CAS Blog - September 2010

With my senior year starting, I have a slew of new CAS activities to choose from.
I ended up picking the following as the activities that I wish to participate in for the 2010 - 2011 school year:

SAISA Badminton - Action

Badminton Club - Action

Habitat for Humanity (aka H4H)- Service

Computer Club (aka C-Squared / C2) - Creativity/Service

French Honor Society - Creativity/Service

Both my required action slots have been filled last year but I enjoyed playing in Badminton Club and SAISA Badminton that I decided that I should try to better myself by continuing both activities.
I have similar reasoning for continuing Habitat for Humanity (H4H) as I will be working with same group of people and hopefully attending the same builds with them as well. I remember it was hard to incorporate myself into the work ecosystem that was present when I joined H4H last year, I do not wish to experience similar discomfort when switching to a different club. I feel that a continuation of an activity will always lead to some sort of specialization, hopefully I will end up as a distinct member of H4H.
Once again, like last year, i'll be continuing my participation in French Honor Society (FHS) and C2 but believe it's more of a personal obligation that's encouraging me to stay in these clubs. As a senior, it is my responsibility to guide my peers with my experience. First of all, as a French student for over 6 years, I have absorbed a lot of francophone culture that can be passed on through this club. Secondly, with a natural affinity for computers and technology, I have become a valuable asset for C2 that was unfortunately not fully tapped to it's maximum potential last year. This was primarily because of my newcomer status, but that's behind me this year. I hope to lead a couple projects and ramp up the productivity to compensate for the lower membership.

Till now, I've attended two badminton clubs meetings, two Habitat for Humanity meetings, two Computer Club meetings and one FHS movie night.

CAS Blog - April

Over the past month, a dozen students and I have been training hard in an attempt to become the athletes who will represent AISD at the SAISA Badminton Tournament. I was consistently fourth seed on the ladders and had good prospects. Unfortunately, on the last day of practice, i was defeated, loosing my fourth place and also my spot on the team. I think that i lacked the confidence to win and also the sleep to be fully energized, several times i felt more tired than usual and because of that, did much worse. Next time i participate in a SAISA sport, i hope to be able to manage my time more efficiently and get my homework done in a manner that it does not interfere with my game.

Also, April was the month of AISD Idol. Although I did not try out as a participant, me and the members of C-Squared did a fantastic job of recording and presenting the performances on the spot. I think that our organization and preparation could have been slightly improved as a lot of the things we did were very last minute and it quickly became hectic.

CAS Blog - March

March marks the beginning of the first ever SAISA badminton season. Naturally, being part of badminton club for two years, I tried out for the team. The first couple practices were not challenging at all, we began learning the basic strokes (which i had already mastered). But when the intense training began, I went home every night with a sore shoulder and an aching hand. I sought advice from our captain, Pranav, who recommended I buy my own racket as the ones provided by the school are inferior in quality. When I found one that suited my style, I found playing much easier. Also, using the same equipment every time ensures that you can acclimatize and then optimize your technique. After slightly adjusting my hitting style, I no longer had the same shoulder problems as before.
Unfortunately, devoting so much of my time towards SAISA badminton meant that i could no longer fully participate in C-Squared or attend all the talent show practices. In the weeks following spring break, i need compromise by missing a practice or two so i can still keep my other activities going.

CAS Blog - February

Over the month of February, I took on the role of a freelancing photographer as a creative service to the understaffed yearbook team. This compromised of taking photos of two DISA events, boys soccer and girls basketball. Having a lot of experience in the sport of soccer and good weather conditions, I was able to take fantastic photos of the players in their best moments. Unfortunately, I had difficulty attempting to capture images of the girls playing basketball because of the terrible and mediocre lighting available in gyms C and A, respectively. The only way to circumvent the darkness of the photos was to set the ISO higher, although this produced brighter images, they were freckled with noise and odd colors. Thankfully, modern image editing software can patch up and remove such noise, it will be some extra work for the yearbook staff. I hope to be prepared next time and arrive with a flash in hand.

Badminton club was not as successful as before, the dwindling number of members has caused me to play the same opponents over and over again. Without the diversity of players previously available, the club has become less enjoyable and active. This, on the other hand, also has an upside: the limited amount of court space was no longer saturated with doubles teams. For the first time in months, I was able to play one-on-one matches in order to test my true capabilities in Badminton. I proved to be a powerful player with others complementing me on my quick reflexes. With this knowledge in hand, I can confidently say that I succeed during the upcoming SAISA Badminton season. This will be the first Badminton tournament held by the SAISA organisation. Although it will be a honor to take part, there are a lot of aspects of the game which light needs to be shed on, there will always be difficulties the first time but I hope nothing too big goes awry.

CAS Blog - January

Over the past month I have engaged myself in badminton club once again as well as another habitat build.

Badminton began a week late and I opted to go to football club for that week, the change in pace was welcome and I hope to go there more often as it's time doesn't conflict with that of badminton. (but homework will still come first, i'll only go when i have free time) The the schedule during the weeks after that continued as usual. On the other hand, my usual badminton partner, Prakash, had more pressing issues to attend to and forced me to play with Sanchit who was on a different level than I. Although this change was unforeseen, I still managed to make the most out of it by learning a different playing style that was presented me and, in turn, helping and giving tips to Sanchit.

During my second habitat build, with new peers helping out as well as a new advisor, i felt that it was much easier. I had come with a prepared-ness that was absent during my first build which aided in my understanding of what needed to be done and the purpose of the whole shebang. I think being with a different group of people also helped bring a positive attitude, this time girls came along (rather than all boys last time) and set the pace a bit slower but brought a lot more meaning into community service. When all the boys complained that the work was hard last time, the advisor would just force us to work harder. This time, when we did the same thing, we were just spurred on by encouragement such as: "dont give up, you're doing a good thing." I enjoyed this build a lot more, it had more spirit, a bigger group and more meaning.

In addition to the physical activities, C-squared began a new short term project, the filming of AIS/D Idol. As a person enthusiastic about all sorts of media, this was more a recreational activity and an opportunity instead of a chore that other people perceive it to be. The project has just begun and so I cannot comment much but i hope that my presence (with a scary looking video camera) wont intimidate the auditioners too much!

CAS Blog - December

December was only half a month of activities, it ended abruptly when winter break began. It was getting cold, too cold to do any physical outdoor activity and borderline freezing indoors during badminton club. Furthermore, the Gyms are air conditioned which lead to participants to wear thick clothing or shivering in the chilling breeze. This was what caused Badminton Club to become less effective as an excercise method. Those that were not as sensitive to the temperature also suffered as the game requires at least two players. if your opponent doesn't play as well as usual, it becomes easier to beat them and so you put less effort into it, less effort means less training. I attempted to fix this by wearing several extra layers but this made is harder to move as the sport requires high levels of agility, soon i began to sweat and began shedding the layers. Then it was too cold. It was hard to find the right balance between performance and health (the immune system weakens and the body becomes susceptible to disease if it's operating below optimal temperatures). The joy that I usually get from badminton is also disappearing into the weather and with it, all it's stress relieving properties. I relied on the action to vent my pressure that accumilated over the week from the strenuous IB program, the need for a vacation grew rapidly. Bandminton was also my method for staying fit, as it became less effective, i didn't really notice it (but the scales did!). I hope to return to playing badminton at the club after the winter break has ended, hopefully it isn't as cold then.

CAS Blog - November

Two interesting forth-comings in Habitat for Humanity (aka Habitat) and Computer Club (aka C-squared) have kept me pretty busy. The first of the two, Habitat, organized builds for its members to go on. During the second weekend of November, I volunteered to go to a remote village to the north of Dhaka to help build one of two houses that were at the site. It was actually more a a refurbishing than a from scratch build. This was the case because the owner previously lived in a corrugated tin shack, dangerous and poorly protected against the monsoon. The Habitat for Humanity organization aims to change that, giving this family man a sturdy dwelling by the beginning of the next rainy season. Our build was only a small part of the whole house and arguably the most important one, the floor. Straining our backs to shovel, shift and mix over 200 baskets of brick, sand, cement, and water to obtain concrete, we laboriously (but still carefully) created a floor. According to our trip leader at that time, Mr. Steffens, this stuff would last almost a century (if not, at least 50 years).
Secondly, our C-squared team advance in our goal to create a functional website for our club. With the absence of Mr. Read during some of our meetings, we collectively decided that the best course of action would be to have each member specialize in a sector of the website. With the building underway, the website has big potential thanks to the efforts of Erfan for scouting for useful tools and a newcomer, Tanveer, who will be responsible for image editing. In a way I see myself as a group leader, although not officially appointed as one by our project coordinator. I constantly get decision making questions asked and am the "go to" person for anyone with troubles. On that note, I hope to be of some help to my peers as I am the only one with prior experience with Dreamweaver, the application with which we will be constructing our website with (although the decision is not final - the proposition has not been run through to Mr. Read.) The learning phases are slowly coming to an end, we aim to pick up pace on production during the next meeting!