And two years later…

This is my last CAS entry. It has been two years since I started CAS. There has been ups and downs and long breaks away from CAS but writing my final entry means that it is finally over and it is time to focus more on the final examinations. I remember our CAS coordinator always saying, "CAS is not about the hours, it is about you meeting the learning outcomes, so please stop asking me how many hours you have to complete for the next two years!!!" I remember him saying that often during the first year, but soon everyone caught on and everyone started working on completing the different learning outcomes.

There were a number of difficulties during the two years. One of them was meeting some of the learning outcomes, especially "engage in issues of global importance" and "consider ethical implications of your activities." On the other hand, I had plenty of learning outcomes like "work collaboratively with others" due to my participation in different sports activities. The hard part was trying to balance all these outcomes, avoiding to have too much of one, but even with that, some learning outcomes always kept coming back.

I mainly had one project over the course of the programme. My project was the Wobulenzi project. It started in the first year of my diploma programme when the whole class took a compulsory trip to WTA (Wobulenzi Town Academy), and it all started with my group and I doing a workshop that involved teaching the students of the school rugby. It was hard at first, they would most times get carried away and kick the rugby ball and play football with it. But when they got the hang of the game, it was sometimes fun to play. The real project started in the 3rd term when we got the idea of teaching the students french for one month. Although the classes only lasted 1 month, I am proud of what we accomplished.

There are many things that I learned during the last two years doing CAS, but most of what I learned can be summarised through the learning outcomes I achieved.

Student council is also for the cool kids :)

This is my last entry for the student council activity. Honestly I only entered the student council in order to get my CAS points and planned on doing nothing all year long. Things changed quickly. The student council meetings were always fun to attend. I made new friends and talked to people I would never have talked to outside the meetings. There were also awesome privileges that came with being in the student council but the most important one is that since that day, I never had to stay in line waiting for lunch. All I had to say was that I was in the student council and people had no choice but to let me cut in line, because the student council was there to listen to their complaints and why not do something nice for the student council too?

During my year in the student council, we discussed student complaints, uniform changes, planned parties, some failures and others surprisingly successes. I improved my listening and team work skills and learned a few other useful tips that will surely be useful sometime in the future. This is by far my longest activity and it was not always easy committing to the weekly meetings but I made it. Maybe I will be in some sort of student council in my university, who knows!?

These are the learning outcomes I achieved:

- Increase my awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth.
- Show perseverance and commitment in my activities.
- Work collaboratively with others.
- Undertake new challenges. 

Never too young to be a role model!

This activity involved supervising a toy distribution programme in the primary section of my school. I don't know if its the case with everyone but I always find it scary working close to little kids. You never know if they are going to kick you or jump on you at the same time. I guess this what happens when you watch too many movies. This activity was carried out for one month and I supervised the distribution once a week on thursday. Basically my role was to aid the student council during the process and maintain order sometimes because the kids were always very excited to get the toys and most times were always trying to fight to go first because the first one always had the most choice and the best toys. This activity was interesting, it showed me that kids are not the "little monsters" that they are sometimes portrayed on TV and helped me improve my patience and somehow my leadership skills because it was important for the kids to pay attention.

These are the learning outcomes I achieved:

• Undertake new challenges. It might not be scary to work with little kids but for me it was. It is always hard to make kids listen to you and you have to find different ways to use in order to make the little kids listen to you. This was a first for me working with kids that young.
• Consider the ethical implications of your activities. Working with little kids that age means that you have to act as a role model and use the appropriate language at all times when the kids are close by because the little kids tend to imitate older people.