During my summer vacations between my two academic years of highschool, I wanted to do something productive about my passion for reading and writing, since I never gave it enough time and attention. Thus, I planned to write my own book comprising several articles on personal development in different areas of life, very creatively with the help of pictures and drawings as well. The title I have given to this book is “My Time To Grow”. This was a challenge for me because I have never written a book before. However, it is difficult to publish a book like this, and I haven’t completed it yet because of so many academic assignments and basketball tournaments coming on my way. Since I wasn’t able to publish the book right now (though, I plan to work on it and publish in future), I created my own blog titled “It’s Time to Think Big n New” where I could at least publish a few articles that I wrote. The content of my blog write-ups and my book was inspired by the learning from all the self-help books I’ve read. Out of all book genres, I prefer self-help books because I believe that personal development is the most important aspect of any human life, which is not given adequate attention in school. Thus, through writing on these topics and sharing it with everyone, I wanted to help people to see the prominent role personal development can play in their lives and improve the quality of life by giving them different perspectives to look at it. This is one of my favourite CAS experiences because I’ve enjoyed it a lot.
Link to my Blog: http://diyaideas.blogspot.com/
Learning Outcomes achieved:
LO-1 – Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth.
Since I am an English HL student and I love the subject, I have the practice and experience of reading and writing a lot. These have always been my strengths. However, I only wrote stuff related to my academics, thus, this CAS experience gave me an opportunity to identify my strength of reading and writing with effective language and develop myself in areas where I could grow, that is writing outside my comfort zone on academic topic, instead about the topic of personal development and looking at life from different perspectives which I love.
LO-2- Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
This is the first time that I wrote my own book. To be honest, just thinking of the idea to write my own book was scary because it was completely out of my comfort zone and I doubted whether I had the content and the ability to write so many pages. Also, creating my own blog was challenging because you have the pressure from your peers to judge you if you don’t get many followers. I am grateful to the CAS experience as it helped me overcome this challenge and get me out of my comfort zone.
LO-3- Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience.
Initiating this particular CAS experience was difficult because there were no deadlines and no people to push me except myself as it was insignificant for everyone else. Thus, I planned to write my book and blog write-ups on summer vacation so that there are less chances of people demotivating me to continue this CAS experience. I planned that I’ll write for two hours everyday in the entire vacation and I successfully lived up to all the plan I had created. However, I couldn’t complete the entire book in the vacation because I also had to work on my extended essay submission. Despite that I am happy that I initiated this plan and enjoyed reading and writing about personal development.
LO-6- Engagement with issues of Global Significance.
According to me, the current education system, especially the Indian education system, be it affiliated to any educational board, primarily focuses on encouraging the youth to earn more money and build a good career. However, schools rarely focuses on personal development and giving a lens of how to look at life which is the most important thing when you need to make important life decisions. I believe that the educational system needs a lot of changes and include this subject of ethics and personal development which will be more helpful in their practical real lives, and not just getting into a good university. Thus, through this CAS experience, I think I was able to address this issue of global significance about the educational system that determines the future of youth.
LO-7- Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions.
Writing on the topic of personal development and different perspectives to look at life is something I love that is the reason why I could write a lot while enjoying at the same time. Though the content of my write-ups was inspired from my learning from the self-help books I had read in the past, I never copied anything and tried my best that everything I wrote was very unique and creative. Also, all the pictures and quotes I used on my blog, I made sure I cited them. Furthermore, there are many people who pay some money or use other methods to increase their followers of blog. Despite the fact that I hardly have a few followers on the blog, I feel good that I didn’t cheat in this respect.
The final takeaway for me was that I enjoy reading and writing about personal growth and life ethics a lot and I should definitely explore this passion of mine in future. This CAS experience gave me confidence in myself that I can put my ideas and vision through language. The best thing is that this CAS experience helped me set a new goal for myself, that is publishing my own book on personal growth.