities for me because well, it’s a school for primarily severely disabled kids. And the worst part was at that time I was too worked up to talk so I dunno, not the best day. Optimism activate!!!

LAST DAY!

Final thoughts –

We did our group 4 project recently and whilst collecting data to create our poster, we also did service by helping remove the water hyacinth from the lake.

I have to admit, I did my usual panic about the possibilities thing before leaving OSC to go to an unfamiliar place and I was very ready to just not go but I eventually overcame my fears after like an hour of agonizing over the potential disasters and I left OSC at around 10 with Ms Harrison.

Everything went relatively well except for the bit of rain towards the end but other than that, it wasn’t even a fraction of what I had imagined up as the ultimate disaster. I also found a couple of damselflies and dragonflies which were cool too.

But the ultimate really cool thing was – we found a leech! An aquatic leech! A Hirudinaria manillensis! I can feel your excitement doubling with each revelation 🙂

Two or three weeks back, the service group was planting tea in the school garden. Now I had missed the session before it so I was caught off-guard a bit but hey, planting a tea plant shouldn’t be that hard! It’s just removing the wrap over the roots and then placing the plant in the soil in a hole and (firmly) patting down the dirt around it.

And it wasn’t really hard in terms of technique but then there was the whole getting your hands dirty bit which put me off a bit, considering I’m not the most “soil” person but I braved through the fears of contracting a tea-related disease and planted a plant – with the help of Eloise who had to show me how to do it first.

But eventually, the plant was planted with almost all of its roots intact and despite being a bit skewed, it looked happy in its new home. I was happy that I didn’t say no in the end too because it really felt cool to actually plant something, especially when you know that the plant technically could be consumed in the future.

But moving on to my not-main activities this semester, specifically, experiences that weren’t really a resounding success – I’m looking back to the end of March where after being hit with inspiration, I really tried to make running on the treadmill a daily thing. I remember this really well because that was the week that I had a Bonding test for chemistry and I was trying to do both of those concurrently (you’ll see the relevance later on).

The first day was actually kind of good but then the next day went terrible because the moment I woke up, my legs hurt. A lot. Importance of warming up. But after like 2-3 days, I persevered and kind of started getting a hang of it. But then I was trying to memorize something for chemistry and I had my notebook open at the front to kind of multitask and then I tripped/missed a step and tried to put my arms in the front so I don’t fall all the way down but then I accidentally banged my head on the front. Which was very upsetting and I didn’t really go back to it after that.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have tried to multitask.

I’m still processing that an entire year has gone by since I first started at OSC but maybe this reflection will help me process!

Creativity

By far, the CAS strand I devoted the most time to this year was creativity. Mostly in the form of the Advocate, the magazine club that I’m finally mostly done editing! I say mostly because we didn’t really get to the layout yet but that’s to be expected with the limited timeframe and limited workforce. But yes, with my estimation, I’d say that next semester, the Advocate would finally be published, whether that be in digital or print.

Activity

Activity is generally not my strong suit. In fact, it’s probably my weakest point because my body and I tend to disagree a lot on things like which limb to move, where to move it to and when to move it. Thus, my main activity experiences this year were DP orientation, DP science trip and WWW. That may not sound like a lot but for someone who gets out of breath walking to their locker, it’s a pretty big deal and required a LOT of perseverance.

Service

Semester 1 of DP1 was generally pretty good for service but semester 2 kind of took a nosedive. My stress levels and overall health went sideways by mid semester 2 and I missed quite a bit of service but for the times I was there, it was good! Two of my most memorable experiences would be the planting and the prep for the assembly which were both really engaging!

In the last advocate’s meeting, (since this time we actually had submissions!), we essentially finished sorting the articles submitted for the magazine into yes and no piles. And I was really surprised by the quality of the submissions we got – they really were all incredible and we just had one article that we didn’t really think was a good fit for the Advocate and even that was a hard decision.

But one of my main takeaways from this entire experience was that – there is no such thing as perfect creativity. Every piece has its strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes it’s a matter of personal preference. What a good article is really depends on who’s the reader – we just had two members (INCLUDING Ms Echols) and we still had the occasional disagreement. But I did my best to be fair and consistent and if we ever do get to the putting the articles together and publishing it, the Advocate would definitely be an interesting read!