Monsoon Musings was a Language event organized by us, Grade 11 students, where we gave parents, teachers, and students a platform to recite their poetries and stories they have written and present it to the audience. Along with this, we also had an art gallery where students were asked to give their artworks, which were displayed for parents and teachers to have a look and admire its beauty. Finally, we thought an event would be incomplete without food. So, we also had a Seva Cafe, where we made delicious food for everyone to munch on while enjoying poetry and art. It was not mandatory to pay, however, we accepted whatever people gave us willingly and donated the money we got to charity. I was a volunteer in Seva Cafe and I helped make sandwiches. The LOs covered are LO2, LO4, and LO5.

LO2:- Demonstrate that challenges that have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

I learned the importance of time-management and planning in this activity. In the earlier stage, we took things very lightly and did not do efficient planning. Due to this, we faced a lot of shortage of time and got a lot of work at a go. Sandwiches are something everybody prefers, thus, we got lots of orders and we did not make enough sandwiches. Thus, we had to make and give sandwiches on the spot. I decided to divide the process of making sandwiches amongst ourselves. We assigned 2 students each to apply butter on bread, to chop vegetables, to grate cheese and to make the sandwich. This helped me develop my self-management skills as well.

LO4:- Show commitment and perseverance in CAS experiences

Seva Cafe lacked any motivation for me as I do not prefer service much. I do not like it when my hard work leads to someone else being better off. We were making the sandwiches and we did not even get to taste it. However, I suppressed my negative thoughts and instead focussed more on making others happy. This gave me a sense of satisfaction and inner happiness which made me committed to the event. I could see as other food stall students were just whiling away their time and eating the food by themselves and I too wanted to give up and enjoy to some extent, however, somehow I stayed and did my task.

LO5:- Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

It wasn’t possible for the event to be successful if everyone didn’t work collaboratively. There were 4 teams made respectively that handled food, decoration, poetry and art. Any one team faltering would have made the event unsuccessful. We all worked collaboratively and divided the work equally according to the strengths of the people to make it a successful event!