~ Of my Musing on Past CAS and Suchlike ~

~ Of my musings on past CAS and suchlike ~

SO…

This.

This is CAS apparently…

Or better said, this is CAS the new way….

I’m going to be honest and say that I’ve never quite done it like this before. I’ve done CAS, of course I have, but I’ve never blogged about it. I’ve always been more of an old school, pencil and paper type person (ie: technologically defunct) but it’s a learning process and hopefully I’ll learn quickly.

But yes, other than my lack of tech smarts, CAS at OSC is fairly new to me because no-one counts hours. I’ve counted hours all this time. 150 hours to meet the requirements with 50 hours from each category and that was it. Just count your hours.

But now there’s this long term thing. I don’t mind it, it’s just a little… different.

Back then though, I did CAS activities that I liked, ones that I had a passion for. I did Students Against Prejudice (SAP) and Amnesty since grade 9 to cover my service, both activities that I’ve followed all year long. I had done backstage and props for drama productions to get my creative hours, as many productions as they put on, and joined school teams (mainly footy and badminton) for active. They weren’t all permanent and not all long term but they were things I loved to be a part of.

SAP was like family. We were, within school, the people that cared about the minorities and cared about helping the OIG workers on campus. We were the ones that spread awareness about prejudices and actively tried to do something about it. Hell, we even boycotted the word ‘gay’ when used in a negative connotation. This was something we were proud of, being able to make a difference. We even had a day of silence, 24 hours in which we didn’t speak, to send a message and echo deliberately the silence that minorities are forced to face every day. SAP also had this Bangladesh Project inspired by ONE HEN where the students would fly over and help out in a village, building infrastructure and helping the villagers. We did food drives and stationary drives and tried to make it better for a small group of people and we were captured by the idea of fighting prejudices of all sorts (racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, etc), one school at a time. SAP was the one thing service that I passionately fell in love even before I joined having seen my brother be a part of it before me. That spirit still hasn’t died.

Amnesty, however, was something I was coerced into. My friends, the same few that did SAP, convinced me. It turned out to be the best forced commitment I had ever made. Amnesty was all about awareness and actively pursuing global issues. Everything from Peace Day to Human Rights letters were done by Amnesty and we reveled in it. We weren’t as much a family as a fighting force and we knew that we were doing something good, something great. There was power in the way we used our words and resources to better the world, or so we thought. It may have been naïve but we really were fighting the good fight.

Sports were also a major contribution to my CAS. I began initially with footy (soccer) and basketball which were two sports I had always liked, basketball more so because my family played it too. I liked the high of the adrenalin and the feeling of being the best I could be. But I don’t think I pursued sports fully until Grade 10. That was when I fully realized my potential and went for footy as a serious game. I ditched basketball in favour of Track and Field for which I did discus and shot put but I soon dropped that too. I decided to stick to footy and pursue a game I had always been in love with: badminton. It was a whole new ball game, literally, and I loved it. I’ve stuck to both footy and badminton, alternating seasons, as I went along and playing on a team, playing with people, for people, for our pride and for ourselves as a whole gave me a new kind of buzz. I haven’t quite let go of that buzz yet and I’m glad that I get to pursue these sports here too. Not Vipers this time, but, GO GECKOS!

My biggest passion other than sports was the same one I’d carried through childhood. Art. Art in all its shapes and forms enthralled and captured me and in CAS I pursued it as much as I could. I did every single backstage event for UN Days and school plays. I even took part in UN day with UV (ultra violet) dances and so on. I painted scenery and made props and made castles out of cardboard. I designed the Prince’s jacket for Cinderella and got it stitched, watched it being paraded around the stage. It was nice to see my work out there for everyone. Pride was something that came with CAS. Pride in my work, my teams work, our work. Those were some of the best times I’ve ever had, especially with my motley crew of friends that worked together to make fairytales a reality. It was, as far as CAS went, the most creative and imaginative experience I’ve ever had and that was all I needed to make me go for it again and again.

Wow, I’ve uhhh, looking back up, written a lot more than I expected...

Anyway, that’s really all I can think of for now. I just hope that in OSC, with this CAS program, I can get as many useful outcomes and I can pursue my activities with the same passion I had. Let’s see what my first Service, Action and Creativity are~!