Final Essay

CAS has been a rewarding experience for me over the last two years. Learning to focus not only on academics but also on rounding myself through creativity, action and service has molded me into the person who I am today.

Going out for – and then being cast as – the lead role in the school musical in 11^th grade helped me discover my love for theatre, an interest which I then continued to pursue over the two years and which I know I will continue on doing after high school. Drama has helped me develop a strong sense of self-confidence as well as the strict and concentrated work ethic which is required to learn a large part, traits which I think are extremely important in all aspects of life. 

CAS also allowed to me combine different types of activities and through Artsco, the art/service club which I headed in 12^th grade, I was able to combine my love for the arts with an opportunity to serve my community. This experience really taught me how I can find something that is meaningful, rewarding and caters to my own interests, which is extremely important in discovering what it is that I will be passionate about for the rest of my life.

As the captain of the swim team and the head of Artsco at school, I have been able to build up leadership skills. Artsco, a club that has a large focus on community service, has taught me responsibility, as I have to contact and organize our service opportunities, including painting murals in the Kibera slum and working with community art programs around Nairobi. Serving as captain of the swim team not only makes me responsible for our numerous elementary and middle school members, but also designates me as the liaison between the younger swimmers and the coach. I must function not only as the captain of the swim team but also as a member of the team, which requires skills in leadership, communication, and cooperation with others. Sports like Tennis and Swimming are also extremely important in my life, as I believe that through them I found a way to not only stay fit in high school but also continue an active life style for the rest of my life.

Participating in service events like the two week trip to the Amazon and Lunahuana in Peru as well as being a member of Habitat for Humanity in 11^th grade has taught me an immense respect for people who can live with almost nothing and still be happy and enthusiastic about their situations. The people in the Mai Mahu displaced people camp lost everything during the post election violence in 2007 and yet they are using that as a new beginning and forming a new community in their new home. It really amazed me how people can overcome any obstacle and still be smiling and enjoying themselves, as everyone was always very helpful and kind to us during our Habitat builds.

What made the Amazon trip so rewarding was that we were working with the man and I could really see how much it meant to him that were helping him out. He was always laughing and joking around with us (even though he only spoke Spanish we got by, which was extremely rewarding in itself) and it really just seemed like I was making a difference in his life, which felt great.

On the Lunahuana trip our main focus was working at a local elementary school. I was really scared coming on the trip as a non Spanish speaker that I wouldn't be able to have any impact on the kids but they were so eager to learn and so happy that I was there that it didn't even matter and we managed to communicate. I have to say that this was the most incredible experience of this entire trip, I could really feel that these kids loved what I was doing with them and even only being able to teach them the colors and the parts of the body in English was beyond amazing. They never made me feel like I wasn't getting through to them despite the language barrier. The way in which people can learn to communicate and work together despite cultural difference really strongly impacted me and I think inspired me greatly in choice to pursue International Relations at a college level.

Overall CAS has definitely shaped me into a more understanding and well rounded person, and I think that it has strongly impacted the decisions I will make and the lifestyle I will live over the course of my life. I have learnt that I am a strong leader, that I can find something meaningful and rewarding, which I love doing and that I can overcome any obstacle.

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Final Reflection - Tennis

My objectives for joining the German School Club Tennis team were to try a new sport which I had never really played on a team and only ever truly experienced in a few P.E. lessons. I also think that Tennis is a sport that is really fun, keeps you fit and you can play for the rest of your life, so i was hoping to create a hobby for myself which would help to keep active for much longer than just my Senior Year. I absolutely love Tennis and I am SO happy i was able to discover a sport that i am so happy passionate about. Saturday Tennis has become one of the best parts of my week and I am always very upset when i have to miss a practice for any reason! The relationships I've built with my teammates have also been great as they come from several different schools around Nairobi and it therefore allowed me to broaden my social horizons, meeting new people and learning from them when I would never have otherwise had the opportunity to do so. I've also actually become quite good at Tennis, something which I never would have expected to happen on my first day of practice. We played a few singles and doubles tournaments and I was actually able to win the most recent singles and doubles championship! Tennis is also great because there is singles and doubles so you get to play individually and with a teammate! Overcoming my fear of being bad, and also overcoming some terrible technique mistakes were my biggest obstacles, but i definitely managed to improve my skills tremendously! Again, persistence and the importance of working hard at something in order to get good are what I have taken away from Tennis and i hope to play it for the rest of my life!

Final Reflection - Artsco

 Artsco, an arts club which started when I was a Sophomore, and which I have been a part of since I was a Junior, did almost
nothing for the first two years of its existence. This year, as President, I vowed to change that because this club could be so
much more, and our school really needed to improve its apprecation of the arts. Through blood, sweat and tears and with the
help of two of my friends who I appointed co-chairs, Artsco has now organized service opportunites with programs in the
Kibera slum, where we paint murals in support of positive change in the community. We also organize for students to submit
mural designs which they can then paint onto the walls surrounding our school's construction site. Finally, we organized an inter-school talent show. I am really proud of making this club a significant part of our school's community and it
makes me happy to see an increased interest in the arts at our school, something that I hope continues for years to come.

I think we worked really well as a team in order to create a greater sense of appreciation for the arts in our community and we were really able to bring art more the foreground in ISK's community. The importance of strong leadership and the power it can have to unite and bring people together to actually accomplish something really important is the most important lesson I learnt from Artsco and something that i will be able to carry on into later life.

Final Reflection - Swim Team

My objectives in Swim Team this year were to continue on and improve on a sport that I've been participating in since I was 9. I wanted to not only improve my times but to keep up my overall fitness and to stay in shape doing something that hopefully I will be able to do for the rest of my life. I also wanted to uphold my duties as captain and make sure our team was cohesive and unified. I think that overall ISK did very well this year in swimming and I was a proud member of the team. I feel that even though it is an individual sport we were able to support each other and learn from each other in order to improve as a team, never leaving anyone behind or struggling to be a part of the group. We ended up doing very well as a team too, winning many medals and trophies. I feel that I definitely was able to achieve my objectives of both improving as a swimmer and keeping my fitness level up and good. Even though i had to commit a lot of my time to Macbeth, i was still able to make it to several early morning practices and several swim meets, which made me really proud and happy as swimming is something I love to do and will continue to do for hopefully many years. During the second semester i also had to give over more time to studying for my exams, but I still managed to come to at least one meet and a few practices. These obstacles to commitment were the biggest obstacles i faced, and i'm happy i was able to overcome them and remain an active member of the team. Swim team has taught me about persistence and team work even when these seem difficult to accomplish. It makes me proud when I win a race, but it makes me even prouder to know that I'm contributing to my team's success. It is really satisfying to know that hard work pays off. Both of these lessons have defined me as a person, I know that I can get even more satisfaction from something if not only I, but my larger community benefits as well, and I know that I can do anything if I really try.

SODAS Opening - Artsco

Karl, the head of the SODAS foundation for which we had been painting murals in August, September and October invited Ms. Mackay our supervisor and Anais and myself, the two heads of Artsco, to the opening of the foundation and it was really nice to see something that our club had worked towards building up finally come into existence! It was a big ceremony with lots of musicians, and speakers who talked about the importance of drug and alcohol prevention, sex education and rehabilitation for the youth of Kibera. Everyone seemed really please with Artsco's involvement in the community and we got several compliments on how our murals were able to raise awareness about the project in the community. Art is a great medium through which can impact society and have them better understand the problems of their community. Our first mural about positive and negative role models shows the youth what they do and don't want to do with their life and rewards of living a life free from drugs, alcohol and unprotected sex. In order to help SODAS with the launch of their project we also decided to donate 50,000 Shillings which we had raised through the PTO Picnic, Bake sales, the Talent Show and the International Day! They seemed extremely pleased and I really hope Artsco can continue to work with SODAS in the future.

Working at International Day

For the International Day at school Artsco decided we wanted to do a fun game which would create art through community involvement. We filled balloons with different colors of paint and stabled them to a wooden board. We then gave each player 3 darts with which they would attempt to pop the balloons, winning  different prizes based on which color paint was in the balloon. It was really fun to see all the children get so excited to see the paint spray out on the board and create a really cool piece of abstract art. They were all shouting and yelling at which color  was going to come out the balloon next and it really went along with Artsco's philosophy to promote art in the community by getting them excited and involved in something creative and artistic. We are going to donate any profits we made from the game to the SODAS foundation where we were painting murals earlier in the year.

Final Post Show Reflection - Macbeth

My life feels so empty now, this play took up so much of my time and even though it was stressful I really do miss it. The reaction to the performance have all been really good with people saying they were amazed at what we were able to accomplish because of how difficult the text is but also because of how well it all worked. I've gotten praise for really hitting home the emotions and emotional transition from the beginning to the end, which I'm really proud of. I did, however, get several people telling me they honestly understood very little of the plot even though they enjoyed it! It's weird because to me the text seems so obvious now that i know this so well. I understand every word and its somehow weird to think that the audience doesn't. It does make sense though looking back at my own experience when i saw Macbeth in Stratford Upon Avon, where it was, even though i knew the play, sometimes difficult to to follow, so the reaction was expected. The fighting, I think, was definitely what brought this play to life and I'm so happy we added it unlike the play in Stratford. That first fight really set the stage for the audience to know this wasn't going to be just kids reciting lines from Shakespeare but an actual interesting performance.

My objectives for this activity for this activity were to overcome my fear of thinking i would not be able to perform a Shakespeare play for a high school audience and not have them writhing in their seats with boredom, and also to accomplish this feat! I was also hoping to learn about how a cast and crew can come together, moving past the actor as a singular unit, to create a dynamic and unified performance. I think overall we managed to put on an entertaining show and we definitely did the absolute best we could performing a play with extremely difficult English language to an audience where many members did not speak English as their first language. I also feel that all members of the cast and crew were able to work together to create a synergy which allowed to us impact the audience fully at all times. I also had so much fun with my cast and crew and the relationships i built with them made the entire experience worth it on their own. So in the respect I did feel that I reached my objectives and i'm happy with our final performances. There was the obvious difficulty of people not being able to understand the plot, and due to the language barrier, never being able to understand the lines no matter how well i presented them. I think that by putting on a definite spectacle we were able to keep the audience engaged visually and auditarily even if they didn't understand the exact lines that were being said. The elaborate fighting and costuming also allowed the audience to see characters advance and fall, which is the main plot of Macbeth. I learnt that anything is possible, and i remember myself sitting in the read through for this play thinking I could never learn all those lines, so accomplishing just that was truly amazing for me. The work ethic and discipline i learned from staying after school until 9:30 sometimes and still keeping up with my studying is extremely important for the rest of my life as it taught me time management and persistence even in the face of things looking impossible. I've definitely learned to value my free time, and not to waste it when I could be doing something productive.