Final Post

The two years of the IB diploma have pushed me to the best of my abilities. i have tried things that i probably would have never attempted and i have learned a lot. I attended many different CAS projects and many different activities outside of school time. i expressed all my abilities and set goals through out the years.

I started with the Cleft lip & Palate Service led by Rithvik. I started with this project half way through the year and when i came in I tried my best to engage in the group activities. applying new skills i faced a global issue that is also face here in Sri Lanka. i didn't know much of the situation nor the disease but when i entered i made a difference. I took charge of the situation and gave ideas in order to make the difference. I gave an idea and developed it in the group in order to raise money for the situation. I kept changing community service projects in order to gain new skill and start setting new goals. The other Community service project which i applied a lot of my time and effort in trying to help the project. In Alzheimer's we had a walk to raise awareness of the disease so the people of a lower class, people that would other wise not be aware. i took initiative to give out brochures to every single passer by. we also gave money to join to raise money to help the foundation.

Other than services i also joined Sporting events. I was part of the Basketball team for 3 years in a row. the SAISA basketball team is where i applied my skill the most and tried to develop. the change and development was seen through out the years as a player and for the people playing with me. i went from being bench in grade 10 to started in grade 11 to captain in grade 12. this is one of my greatest achievements and my greatest application of commitment. A surprising Achievement and goal i set was to make the Track and Field team for SAISA. Representing the school for those events was very unusual as i am not used to any of these sorts of activities but with determination i achieved my goal in making the team and traveling to represent the school. i even won a medal for placing in the discuss throw.

All the activities required for me to work with others but the activities that i feel that required me to work most with others is the initiation of a new school band. Playing the drums has opened many doors before but nothing quite like this. Mr. Smith, the tech teacher at OSC had asked me to play for him and his band. It was a very nerve racking experience because it has been a long time since i last played and the people i would be playing with have played their instruments for much longer than i have. this was a challenge i was willing to undertake. working collaboratively with the new band i was able to improve my skill. i showed initiative in every practice and put full effort in every performance.


the two years of my IB program were full of activities and have really pushed me to the limits but it has allowed me to develop new skills that will help me later on in the future. engaging in small issues brought up by the school has allowed me to see the issues of a more global scale.

Complicating things

The band was finally named Las Paginas and we started practicing again. Interacting with Mr. smith and Mr. Reihm became easier because we got more ecomfortable around each other. this allowed me to surpass any pressure and push myself to try new things on the drums. this risk taking has allowed me to improve my skill in playing and improvisation.

We are now practicing for a much tougher performance. there is a music concert being held in april at this school. In this performance we are playing songs that push us to the limit of our abilities. this is a great chance to improve my skill and confidence on the drums. this performance will encourage the interest in music amongst the students at osc

Performing

Performing for the school for the first time required a lot of risk taking. we planned everything before hand, like where to stand and the song list to make it most interesting. We performed at the Food and Fun Fair that included all ages so it was hard to pic songs that would be enjoyed by a wide verity of people.

The difficult thing in the beginning was to overcome the fear of perfoming infront of a big group of people where most people where strangers to me. once that fear was over come the challange was to keep the same tempo as i got tired and keep grip on the sticks as my hands got sweaty. i can definitely say i have developed new skills, the performance was very long and allowed me to reflect on each of my actions. i immediately gained comfort.

The goal i set at the beginning of this project to play with Mr.Reim and Mr. Smith was met as i was able to learn all 8 songs with no mistake. I only messed up once but i have developed enough understanding and skill on the songs that i was able to regain the beat and get back perfectlly in the song, you could really see the commitment we put in practice and the perseverance that we were putting in the performance.

The Band

Mr. Smith, Mr Reim and I have formed a band. they needed a drummer therefore i joined, the reason i got picked was because of the choice of music i am interested in that correlated with the music they listen to and were interested in playing. the challenges of this band is that they are very good at their instruments and have a lot of experience since they have been playing for a long time so its hard to keep up to their standards, but hopefully this will allow me to develop my skill on the drums. to improve and in order to have the songs nailed down by the time we perform, we will have to show high levels of commitment and practice everyday.

My goal is to learn all the songs that we are aiming to learn for our two upcoming performances. we are going to play for entertainment at the food and fun fair. My goal is to gain full familiarity with the music, the difficulty is that this was the first time i ever herd the songs im learning how to play for them.

the solution to this is listening to the songs continuously and imagine the motion so that im more familiar when it comes to actually getting on the drums.

hopefully our goal is achieved and we make a great performance

SGA

For the first time in my life i started taking part in the Student Government Association. this was because of some misfortunate events which led to our class representative to drop out and I decided to volunteer to become the SGA class representative.

I felt like I took a lot of responsibility undertaking this role so i set some goals to actually get some of the ideas on the shelf and speak for my class for any improvement. I already started getting busy by giving out the valentines cards and attending one meeting, this is the first time i have worked collaboratively with people towards change in this school. i also shared some ideas for valentines which i picked up from my old schools which i thought would be fun for valentines day.

I aim to make myself useful and be helpful to the SGA by also attending and helping in the school events.

Alzheimer's walk

On the 5th February I participated in the Alzheimer's walk to raise awareness. this walk was symbolic not only as a fund raiser for the Alzheimer's foundation but also to raise awareness in areas of colombo where people were not aware of this dementia.

my goal for the walk was to make as many people as possible aware of the dementia by handing out brochures that surprisingly people read. whole i was handing out the information papers i saw that some were already reading them, the people that weren't were so interested that came up to me and asked for a couple to bring to their families. people even stopped their cars to get informed of what was going on.

The walk was done in the poorest part of colombo were awareness of this dementia was very low (almost none). This was a symbolic walk as well as a fund raising walk. the fund raising was 1000Rp per entry. there were people walking and some running. we were very visible as a group since we were all wearing red & white and had balloons and flyers that attracted attention.

SAISA Basketball

Finally the tournament we were all looking forward to arrived. We were all very excited and couldn't wait to start playing our first game. our goal was to show who we were and frighten our opponent. this was probably the hardest goal to achieve since we were playing AES first (who ended up coming first) and we knew they were going to be a tough team to beat but we were ready for it.

when we arrived we went to this mall where we would eat lunch and mess around until it was time to meet our hosts since we arrived at 8am and our hosts would come pick us up at 3:30pm. at the mall we played in this arcade where every time we would beat a record it would give us a lot of tickets that we could use to win a prise. the mall was filled with less fortunate kids and so we decided to give all the tickets to this group of kids who would enjoy the stuffed toy a lot more than us. we also saw a small group of poor children trying to buy an ice cream but barely had enough money for one so we just gave them the money to buy each one an ice cream.

on the second day there was the opening ceremony where they introduced all the teams. we then had our first game. we were the opening game and we had to play AES the toughest team. we needed to work collaboratively as a team as much as possible. moving the ball around and working together and collaboratively like we practiced through out basketball season.

the tournament did not go as planned. we lost the first game with AES and our goal after that was to go to the finals. though we won 4 games and lost 2 we lost the crucial games that put us down to 5th place. we were not sad at all with that position because we were announced second in the win - loss ratio after AES who won all 6 games.

as a team we developed a lot of skill together in these few days. we were always there for each other and we were ready for anything even though not being familiar with our surroundings. we all bonded with each other and with other teams. this a great experience and our loss did not affect us much.